"I don't know what I saw. I don't know what this means. But the seams are real. And they're starting to pull."
The thread vanished.
One blink, and it was gone—like breath dissolving in frost, like a memory slipping between waking and forgetting.
Darian sat still, quill hovering above parchment, ink slowly bleeding into the fibers of the page. The candle's flame steadied again, indifferent. The room returned to silence.
But something had shifted.
He had seen it.
Again.
A thread—no longer suspended in the mirror or veiled behind dreams, but here, in his own room. Near. Direct. Undeniable.
He didn't touch it this time. Didn't need to. The air had told him enough.
He set the quill down.
Folded the parchment twice, slipping it beneath the loose floorboard beside his cot—the one that always creaked, the one no one stepped on.
His fingers hovered there for a moment longer before sealing it shut.
The candle's light danced across his features—drawn, pale, hollowed by questions he did not know how to ask.
The following day crawled.
He moved through his duties in a trance—fetching coal, polishing handles, washing out silver vessels for a celebration he would never attend.
The other servants avoided him more than usual.
Perhaps it was the shadows beneath his eyes. Or the way his movements had grown too quiet, too precise, as though mimicking the invisible lines that now seemed woven into his skin.
He caught glimpses.
Tiny flickers in the corners of rooms.Lines tracing the edges of objects—shimmering too long before fading.
He said nothing. He wrote nothing.
He only watched.
By late afternoon, Darian was sent to deliver a sealed bottle of Darenthor wine—aged, dust-covered, worth more than most servants earned in a year—to the upper halls. His path took him past the Grand Gallery, where lords and ladies often strolled in idle judgment beneath stained-glass saints.
As he neared a narrow archway, voices leaked from within.
"…And if the boy causes trouble, you know what to do."
A pause.
"You don't have to remind me. His mother was trouble enough. The last thing we need is another dreamwalker."
Darian froze.
Dreamwalker.
Another voice now—softer, clipped, older.
"He's a stain. An echo. He shouldn't even be here."
"And yet here he is," the first voice replied. "Which means someone must be watching."
Footsteps.
Darian slid back, pressing himself into the cold stone just as two noblemen exited. Tall. Robed. Faces he had seen but never been allowed to name.
They did not notice him.
But the word followed him.
Wrapped itself around his throat like unseen fingers.
Dreamwalker.
Spoken with disgust. Spoken with fear.
That evening, he returned to the room.
His mother's chamber.
The door resisted him, as if the wood had swollen with memory.
It groaned as he forced it open.
A breath of must and shadow spilled into his face.
He stepped inside.
The air was heavy.
Still charged.
Still waiting.
The mirror remained covered. He did not uncover it. He did not need to.
Instead, he turned to the wardrobe—the one sealed with red wax.
His fingers hovered above the sigil.
A spiral. Again.
He pressed gently.
The wax cracked.
The doors opened.
Inside, carefully folded:
Robes of black and silver.
A velvet sash embroidered with shifting patterns.
A pair of gloves, unstitched at the fingertips.
And beneath them all—
A box.
Wooden. Locked. No key in sight.
He picked it up.
It was light. Too light.
Yet the weight of what it held pressed on him nonetheless.
He returned it to the shelf and stepped back.
Then—a sound behind him.
A breath.
He turned.
Nothing.
But the candle in the room had dimmed—just slightly.
And for a moment—just a flicker—he thought he saw a shape in the mirror beneath the cloth.
He did not check.
He backed out slowly.
Shut the door.
This time, the lock clicked on its own.
The dreams came heavier that night.
Not visions. Not nightmares.
Just a sensation of falling.
Not through space, but through layers of cloth.
Velvet. Silk. Bone. Thought.
Each layer whispering as it passed:
"Unpick. Undo. Unravel."
He woke before dawn, sweating despite the cold.
The air shimmered faintly.
He sat up.
Slowly.
And there—on the far wall—
A thread.
Pale. Vertical. Still.
He stared.
It did not vanish.
And then—
It bent.
Just slightly.
Toward him.
He did not breathe.
It bent again.
As though drawn by something inside his ribs.
He stood.
It retreated.
Not vanished—just moved, sliding along the wall until it disappeared behind the bookshelf.
He traced its path.
Found nothing.
But behind the lowest shelfboard, the wood had warped—ever so slightly.
A gap no one would have seen.
He pried it loose.
Inside: a folded slip of parchment, brittle with age.
Five words. Again.
Written in the same hand.
"Follow the ones no one sees."
At dusk, Darian found himself at the edge of the lower cloister gardens—half-swallowed by vines and silence.
No one ever came here.
But the thread did.
It shimmered faintly in the dying light, curling around the base of a crumbling statue—an old saint whose face had long since eroded.
He stepped closer.
And heard the breath again.
Not air. Not wind.
A presence.
Behind him.
He turned.
A boy. Maybe eleven. Dirty. Thin. Barefoot.
He stood near the gate, eyes wide, fixed on Darian's chest.
"Y-you see them," the boy whispered.
Darian froze.
The boy pointed—not at him, but just behind him.
"They're all over you. The strings."
Darian opened his mouth.
No sound came.
The boy flinched.
"They're moving," he whispered. "They like you."
Then he ran.
Darian chased him.
Across stone, through weeds, around corners—
But when he turned the final bend—
The boy was gone.
No footsteps. No breath. No thread.
Only silence.
And a candle burning in a window far above.
His own.
That night, Darian did not write. Did not sleep.
He sat.
And listened.
And somewhere between one breath and the next…
He began to feel the thread inside himself.
Tugging.
Not out.
But deeper in.