He walked east, into the forest's deeper veins—beyond the safe paths worn by generations of cautious villagers. The branches grew denser here, the trees older, gnarled like arthritic fingers grasping toward the sky.
Every step forward tugged at memory.
In cycle twelve, this path led to a bear trap meant for another. In cycle twenty-five, he'd met a starving ascetic who spoke in riddles and tried to eat his shadow. But this time, Kael moved with precision.
He no longer feared the dark. He had become it.
At the heart of the forest, he reached the stone altar—half-buried, moss-eaten, older than the Path itself. This was where the Boundless Thread had once been woven, if the myths held even fragments of truth.
Kael knelt and pulled a flask from beneath his cloak. The liquid inside shimmered faintly—silver-blue and volatile.
Regret.
Distilled from the tears of the dying, harvested in cycle thirty-two from a battlefield where mercy had failed.
He uncorked it and poured a single drop onto the stone.
It hissed.
The glyphs hidden beneath the moss flickered to life, casting pale lines of energy into the earth. Kael laid both palms on the stone and whispered—not a prayer, but an invocation.
"Hollowborn by thread denied. Let the first gate open."
The forest didn't answer. But the air did.
It pulsed. Once. Then again.
And then, silence shattered.
A figure emerged from the woods.
Tall, cloaked in gray. No face beneath the hood—just a mask of smooth, polished obsidian. Where it walked, bark peeled from trees, and roots writhed like worms.
Kael stood.
"You took your time," he said.
The figure didn't speak. It simply raised a hand.
In it was a thread—not gold, not silver. Something darker. Coiled. Breathing.
"You remember me," Kael said quietly.
The masked entity inclined its head.
Kael reached out—and hesitated.
The last time he touched this thread, he had bled for a week. He had tasted every death he had not yet died. It had driven him mad. Briefly.
But madness had taught him how to survive.
He grasped it.
The world exploded.
No light. No heat. Just sensation—the collapse of potential futures crashing through him like a tidal wave. Every life unlived, every betrayal undone, every possibility strangled before birth.
Kael screamed.
But he did not let go.
And then—he was kneeling again.
Alone.
Thread in hand.
No pain. No sound.
Only stillness.
The obsidian figure was gone. In its place, a mark had burned into the stone:
◯ — broken at the top. Hollow.
The sigil of the Forsaken Path.
Kael stood, eyes clear. Sweat beaded on his brow. His fingers were bleeding. But his mind was razor-sharp.
He had bound the first Hollow Thread.
It wouldn't show in the Ceremony. It wouldn't shine for the elders or whisper promises of strength. It would not comfort.
But it would obey.
And it would grow.
He turned, making his way back toward the village, the thread coiled tight around his left forearm like a snake of living ink.
They would not see it. Not yet.
But in time, they would feel it.
The change had begun.
And Kael Riven—soon to be Vain—would make sure it never ended.