That night, I dreamed in static.
Not color. Not sound.
Just the echo of threads unraveling—soft as whispers, sharp as screams.
When I woke, my hands were glowing.
Not with the familiar violet shimmer of my Desire Mark, but with raw shimmerless light—gray, flickering like starlight that didn't belong in this world.
I clutched my chest.
No heartbeat.
Not at first.
Then—boom.
One slow thump, like a delayed echo from far away.
"Sera?" Riven sat up from where he'd been sleeping beside the fire. "What's happening?"
"I don't know," I whispered. "I think I'm… changing."
Kael stirred. "You used your Anchor Thread. You severed your deepest bond. What's left of you is rewriting itself."
"I feel…" I looked at my hands again. "...detached. But clearer. Like I'm seeing the weave outside the Veil. The patterns behind the threads."
Kael's expression darkened. "That's how the Threadless begin."
I stood, unsteady. My steps made no sound. Not because I was light—but because the world wasn't reacting to me anymore. The Veil didn't see me.
"I'm invisible to the weave," I whispered. "It can't read me. Can't record me."
Riven reached out and gripped my shoulder. "Then we'll make our own threads. You, me, Kael—we'll bind what we choose."
But the fear in Kael's eyes was undeniable.
"I've heard the stories," he said. "Threadless become… unhinged. Power without tether. Desire without center."
I didn't argue.
Because he was right.
Part of me wanted to bend the Veil now. To reach into the weave and pull at it until the threads listened.
Later that day, I wandered beyond the edge of the forest. The wind tugged at the trees, but not at me. I was a ghost, drifting past life.
Then I felt it.
A ripple.
Not from the Veil—but from something beneath it.
A tear.
I followed the pull through stone and root until I found it: a thread pool, black as oil, swirling with reflections that weren't mine.
I knelt.
In the reflection, I saw myself—but with eyes like Thorne's. Silver. Empty. Threadless.
"You are the first of us," said a voice—soft, female, and somehow… me.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"I'm the version of you born without anchors," the voice said. "The part you buried to survive."
A hand reached out from the pool.
"Let me show you what we're truly capable of."
---