"Maybe I'm not unraveling.Maybe I'm being measured.And maybe—I'm not the only thread left hanging."
Darian didn't sleep.
Not because he couldn't.
Because he felt that if he did, the world might choose to continue without him.
He sat at the edge of his cot, the glove still fitted tight on his hand, the wrapped black needle beside it under the board. The floor creaked slightly beneath his heel, though he hadn't moved.
He could feel the threads above him again—just out of reach.
But something was different tonight.
They weren't watching.
They were waiting.
That morning, the world had color again.
Not normal color.
Not warm.
Everything was a shade sharper. Light fell at wrong angles. Sounds arrived a moment too late. People moved like actors one step out of sync.
It wasn't a shift in the manor.
It was a shift in him.
He could feel it in the space around his skin.The threads weren't hovering anymore.
They were part of him now.
He walked the upper east corridor at dusk, where no one should have been.
And yet—he heard footsteps.
Light. Quick.
Almost careful.
He rounded the corner and stopped.
There, standing before one of the dead mirrors, was a girl.
Young—perhaps fifteen, but it was hard to tell. Her skin was pale, her hair pulled back in messy thread-bound loops. She wore a tunic that didn't belong to the manor. Her eyes were half-shut.
And around her—
threads.
Dozens.
Coiled around her arms, her shoulders, her throat. Some threaded directly into the cloth of her clothing. Some into her skin.
She turned toward him as if she had always known he was there.
"Yours listen to you," she said.
Her voice was calm. Measured.
"But they're still stitched wrong."
Darian didn't speak.
He couldn't.
The girl tilted her head.
"You don't know how to shape them yet. That's dangerous."
"Who… are you?" he finally managed.
Her eyes narrowed. "No one yet. Just another piece someone forgot to cut."
She stepped forward.
The threads moved with her, but not like Darian's.
Hers flowed. Interlaced.
Trained.
Darian saw it then—some of them were connected to the stone itself. Tiny silver threads embedded in the walls, the floor. She wasn't walking the hall.
She was walking through the loom.
"You're not the only one who was chosen," she said.
Then paused.
"Or maybe… you weren't chosen. Maybe you're a mistake."
Darian's hand clenched.
She saw it.
"You still use the glove?" she asked. "Hiding behind it?"
He said nothing.
She sighed. "Typical first-stitch behavior. All reaction, no shape."
She raised her hand.
And with one clean flick—
One of Darian's threads unraveled.
Just like that.
Gone.
He staggered.
It felt like someone had peeled a memory off his spine.
She looked disappointed.
"That one wasn't even guarded. You really are unfinished."
Darian stared at her, mind spinning.
"Why are you here?"
Her threads coiled tighter.
"Because someone's started sewing again. But not with care. Not with rules. You've felt it."
He nodded.
She stepped closer.
"I'm not your enemy," she said. "But I'm not your ally either. Not yet."
Then, softer:
"Some threads were never meant to pull each other. If they do… the cloth tears."
She reached into her sleeve.
Pulled something out—a scrap of fabric.
Black, stitched with a red loop and a needle made of gold.
She pressed it into his palm.
"You'll know when to burn it."
Before he could ask—
She was gone.
Not vanished. Not blinked.
She simply slipped—between threads, between breath, between now and next.
That night, Darian didn't return to his cot.
He went back to the hidden loom.
The room was dimmer than before.
The mirror clouded.
The threads were still.
He stood before them and whispered:
"She cut one of mine."
The loom creaked.
Not in anger.
Not in agreement.
But in acknowledgment.
He reached for the spool nearest the edge.
It unraveled slightly—willingly.
He touched it.
A flash of memory not his—
—a city made of cloth—a sky held up by nails—a scream stitched shut mid-birth—
He pulled back.
The thread recoiled.
And in its wake, a small symbol appeared on the wall:
A loop.Split once.Then joined again.
He left the room before it faded.
The manor was quieter than usual.
But one hallway was too quiet.
He turned the corner.
And saw them.
Four.
Standing in a line.
Draped in black.
No faces.
No hands.
Just long cloaks with threads trailing behind them like tails.
Each held a needle.
And each pointed it at the space where he stood.
None moved.
None spoke.
And then—
They lowered them.
And walked past.
But the threads behind them tangled.
Left behind in the air like snares.
He didn't follow.
But he knew what they were.
Stitchwatchers.
He had heard the term only once before, in a torn page found beneath a broken stairwell:
"When a design tries to rewrite itself,the Stitchwatchers come.They do not question.They do not warn.They cut."
Darian sat in the servants' quarters that night, hand still gloved, eyes open.
He whispered:
"What am I?"
And for the first time, a thread answered.
Not in words.
In shape.
It wove itself into a spiral—
—then broke it.
Forming a needle that pierced the center.
A mark he had seen once before.
On the mirror.On the loop.On the girl's scrap.
And something deeper in him shifted.
"I'm not a thread being pulled.I'm a needle being aimed."