Snow.
Not the soft kind that settles gently. This fell in slow, sideways sheets—sharp as glass, dancing in a wind that carried whispers no one wanted to understand.
They were higher now—on the ridge above Neon Haven, in the frost-laced mountains that touched the skies between Goryeo and the shattered edges of the Ruins of Shao. The map Juno had decoded from the temple's altar showed a path carved between ancient shrines—some Korean, some Chinese, some older than even myth.
Their destination?
The Shrine of the Withering Blade.
It had been gone from all maps for over three centuries. Wiped clean. Not lost—erased.
Which, of course, meant it was exactly where they had to go.
---
"We're being watched," Rin said, eyes narrowing as she stopped mid-step. Her breath misted the air like steam.
Kael didn't respond. He didn't need to.
He felt it too.
The threads in him pulsed softly—not in alarm, but in awareness. Something ancient was near. And it wasn't hiding.
It was waiting.
They moved cautiously now, through carved stone gates and half-buried torii, some marked with writing so faded only Juno's seal magic could translate.
> "Those who step beyond this gate surrender their memory."
> "You cannot kill what remembers."
> "The blade that severs must also bleed."
Juno frowned as he read them. "This shrine was a battlefield once," he muttered. "The last stand of something forgotten."
"I hate that word," Mace said flatly. "'Forgotten.' It's always followed by murderous spirit thing from hell."
Kael gave a small grin. "You're not wrong."
---
By nightfall, they found the shrine.
Or… what was left of it.
It stood at the edge of a cliff—half-collapsed, but still humming with magic. Paper charms fluttered from trees around it, each one scrawled with warnings in ink so dark it looked wet.
In the center of the courtyard was a blade.
It floated.
No pedestal. No altar. Just hanging there, like the air itself was holding it upright.
Rin stepped closer. "That sword…"
Juno's breath caught. "That's Threadcutter."
Kael blinked. "The sword from the vault vision?"
Juno nodded slowly. "The one bound to the sixth. It's said to sever the line between soul and body—cutting threads permanently. No revival. No reincarnation. No afterlife. Just gone."
Mace raised a brow. "And we're here to... what? Touch it?"
Kael stepped forward instinctively.
The violet thread within him throbbed.
The sword responded.
It spun—just slightly—then stopped, pointing at Kael.
Then at Juno.
Then… Rin.
Then, it turned.
And pointed behind them.
"Something's coming," Kael said, spinning around.
---
The forest exploded.
Shadows tore from the trees, moving on all fours like beasts but shaped like men. Their eyes glowed—not red, not violet—but white.
Threadless.
Soulless.
"They're husks!" Juno shouted. "Spiritual blanks—people whose threads have been cut!"
Rin didn't wait. She dashed forward, crimson blade slicing a clean arc through the first one, which let out a shriek that didn't sound human.
Kael reached for his tether—but it froze.
"Shit," he hissed. "They're canceling our marks!"
"They're not just blanks," Mace growled, pulling two short sabers from his belt. "They're void-born."
The battle was chaos.
Blades clashed. Runes sparked. Screams rang out over the snow-covered stone.
Kael fought purely on instinct—dodging, striking, blocking. Every time he got too close to a husk, the violet thread in him burned. The husks were drawn to it like predators to blood.
And then—one grabbed him.
He gasped, its fingers digging into his skin, and the moment it made contact—
He saw.
A woman. Weeping over a cradle. A blade falling. A temple in flames. His mother's voice.
"Kael, run!"
The vision shattered as Rin sliced the creature's head clean off.
"You alright?" she barked.
"No," he muttered. "But later."
---
Juno reached the blade first.
Threadcutter hovered in front of him like it was sizing him up.
He didn't touch it.
He spoke.
In the old tongue. The same words he'd seen etched into the stone pillars of Nara's ancient sanctum. Words not meant for mortals.
The sword pulsed.
Then dropped—landing softly in the snow.
Rin stared. "You… asked it."
Juno nodded, panting. "It remembers."
Kael picked it up.
No voice spoke. No visions. No pain.
Just… stillness.
The blade felt right.
But it was heavy—not in weight, but in meaning. Like holding it meant choosing something you couldn't unchoose.
He knew what it was for.
And he knew who it was meant to kill.
---
They buried the husks in silence.
Even threadless, they had once been people.
The sword now hung across Kael's back, bound by an old white sash pulled from the shrine wall.
Juno wiped blood from his cheek. "That was the first real attack. The first deliberate move."
"Which means the sixth knows we're coming," Rin said.
Kael looked at the sky.
It had shifted again. The stars realigned. The tethers in him pulsed in tandem.
And far to the south, where the forbidden city of Hanluang once stood, a new mark had appeared on their map.
The next vault.
The next memory.
The next war.
And this time, it wasn't just a hunt for tethers.
It was a battle for who they made Kael become.