"I'm not a thread being pulled.I'm a needle being aimed."
Darian felt the shape of the thought settle inside him.
Not just as an idea, but as a position.
A place in the design.
He stood in the dark, gloved hand raised slightly, fingers flexing.
The air reacted.
Not all of it.
Just the part near the broken mirror.
A thread shimmered into view—slowly, reluctantly. Not in greeting. In recognition.
He stepped toward it.
This time, it didn't flee.
It hovered.
And waited.
He didn't reach for it.
He pointed.
Just pointed.
And the thread… bent.
It bent.
For him.
It didn't curl, didn't flicker, didn't pull.
It yielded.
He took a slow breath, the realization weighing heavier than he expected.
Whatever had changed… it wasn't just perception.
It was influence.
The threads could be guided now.
But only by one thing:
Intent.
Later that morning, the manor groaned.
Literally.
The stone shifted above the servant quarters. Light fractured differently through the upper hallways. Entire sections of the eastern wing were closed—without announcement, without reason.
He heard whispers.
A boy lost beneath the kitchens.A woman who opened a door and never came back.A noble guest who claimed to have seen "a corridor bend".
And worse:
A thread stitched into a wall.
Twitching.
Leaking light.
Darian didn't ask questions.
He didn't need to.
He could feel it now—a tension between the threads.
As if parts of the weave had become unbalanced.Like someone had pulled too hard, too far, from somewhere they shouldn't.
He suspected it hadn't been him.
Not yet.
But whoever it was…
They were nearby.
That night, in the servants' stairwell, Darian stopped halfway down and looked to the wall.
There was a thread there.
He remembered it.
It always shimmered gold.
Tonight, it was black.
Still.
Frayed.
Dead.
He reached out to touch it—
But it crumbled.
Right there in the air.
Into ash.
And in the stone behind it, someone had scratched a symbol.
Not a spiral.
Not a loop.
A knot.
Twisted.
Unraveling at one end.
The edges burned.
Someone had been cutting threads wrong.
He returned to the loom.
It was quieter now.
Dim.
Weary.
The threads barely moved.
Like they, too, were tired.
He approached the central line, gloved hand raised.
And spoke:
"Who else is sewing?"
The threads didn't answer.
But a pattern appeared.
Not in the loom.
On the wall behind it.
A figure.
Tall.
Blank-faced.
No features.
No limbs.
Just a shape formed from stitched lines, bent over a mass of tangled thread.
Darian stepped closer.
The thread-image moved.
Subtle.
The shape turned its head toward him.
And in that moment—
He felt it.
Recognition.
Not his.
Theirs.
Something had seen him back.
He left.
Quickly.
But not running.
Never running.
Because the threads don't like fear.
That evening, a voice called his name.
Soft.
Calm.
Unfamiliar.
But it came from a place it shouldn't:
Behind the wall.
He froze.
Turned.
Stone.
Still.
But the voice came again.
"Darian."
Not a threat.
Not a plea.
A test.
He didn't answer.
He placed his palm on the stone.
The glove grew cold.
The wall pulsed once—like a heartbeat behind it.
He whispered:
"Who are you?"
The wall whispered back:
"Someone who wasn't unthreaded fast enough."
He didn't return to that corridor.
But that night, he dreamt of stitches inside his own skin.
Not metaphor.
Needles.Thread.Patterns he didn't remember learning.
And a voice counting:
"One loop for breath.Two for thought.Three for forgetting."
He woke gasping.
Pulled the glove off.
His palm bore a new mark.
A spiral, jagged at the edges.
Incomplete.
Fractured.
A warning?
Or a map?
He didn't know.
But the threads above his bed had retracted—
—and were now forming something.
Not a message.
Not a word.
A shape.
A needle.
Pointed down.
Toward him.
"I thought I was being aimed.But now I see—I'm just the next thing to be sewn."