The wind here didn't whisper. It shrieked.
A ragged scream slicing across the dead land like a blade too old to stay buried.
In Drav'nar, silence had been sculpted—shaped into doctrine, wrapped around throats like a leash. Emotion was a contagion. Speech was sin. Children were taught to smile with their eyes closed.
But here?
This silence had fangs.
It wasn't peace.
It was predation.
The snow didn't fall white.
It fell grey, like ash shed from the ribs of the sky. It stung. Clung. Burned.Every flake felt like the last breath of something that should've stayed buried.
It caked his lashes.
When he blinked, his eyelids stuck. Not from snow. From frozen tears.
His fingers—blue, cracked, swollen—no longer trembled. His feet bled in silence. He hadn't looked in a while. Didn't need to. The blood had warmed the wrappings days ago.
The only thing still alive in him was the ache in his ribs.
Not from injury.
From memory.
The ribbon on his wrist clung tighter than any sigil ever had.
Crimson silk, dulled by frost, tied in a knot he didn't remember tying.Because he hadn't.
Serah had.
Back then—before the silence. Before the Spiral took her. Before exile burned her name into the Archives and erased her from every story he wasn't allowed to tell.
She'd looked at him once. Not like a mistake.
Not like a Threadless boy.
Just—a boy.
And that was enough.
It made the ribbon more sacred than any name.
And he didn't even have that anymore.
The sky split.
Not from thunder.
From her.
She stepped from the storm like it owed her blood.
Clad in cracked leather and scavenged fur, draped in the hide of something that died trying to eat her. A blade hung across her back—too heavy for decoration, too real for ceremony.
She didn't walk.
She arrived.
The snow parted for her.
She stopped a few steps away.
Didn't draw steel. Didn't ask permission.
Just watched.
"Drav'nar," she said. Her voice scraped like flint. "Threadless?"
He didn't answer.
Didn't need to.
She crouched, examining him like a broken blade.
Her eyes told stories.
One—milky white, dead as moonstone.The other—living flame, scarred and relentless.And beneath the frostbite and grief:
Recognition.
Her gaze landed on the ribbon.
She reached out—barely brushed it.
"Crimson silk. Girl gave it to you. You didn't tie it."
Still no answer.
Just silence thick as blood.
"My name was stolen," she said. "Call me Yren."
They sat under a dead pine that still refused to fall.
Its trunk was split from some old, forgotten burn. Its bark smelled like ink and cinnamon and something sacred left too long in the sun.
Yren built fire with practiced hands.
Bone-coal. Dried moss. Bark from a tree that no longer grew.
The flame crawled—not up, but sideways—like it was studying them.
She handed him dried meat.
He didn't eat it.
She didn't push.
"You're from Drav'nar. That means you were taught silence is survival. That smiling is heresy. That feeling is a sickness you choke before it spreads."
Her voice wasn't bitter.
Just exhausted.
"That silence won't save you here."
Her eyes slid to his wrist.
The sleeve had slipped.
And something glowed.
A spiral. Golden. Slow. Alive beneath the skin.
Her breath caught.
"Where did you get that?"
His voice cracked like brittle bone.
"I… dreamt it."
The spiral reacted.
Molten light surged beneath his veins.His pupils twisted—not dilated, but coiled, golden spirals blooming outward.His skin flared.His shadow jerked behind him—bending in the opposite direction.
He gasped, spine arching, hand twitching like something inside was carving itself out.
Then—
It passed.
Just a breath.
Yren didn't blink.
Then, slowly, she rolled up her own sleeve.
Etched in her arm: a sigil like a twisted flame. Burnt ochre. Warped.
"Kas-Nur," she said. "The Ash That Remembers. I'm from Kasveth-Ra."
She tapped it once.
"It lets me burn a moment. One. Just to see what it cost."
Then her gaze dropped to his spiral again.
"But yours?"
She shook her head.
"That's not from any of the Fourteen Lands."
"You know the Fourteen, right?"
He nodded.
Every Hollow-born child did.
"Each kingdom gives a thread. One emotion. One burden dressed up as destiny."
She pointed at hers.
"Mine? Regret. Yours?"
She leaned closer.
"It shouldn't exist."
He licked cracked lips.
"The spiral whispered to me. Beneath the snow."
"What did it say?"
"Vaern. Nurath. Eln."
She went pale.
"That's Veresh. Old tongue."
"What does it mean?"
"Thread. Soul. Hollow."
She rose sharply.
"There's a book. Forbidden. Pre-Order. Bound in—""I saw it," he interrupted. "In the dream. Bone-covered. Blank pages. But when I touched it…"
She went still.
"…they filled," she finished.
She gave him the book that night.
And it wasn't just a book.
It breathed.
Bound in bone.
Its pages curled before he touched it, like it had felt him coming.Its stitches weren't thread.They were hair. Silver-white. Impossibly fine. From no species still living.
The spiral on his arm glowed faintly in response—pulsing in sync with the bone-bound tome.
He reached for it.
The leather didn't warm.
It remembered.
He touched it like someone returning to an old scar.
And it welcomed him.
Dawn wasn't kind.
It came screaming.
Yren kicked him awake.
Tossed a dagger beside him.
"Up. Fight or fade."
They found the clearing. Snow flattened in a circle. The trees leaned too close.
Something waited.
It didn't growl.
It wept.
A creature—hunched, massive, furred. Body like a starving bear. But its face…
Wrong.
Human.
Like a child.
Like a corpse given breath.
Its eyes were sorrowful. Its mouth trembled.
Its grief sounded like his own.
"That's a Weeper," Yren said. "It lures pain. Then devours it."
It saw him.
And wept louder.
"Strike."
He hesitated.
"Or it unthreads you."
It lunged.
He moved.
Blade met skin.
Once. Twice. Again.
His spiral surged.
His vision blurred.
His veins glowed white-hot.
The Weeper's blood—black and thick—splashed across his forearm.
And then?
It crawled.
Slowly. Upward.
Like a living thing.
Twisting.
Whispering.
Before vanishing.
It left behind only a frost-mark.
A spiral of dark veins etched across his forearm.Faint.But cold as betrayal.
He staggered back, breathing hard.
And for a second—
He didn't see snow.
He saw—
A cradle.A scream.A woman's arms, empty.His own reflection.Weeping.
Yren's voice dragged him back.
"That," she said, "was Threadburn. First taste."
He didn't ask what that meant.
Not yet.
Because the ribbon on his wrist had started to flutter.
Even though there was no wind.