Journey to the Shrouded Place
Ari stood at the edge of the ancient pathway, alone save for the parchment sigil Aven Kaelstrath had left beside his bed. The glyph burned faintly with an otherworldly resonance—not Signum, not any known syntax.
It responded only to him.
A quiet pulse.
A pull, like gravity laced with memory.
The path led away from Sanctum, curving into a forest that was unmarked on any map. His steps were silent, the world oddly hushed. Birds did not sing here. Magic did not breathe. It was like walking into the world's forgotten pause.
And then—he saw it.
A town. Small. Quiet.
But it pulsed with a weight heavier than any palace.
Detracta.
A hidden place within the kingdom, yet untouched by its laws. A sovereign town-state. There were no guards, no banners, no floating sigils. Just cobbled paths, aged stone buildings, and silence—intentional silence.
But it was alive.
People moved calmly. Children played without Threads. Elders sat in quiet contemplation. No magic, and yet a presence that hummed like thunder beneath the earth.
Ari felt it immediately:
"They're hiding something… no, they're protecting something."
The Meeting Hall of the Forgotten
At the center of the town stood a structure made of obsidian and bonewood. It wasn't large, but it bled with power. Etchings ran across its surface—not of spells, but of syntax. Raw, primal language.
The door opened without a sound as Ari approached.
Inside sat seven figures around a low stone table. Each wore a cloak of unthreaded fabric, yet their gazes pierced deeper than any royal Archon. Aven stood at the head, now robed, his demeanor far more formal.
"Welcome, Ari Solen," he said. "Or shall we call you… Heir of the One True System?"
Ari sat. He didn't speak—only listened.
"This place," Aven gestured, "is unknown to your Pillars. We were once their mentors. Their cautions. Their rivals. But we stepped aside when they chose to silence the Originis Lineage. It was our greatest failure."
One of the seven, an older woman with eyes like broken starlight, spoke next.
"We are the Detractors. We once rewrote fragments of the original System to save the world from unraveling. But in doing so, we became its jailers. Now, you are here. And the System… breathes again through you."
Truth Buried in Silence
Ari leaned forward. "Why me? Why now?"
Another figure—an androgynous being cloaked in shadows that flickered unnaturally—answered with a whisper that rang like glass.
"Because you survived the great deletion. Your soul is imprinted with the Prime Code. Your Threadless nature is not a defect… it is purity. You are System Unbound. Not governed. Not contained."
They spoke of how the One True System was not created to control—but to harmonize. To shape the world by agreement with existence itself.
But when greed overtook vision, the Six Pillar Families collaborated with unknown entities—the Fragmentwalkers—to delete the Originis and seal the Prime Syntaxes. And now, the walkers were returning.
"You are the anomaly," Aven said. "The one the Fragmentwalkers could not erase, nor assimilate. They fear you because you are the original endpoint they tried to overwrite."
The Choice
A parchment was slid toward Ari.
Upon it: seven seals, each representing a hidden subroutine locked inside the world's structure. If he agreed to study the Prime Syntaxes, the Detractors would begin the unsealing process.
"This is not magic," one of them said. "This is reality. You will be rewriting how truth behaves."
Ari stared at it.He thought of the wars, the lies, the loss.He thought of his forgotten kin, his erased lineage.
Then he signed it.
The seals flared with white-blue fire, searing the room in silence.
The Detractors bowed their heads—not in reverence, but in respect.
Outside the Town
When Ari stepped outside, the town hadn't changed.
But the world had.
A single word formed on his lips, involuntarily:
"Awakening."
The path back to Sanctum began to tremble.
For reality now had a new editor.
And he had just begun to read the forgotten lines.