The flicker pulsed again.
Not light.
Not even memory.
Just a suggestion.
A direction whispered by something that no longer had a voice — but still remembered his name.
Nox stepped forward.
One step. Then another.
Threadcutter still pulsed in his hand, a strand of something unmade and waiting.
Around him stretched the Unwritten Expanse — wide, dead, and quiet. Not empty.
Quiet.
Like the silence after a scream too large to ever be heard.
The sky above — that broken Loom hanging across it like a corpse — didn't move. Didn't judge. Didn't heal.
This place wasn't recovering.
It had simply… stopped.
---
SYSTEM FEED: OFFLINE
THREAT LOGIC: UNAVAILABLE
SENSE-ANCHOR: DEFAULT TO INSTINCT
You are beyond fate.
You are alone.
But the world still watches.
---
He walked across cracked stone that wasn't stone.
A flatland of shattered glyphglass, each step crunching over sigils that never got written.
To his left — dead trees. Not wooden. Not organic. Just… outlines. Shells of concept that had once meant forest, before meaning was removed.
To his right — a field of sunflowers.
Except the heads didn't follow light.
There was no sun.
Only a sky of hanging threadlines, pulled taut across an unseen frame.
And at the center of the sunflower field… stood a shape.
A girl?
No.
Not human.
But shaped like one.
---
Nox stepped closer, Threadcutter vibrating faintly.
The girl stood still, her face turned toward the sky. Her skin — if it could be called that — was translucent fabric, stitched with thin traces of code. Her body wasn't breathing, but still moving — an idle sway like a marionette without strings.
There was a symbol burned across her chest.
Not a Loom glyph.
Not system-made.
But older.
A spiral wrapped around a crossline — a forbidden pattern.
He recognized it.
From Kiris's memory shard.
The Seal of Rejection.
---
He stepped into the circle of sunflowers — and the girl moved.
Not violently.
But… deliberately.
Her head turned. Her eyes opened.
They were filled with static.
She spoke.
But it wasn't speech.
It was recorded intent.
"—you came too soon—"
A pause. The glitch stuttered.
"—or maybe you're late. Either way, this path isn't ready."
"This was meant for her. Not you."
"But she's not here, is she?"
"She failed."
---
Nox gritted his teeth. "What are you?"
She blinked.
And for a moment — just a moment — he saw her real face.
It was Kiris.
Or rather… a broken render of her, stitched together from discarded memories and prototype instructions.
WARNING: THREADSIGNATURE RECONSTRUCTION — CORRUPTED Memory Ghost Detected Role: Failed Interface Fragment
She wasn't real.
But she had remembered him.
"If you remember her name," the fragment said, "then you're still dangerous."
"Even here."
---
Wind moved.
But there was no wind.
The sunflowers turned — all at once — to face Nox.
Their dark centers pulsed with tiny blinking glyphs, like watching eyes.
And from the sky… something broke loose.
A falling star?
No.
A coffin.
Metal. Thread-bound.
Slamming into the ground a few meters from him with an impact that rewrote the dirt around it.
The girl-fragment backed away.
"You weren't supposed to see that yet."
"But the system… it remembers you now."
"And it's starting to send its ghosts."
---
The coffin cracked open.
Steam escaped — or maybe code.
Inside, a figure sat hunched over.
Black bodysuit. Mask cracked.
Wires embedded in her spine like veins.
Another hunter?
No.
Not yet.
This one hadn't moved in a long time.
But her eyes opened.
They were red.
Not crimson. Not glowing.
Just… recording.
She locked onto Nox.
"THREADSIGNATURE: NULL_01 — VERIFIED."
"LOOM RESPONSE: MANUAL INITIATIVE AUTHORIZED."
"PROTOCOL DESIGNATION: ECHO_ZERO."
And she smiled.
A smile that did not reach the eyes.
---
Nox stepped back.
Threadcutter pulsed, warm.
But the girl-fragment was already gone.
The sunflowers had burned to glass.
The sky pulsed once.
Something far away — very far — started turning again.
The Loom?
No.
Worse.
The original spindle.
---
He tightened his grip on the thread.
And whispered, not to himself — but to the silence:
"You want me to play your game."
"But I'm not a piece anymore."
The air hummed.
Echo Zero stood up fully.
And took a step forward.
---
The ground responded.
Not by shaking — but by recalculating.
Stone lines glitched, reforming beneath her feet like a battlefield preparing itself. The threadlines in the sky twisted, rerouting away from the sunless void above and stitching into the coffin that still hissed with residual code.
She moved like someone remembering how to be real.
Each breath she took reasserted authority.
Not control — but authorship.
---
Nox didn't flinch.
But something in him recoiled.
Not fear.
Recognition.
He'd seen eyes like that before — during the first Loom sync trials. In the memory-stained chambers Kiris had once stood in. The eyes of a failed construct still pretending to follow protocol.
But Echo Zero wasn't pretending.
She had permission.
From something old.
Something buried.
Something that shouldn't still have keys.
"Your designation should have been erased," she said, her voice layered — flat and clinical on one level, echoing with childlike uncertainty beneath.
"Null_01 was not meant to survive past divergence."
Nox didn't respond.
He let Threadcutter speak for him.
The red strand pulsed once, brighter than before.
Like it wanted to correct the narrative.
---
The sky above trembled.
Not visually — but semantically.
The Loom's corpse shifted.
Not alive.
But... aware.
Somewhere, in a layer of system-code long thought obsolete, something tried to intervene.
CONFLICTING DIRECTIVES DETECTED
ECHO_ZERO: PURGE ORDER CONFIRMED
NULL_01: DEPRECATED BUT IMMUNE
Override Protocols: INSUFFICIENT
Resolution Required: By Pattern Combat
---
Threadcutter grew heavier in his grip.
Not with weight — with possibility.
If he swung it now… it wouldn't just strike Echo Zero.
It would cut the path forward.
Maybe even the sky.
---
Echo Zero raised a hand.
Not to attack — to signal.
And from the crack behind her, three more coffins rose.
Dragged from the dirt by invisible hooks.
Glitch-coffins.
Each marked with different failure seals.
One bore the mark of Prototype Echo_One.
Another: GODTHREAD INCOMPLETE.
And the last — unnamed. Blank. Red.
"You were never the only anomaly," she said.
"Just the one that got away."
Her smile didn't falter.
But the mask around her jaw trembled — like it was remembering how to scream.
---
The field burned.
Not fire — but light.
False sunlight poured down from nowhere. It didn't warm. It diagnosed.
Scanning.
Tracing.
Measuring the threads of every living thing — and coming up short.
ANOMALY: NULL_01 — Thread Signature Not Aligned
"He does not bind," whispered a system echo. "He unravels."
---
A wind rushed across the Unwritten Expanse.
This time, real.
The kind of wind that heralds arrival — or erasure.
The sunflower field cracked to ash.
The trees vanished.
Only Nox remained, surrounded by silence and future combatants.
Threadcutter lit up — now almost too bright to look at.
Red.
Living.
Screaming against the system.
And in that moment — he heard her voice again.
Not Elira.
Kiris.
But not the real one.
A fragmented echo.
Buried deep in the spine of Threadcutter.
"This thread wasn't made for battle," she whispered. "It was made to choose."
---
He stepped forward.
The sky bent slightly around his decision.
One step.
Two.
He could see Echo Zero's eyes narrow, tracking movement not in the body — but in intent.
THREAD PATH OPENING...
NEW DOMAIN: RED FRACTAL
SYSTEM RESPONSE: HALTED
PERMISSION: PENDING...
Then the others opened their coffins.
And the sound of forgotten wars spilled out.
Static mixed with old nursery songs.
Boot code chanted like gospel.
Weapon logs read aloud by synthetic voices that no longer had throats.
---
Nox stood in the middle of it.
One thread in his hand.
No fate.
No script.
Only this:
"I don't need your permission," he whispered to the system.
"I'm not your story anymore."
---
Echo Zero lunged.
And this time, the world didn't hold its breath.
It screamed.
And so did Threadcutter.