The crawl began beneath the skin of the world.
Kaelen felt it before he saw it—a low thrum beneath the earth, like something buried too long was beginning to itch. The basin they'd left behind had gone still, but the further they walked toward the canyon etched into the Rift's edge, the louder that sensation grew. Not sound. Not motion. Just... awareness.
"Something's watching us," Aelira murmured, walking beside him, her cloak drawn tight around her. "Something old."
Kaelen's silver-violet eyes flicked skyward.
The sky didn't change. But the light felt wrong.
As though the sun was being remembered, not seen.
The canyon opened before them like a scar—black rock stripped bare of time, coiling downward in a spiral that defied geometry. No birds. No wind. Just gravity curling inward like an invitation.
Kaelen paused at the rim. The Weave was denser here, layered thick with decay and whispers. His fingers flexed slightly, brushing the air. Threads responded.
"It's beneath," he said.
Aelira drew her blade. "The thing that watches?"
He nodded. "And the memory it rides."
They descended.
It took time—long hours spiraling down bone-pale stairs that seemed carved by claws rather than tools. At every turn, Kaelen touched the walls, tracing unseen glyphs layered into the stone. Some flickered like fading stars. Others pulsed with hunger.
They passed skeletons embedded in the walls.
Not human.
Not entirely.
Some bore wings. Others, eyeless skulls. Each corpse was locked in place with strands of Weave-forged metal, melted into flesh and bone.
Kaelen paused at one of them—a headless figure whose ribcage had been forced open, revealing an empty cavity.
"They carved something out of it," he murmured.
"Organ?" Aelira asked.
"No. Pattern."
Hours deeper, they reached the bottom.
The air was wet—not with water, but with pressure. Like something vast had exhaled and left its breath clinging to the stones. Ahead lay a stone plaza, flat and circular, with runes etched deep in its center. Cracks ran through it, and from those cracks...
...something crawled.
At first, Kaelen thought it was mist.
Then it shifted.
A mass of fingers. Twisted limbs. A body that had no right to live, formed of scraps of abandoned thoughts and decayed memory.
The Forgotten.
It dragged itself forward with no legs, ribcage clattering like brittle wood, a hundred mouths sewn shut with golden thread.
Kaelen stepped forward.
It stopped.
Aelira hissed, blade ready, but Kaelen lifted a hand.
"Wait."
The creature tilted its stitched head. Its many hands twitched.
Then—
It spoke.
Not in words. In memory.
Kaelen's mind flooded with images: a child bound in ritual, a god's jaw torn out and buried, a string of names never finished, a loom straining under too many threads.
He gritted his teeth.
"It's... a priest," he said slowly. "One of the Quiet Ones. Or what's left of it."
Aelira shivered. "Why is it still alive?"
"Because it was never allowed to die."
The Forgotten began to crawl toward Kaelen again.
Slowly. Not hostile. Purposeful.
Kaelen didn't move.
Instead, he reached out with his Weave-sight.
The creature flared in his vision. Not with power, but with resonance. It had once held a key—a fragment of an old ritual, one meant to separate the soul from the Weave.
Kaelen touched its shoulder.
The creature screamed—not aloud, but in the Weave.
And broke apart.
It didn't explode or fade.
It unraveled.
Threads came loose, golden and black, spiraling upward. Kaelen watched them dance—and then caught them. Absorbed them. The ritual had failed once.
But now he understood its design.
A map to remove presence from time.
He whispered its shape beneath his breath, sealing it behind his heart.
Then stood still.
And saw something else.
The center of the plaza had shifted.
Where the creature had crawled from, a hole had opened—an eye-shaped scar in the stone, its surface rippling like ink. Inside, not darkness, but light.
Kaelen stepped forward. Aelira caught his arm.
"You don't know where it leads."
"I don't need to."
"Why?"
Kaelen's eyes gleamed.
"Because it was meant for me."
The descent was instant.
One blink, and he was standing in a chamber of obsidian glass, its walls covered in murals painted with blood and ash. They showed him—not in likeness, but in pattern. In threads. In acts.
Each panel a scene:
A figure splitting open the sky.
A hand holding a heart made of light.
A face staring at its reflection, only to find the reflection looking away.
Kaelen stepped through the room slowly.
The Weave here was thin. Barely holding. This place wasn't real. It was conceptual—folded into the world like a forgotten page.
In the center stood a pedestal.
On it: a spool of thread.
Not string. Not fiber.
Weave.
Pure, unformed. Unwritten.
Kaelen reached out—
—and his hand passed through it.
He frowned.
The thread responded. It floated up, wrapping around his wrist, then up his arm. Not binding him—but testing him.
A challenge.
Kaelen accepted.
Pain surged.
Not physical.
Mental.
The thread dug into memory.
It peeled.
Kaelen saw flashes: a mother's voice he never heard. A name he never chose. A choice he never made. Then silence. Then...
...a girl. Standing in fire. Her back to him. A blade in her hand.
He reached for her.
She turned—
Aelira.
But her eyes were wrong. Not hateful. Not kind.
Just empty.
The vision shattered.
Kaelen staggered.
The thread fell away, vanishing into his palm.
He was alone again.
He stood still for a moment, breathing hard.
Then looked down.
The pedestal was gone.
The murals too.
Only him.
Only him.
Kaelen closed his eyes.
A pulse moved through his body.
When he opened them again, his gaze burned faint violet.
Not just from the Weave.
From understanding.
Aelira was waiting for him at the plaza when he returned.
She saw his face. Didn't speak.
He nodded once.
"We go west," he said. "There's a tomb buried beneath the Ash Canopy. And inside it... a path to the next Threadwake."
She followed without question.
But in her mind, the image remained:
Kaelen. Standing among threads that weren't there.
Speaking to things that didn't exist.
And becoming something that no longer blinked like a man.