The forest grew quiet the deeper Kael walked, not with peace, but anticipation. Each step was a question the trees refused to answer. He'd bound three threads so far—each one a fragment of discarded fate, stolen from the edges of what should never have been remembered. But the bindings came at a cost. His left hand trembled when he wasn't looking. His thoughts wandered without permission. And each thread burned colder than the last. That was the bargain. Hollowbinding wasn't cultivation. It wasn't even sorcery. It was theft. And Kael was becoming very, very good at stealing. The place he sought was forbidden, even by the old standards. No name, no trail. It wasn't on any map because it moved—buried in a valley that only appeared when too many regrets had soaked the soil. He called it the Pale Hollow. It had appeared only once before, in life thirty-four, after he failed to save the girl who'd once loved him. She had died screaming his name. The Hollow had risen the next night. Now, Kael intended to find it again—on purpose. He didn't carry food. Or water. Just the knife. The diagram etched into leather. And the glass vial that contained the dying flicker of a failed thread—his fourth, collected an hour prior from the corpse of a bird that shouldn't have died so young. He reached the first marker as dusk settled. Three stones, flat and angled toward each other unnaturally, formed a triangle. In his last encounter, he'd ignored them. This time, he didn't make that mistake. He stepped around them in a half-circle, eyes low, never looking between the stones. Not directly. The air behind him cracked like paper. Kael didn't turn. He kept walking. By nightfall, the trees thinned, the soil turned to ash, and silence stopped being passive. It pressed against him. There was no moon. Only the Hollow. It rose before him like a wound in the world—an open-air ruin, sunken into the earth, pulsing dimly from within. Black thread curled up from its center like smoke, vanishing before it reached the sky. Stone columns slumped inward, as if exhausted. No wildlife stirred. No insects buzzed. Kael stepped into the ruin without ceremony. There was no audience. Only judgment. He approached the altar at its center, the same one he'd seen in another life—though back then, he hadn't understood what it was. Now he did. It wasn't a shrine. It was a loom. A crude one. Primitive. But unmistakably shaped for threads. Kael unrolled the leather diagram at its base. The ash circle he'd prepared in advance held four lines—three bound threads and one pending. The stolen regrets shimmered faintly in the dimness. He added the bird's thread, placing it in the fourth ring. Then he whispered the words that no living person should remember: "I offer what was broken. I bind what was cast off. I claim the void between stories." The loom pulsed. Black threads snaked down from above, not from the sky—but from some in-between layer, like the memory of a thought that had never fully formed. They twisted, coiled, hissed. One lowered itself gently, hovering inches above Kael's face. It was not solid. It was possibility. "Who seeks pact?" a voice rasped. Not aloud. Not in his ears. In his bones. Kael looked up. "Kael Riven. Threadless. Hollowbound." The threads swayed, as if conferring. "You are not a child of fate. You are not heir to thread. You are waste." Kael didn't flinch. "Then waste has learned to speak." "And steal," the voice replied. Silence. The loom shifted. A new thread lowered. This one was thicker. Jagged. Its glow pulsed red, like coals that had forgotten they once held fire. "Bind it," the voice said. Kael reached toward it—and his hand began to smoke. Pain erupted. The thread wasn't just hot. It rejected him. Fought him. But Kael didn't stop. He dug deeper, past the pain, into the core of the thread. It wasn't a timeline. It was a choice someone else had failed to make. A betrayal that had never occurred. A blade that had hesitated. Kael grasped it fully and forced it into the diagram. The ash circle exploded outward. He was thrown back, slammed against a stone pillar. His shoulder cracked. His vision swam. But when he looked again, the thread was still there—burning, but bound. "You take what cannot be given," the voice said. "I survive," Kael replied. Another silence. Longer this time. Then: laughter. Dry. Ancient. Like parchment tearing in a tomb. "Very well, Hollowbound. Take your pact. But know this: Each binding you make will cost you more than time. One day, you will bind something that remembers." Kael's blood ran cold. But he nodded. The loom dimmed. The threads retreated. Kael picked up the diagram. It was still warm, now seared with a fifth mark—deep red and faintly pulsing. Power flowed through him. Not strength, not speed. Certainty. For a moment, he could see things he shouldn't. Choices people hadn't made. Words they wished they'd spoken. Sins buried. Futures erased. He could use them. He would. Kael stepped out of the Hollow as the sky began to change. Not from night to dawn, but to something else—gray, suspended, as if time hadn't yet decided what to do next. Perfect. That was where he thrived. Not on the path. Not even beside it. Between.
