Seoul buzzed as always — neon lights spilling across damp pavement, the hum of late-night buses, and the soft clatter of heels echoing down narrow alleys. But tonight, something felt... off.
Ahri Seo walked alone past Gyeongbokgung Palace, her schoolbag slung low over one shoulder. The air smelled of rain and old stone. The kind of night where the city whispered secrets to itself.
She paused beneath a flickering streetlamp. People bustled around her — couples laughing, delivery drivers weaving through scooters — and yet, none of them noticed what she did.
Fine, glowing threads stretched between them, barely visible, like spider silk soaked in moonlight.
They pulsed, faintly, with each breath. With each word. With each passing thought.
Ahri swallowed hard. "They're back," she whispered.
The golden thread around her own wrist—ever-present since childhood—tightened slightly, as if affirming her fear.
Suddenly, the ground shook. A deep rumble. Then the sharp scream of metal — something collapsing.
A subway tunnel not far off.
Sirens wailed. Panic rolled through the crowd.
Ahri staggered as a ripple of force swept through her chest. The threads around her twisted in chaos, snapping, tangling, and coiling in unnatural ways. She reached for a railing—but missed.
The moment she began to fall, the golden thread flared like lightning. It yanked her backward midair and suspended her, weightless, between moments.
And then... the vision.
A temple engulfed in flame. A masked woman stepping through fire. A fox spirit—its nine tails curled like question marks—watching her with amused, violet eyes.
Then darkness.
Ahri gasped, landing on the pavement. Her knees scraped concrete. The golden thread fell slack again, as if nothing had happened.
But something had. Something had changed.
She told no one—not her classmates, not her father. Detective Seo would chalk it up to nerves and tell her to sleep it off. That's what he always said when the dreams came back. When the golden thread tightened in her sleep.
That night, Ahri did what she always did when she couldn't breathe: she followed the threads.
They led her to a narrow staircase behind a market, then up to a small shaman's house, half-hidden between apartment blocks.
The old woman inside looked at her with sharp, knowing eyes. She said nothing at first. Only brewed a strange tea and motioned for Ahri to sit.
"You see the soul threads," the shaman finally said. "And the gold one... it belongs to something older than you. Much older."
Ahri stayed silent.
The woman poured salt across the floor in a circle. It fizzed slightly, as if reacting to her thread.
"The Severed have returned," she said. "They cut the lines that bind souls. You're not the first to see them."
Ahri flinched. "I thought I was going crazy."
"You are," the shaman said. "But in the right direction."
The next day, she followed the shaman's advice to the edge of the city, where a temple sat curled between forest and fog.
There, the Elder was waiting.
Baek Hyun-tae looked at her for a long moment without speaking. His robes fluttered like pages in a forgotten book, and the staff he held was strung with dozens of small talismans.
"You bear her thread," he finally said.
"Whose?"
He didn't answer. He just turned and began walking.
Over the days that followed, Ahri trained.
She learned to see beyond just connections. To feel them. Some threads pulled tight with grief. Others frayed from guilt. Some hummed with love or flickered with hate.
Her own golden thread began reacting—sometimes glowing violet in her sleep, sometimes pulling her toward strangers who were seconds from making life-altering choices.
And every night, she heard the fox spirit whisper her name in the wind.
One morning, a new presence arrived at the temple.
A girl, older than Ahri, waited at the bottom of the stone steps. She wore robes embroidered with protective symbols. Her ash-brown hair was cropped short, her posture steady.
The moment Ahri met her eyes, a faint silver-blue thread shimmered between them.
"I'm Jin," she said simply. "I felt your arrival. The threads... they sang."
That evening, the Elder called them both.
"The Severed are not just severing threads," he said. "They're rewriting the loom. You must learn to weave not just for protection, but for truth."
Ahri touched the fox mask she now carried in her bag—left behind at the site of her vision. Its surface was cracked but warm to the touch.
She had seen it before. In her dreams. On her mother's shrine.
And every time she looked at it... the golden thread around her wrist flickered.