.
"Thread is memory. Memory is identity. To be unwoven is to die without dying."
— Arknash, Last Pattern Scribe of the Hollow Loom
He no longer marked time by sleep, only by how long the shadows whispered before they bled.
Elric sat beneath a tree that oozed black thread from a mouth-shaped knot in its bark. His own thread — still trembling in its dull grey hue — floated just above his chest like a tether caught in wind. He watched it the way others might watch fire. Or a knife.
Today, the trees had grown teeth.
Not metaphorically — they quite literally grew jagged enamel inside their trunks, hidden until you leaned too close. He had nearly lost an eye.
He was beginning to understand.
This forest didn't want him dead.
It wanted him… unwoven.
Like he'd never been here at all.
Elric tested his thread again.
He held his breath, steady hands raised, and gently imagined the strand sinking into a rock beside him. A simple connection. No emotion, no memory.
The thread touched the stone.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then it cracked — splitting apart like it had screamed without sound. From within, something slithered out. Not a worm. Not a snake. A thread, made of teeth.
He fell back, heart hammering.
The book snapped open beside him, its pages rustling like leaves in a wind that didn't exist.
"When you thread too deeply, you wake what sleeps inside."
He burned that sentence into his mind.
Don't thread without understanding.
Don't thread without consent.
But how do you ask permission from the dead?
The next hallucination came while he was awake.
It wore his skin.
Elric turned toward the sound of dripping, and there it stood — not in the trees, not in the shadows, but directly across from him.
A boy.
Pale. Starved. Eyes like glass marbles. But with Elric's hair. Elric's voice.
"I'm still here," it said, smiling too wide. "But are you?"
Then it split open at the seams — and thread spilled out like blood, lashing at him.
Elric screamed and rolled, but nothing struck him. When he looked back, there was only mist. His own breath loud in his ears.
The book did not react.
His thread, however, had turned a shade darker.
More grey. More solid.
Fear was stitching him tighter.
He wandered — or maybe the forest wandered around him.
There were no landmarks here. No trails. Only deeper murmurs and trees that grew in patterns just wrong enough to suggest intelligence.
At some point, he passed beneath an arch made of antlers. Thread wrapped around each one like garland. The air was warmer beyond it. Sweeter.
He dared to whisper, "Where am I?"
The forest didn't answer.
But the ground did.
It shifted.
It… breathed.
And then he saw it — the thing beneath the dirt. Not roots. Not rocks.
A face.
Stitched into the soil. Eyes sewn shut. Lips locked by golden thread. Massive. The size of a wagon.
Elric stumbled back. The thread above his heart flailed wildly.
He reached for it, tried to pull it in—
Too late.
The face in the ground twitched.
A groan — no, a thread-wail — rippled through the trees.
Branches bent toward him, as if ready to pierce.
The book flipped open, the ink etching itself across the page as he watched.
"Essentia is a wound that remembers. Do not wake what you cannot weave shut."
He ran.
Branches clawed at him. Trees leaned to block his path. He tripped once — over something soft.
Not a root.
A body.
Threadless. Hollow-eyed. Flesh preserved but… empty.
A Stitchborne who had not endured.
His first thought: Will that be me?
His second thought: Was that me already?
He screamed again.
But this time, it wasn't out of fear.
It was defiance.
The forest didn't shake.
Instead, it listened.
Something… heard him.
And answered.
The lullaby returned.
Clear now. Near.
Not a hallucination.
A voice. Human. Female. Soft, but sorrowful. Singing just beyond the reach of the trees.
Elric crawled toward it, heart pounding. His thread surged forward like it wanted to leap from his chest.
He reached toward the sound.
Then stopped.
Because hanging in the branches above — half-cocooned in thread — was the source.
A girl.
Eyes closed. Lips parted in song. Skin translucent, barely alive.
Bound by hundreds of singing threads.
He stepped back, horrified.
Her voice stopped.
And all at once, the forest went quiet.
No whispers. No breathing trees.
Only the sound of one thing moving:
Himself.
And something else.
Far off, but coming closer.
Something big. Something… stitched together wrong.
Elric gripped the book. His thread trembled, glowing darker now — the color of approaching certainty.
Not strength.
But inevitability.
He looked up at the girl in the tree.
And quietly said, "I will not forget you."
Then he turned and ran.
Behind him, the trees began to scream.
End of Chapter 3: The Threads Beneath the Skin