It began with silence.
Not the peaceful kind.
The unnatural kind — where birds stopped, wind vanished, and even the threads in the air felt like they were holding their breath.
Aiden was in the forest beyond the Vale, following Torian's instructions to gather spirit herbs for focus training.
But every step felt… wrong.
And then — the trees began to wither.
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✦ The Broken Threads
It was like watching life unravel.
Leaves turned to ash without burning. The ground cracked in thread-thin lines. The air shimmered — and bent.
Aiden's dagger buzzed.
Then he saw it.
> A creature stepped through the trees — tall, skeletal, cloaked in shredded gray mist.
Its body was not made of flesh.
It was made of threads — torn, snapped, twisted around a hollow shape like a puppet with no soul.
Its face?
Nothing but a cracked porcelain mask… just like the one Aiden saw in the void.
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✦ It Speaks
The creature didn't move like a beast.
It glided. Quietly.
But when it opened its mouth, dozens of severed threads spilled out, twitching like tongues.
> "He awakens," it whispered, voice a hundred echoes.
"The boy of broken stars.
Let him fall… before he unravels all."
Aiden's body froze. The dagger pulsed with warning.
But part of him… recognized it.
This thing wasn't sent by the void.
It was born of it. Like a guardian parasite, awakened by imbalance.
---
✦ Fight or Die
The Fractured Beast lunged.
Aiden barely rolled aside — the creature's claws slicing through a tree, which crumbled into threads.
He summoned Spirit energy. The light flared around him.
But the creature drank it — swallowing the magic into its chest.
It was immune to regular threads.
Panicked, Aiden focused — and for a moment, the black thread sparked in his palm.
The Void Thread.
> "No… I can't… not again—"
But he had no choice.
He unleashed it.
One burst — a whip of pure darkness — struck the creature.
It screamed in static. Not in pain… but recognition.
> "Child… of the Edge.
You are not ready."
And then it vanished into the trees, slipping between realities.
Gone.
---
✦ Torian Arrives
Torian burst into the glade seconds later, golden light flaring in his palms.
But the creature was already gone.
Aiden collapsed, gasping. The black thread still swirled around his hand.
"I didn't call it," Aiden choked. "It came for me."
Torian knelt beside him, scanning the scorched earth.
"That was a Threadwraith. They haven't been seen in centuries.
They only appear when something is fracturing the weave of the world itself."
He looked at Aiden.
"Something about you is calling them."
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