It had been believed—once—that the thread was something you grasped.
That you chose it, as a birthright, a mission, a banner.
That stories were claimed like tools, sharpened into meaning by the will of the teller.
But the Loom Without Edges revealed otherwise.
It was never only about the story you told.
It was about the one that reached back.
The thread that found you.
And asked, quietly:
"Will you carry me, even when I unravel?"
In a place known only as the Listening Hollow—a glade formed from three overlapping regrets—a child with no name came seeking the next path. They had heard of the Loom. Had even dreamed its rhythm. But every time they reached for a thread, it slipped away.
"I have nothing to give," they told the hollow.
"I wasn't meant to matter."
The silence that followed wasn't pity.
It was recognition.
And then, from beneath the soil, a single thread rose. It was not golden. It was not luminous.
It was familiar.
The color of bruised sky and worn parchment.
