Chapter 8 – The Whispering Woods
The forest near Ilnar wasn't forbidden — just avoided.
Old stories spoke of creatures that lived between the threads. Animals with no fate. Shadows with too many. Most thought it was just myth, used to scare children into staying near the fields.
But Vael had seen enough to wonder.
So when a thread disappeared into the forest one afternoon — thick, dark, and moving like it was alive — he followed it.
It wasn't curiosity.
It was instinct.
---
The woods were colder than they should've been.
Not winter-cold — just unnaturally still.
The deeper he went, the fewer threads he saw. By the time he reached a stone ridge, only his own Threads remained — silver and shadow, drifting in silence.
That's when he heard it.
A voice.
Low. Faint.
"Threadwalker."
He turned.
A woman stood beneath the trees.
She wore a veil of torn silk, and her hands were wrapped in black cords. Her face was covered, but her presence pressed against the world like a rock in cloth.
"You shouldn't be here," she said.
Vael stepped back. "Who are you?"
"A wound. A reminder."
Her head tilted. "You touched fate, and fate shuddered. Now it sees you."
She raised one hand — and in it, a broken Thread twitched, wrapped around her fingers like a dying worm.
"You pulled too early. Now it pulls back."
Vael's voice cracked. "What do you want from me?"
"I want nothing. But the forest wants you to know."
She let go.
The broken Thread turned to ash in the air.
"Every change leaves a scar."
And then—
She was gone.
---
Vael didn't run.
He walked back to the village in silence, shadow-thread tight around his wrist.
Whatever he was becoming…
He wasn't the only one.