I ran for hours without direction.
The Threadlands curved around me..trees stretched back, roots twisted upwards, and rocks spoke names I never uttered. Yet I didn't cease. Luro lay ahead, and if he was traveling into the City That Remembers, he was venturing into a cemetery drenched in time.
The wind did not howl in this location. It echoed. Like the air had recalled forgotten screams and was playing them repeatedly.
That's the cost of entering into a site between Loops.
---
We used to call it Veyruun, once.
A refuge constructed during the Fourth Loop, intended to survive the Fifth. Walls were sculpted from thoughtglass, a substance that imprinted whatever emotion it was molded with. The gates of the city were constructed by others who thought they could wait out the Loops through sheer willpower.
They didn't.
The Fifth Loop fell and dragged Veyruun with it. But fragments lingered. Memories carved onto walls that never forgot. Shattered towers seeping voices of long-dead people.
It was lovely once.
Now it was decaying memory shrouded in stillness.
---
I discovered Luro on the perimeter of its outer ring.
He didn't turn as I came up. Just stood there, gazing at the entrance — a fallen archway of shattered thoughtglass, where the dead voices whispered in loops:
"...they're coming..."
".lock the second gate."
"you promised we wouldn't."
"they broke the thread"
"Why did you go?" I asked.
He didn't glance at me. His voice was low.
"You weren't the only one who caused the Break."
I stiffened.
"What?"
He turned at last.
"There were four of us. Four who attempted to revive the cycle within the Zero Loop. Only two remained. You. and me."
---
I backed away.
"What do you mean? I...there was no Zero Loop."
Luro gazed at the ground.
"Not anymore. It was erased. Unwritten. All that which occurred there… is being consumed, bit by bit."
"By the Threadborn?"
He shook his head.
"No. By something worse. Something beneath the Loom. Something that can't be killed because it was never born."
The air around us fell ten degrees.
Even the thoughtglass was still.
---
I stared beyond Luro at the ruins of Veyruun. Spires of broken light shone under a hidden moon. Phantoms of memory strode through the buildings — walking patterns they no longer recalled, faces half-completed, voices broken.
"You came here for something," I said.
Luro nodded.
There's a vault below the city. Concealed before the Fifth Loop concluded. It contains a fragment of the original thread — before it divided into timelines."
My breath was taken.
"Then we can utilize it."
He gazed upward.
"Or destroy it."
"What?"
Luro walked through the gate.
"If what lies below the Loom discovers this shard, it can re-write all Loop we've ever lived. It can erase us all."
I walked after him, blade in hand.
Then the city whispered my name.
"...."
Not in words.
In sound.
Every wall, every crystal panel, every stone .. all at onces...sang with a whisper that wasn't quite mine, but close enough to turn my blood to ice:
"K…e…v…i…n…"
Luro tensed. "Don't look at the statues."
I turned my head—too late.
In the plaza, along the road to the vault, were a hundred stone figures.
Each one of them was me.
Some older. Some younger. Some with burnt-out eyes. Others crying blood. One was split in two. One had Kaelis's pendant wrapped around its neck.
Each statue a me that never made it through a Loop.
Every failure. Every death. Every ending.
Trapped here in permanent memory.
---
"What is this place?" I breathed.
Luro continued to move forward. His voice shook.
"This is where the world recalls what it lost.".
But the deeper you go… the more it remembers things that never should've existed."
---
As we reached the gate to the vault, something moved behind the statues.
Not a phantom.
Not a Threadborn.
But something older. Blank. A hole in the shape of a man.
Luro stopped.
"Run"
But I couldn't move.
Because the thing staring at us had my voice...and no face.
And it was whispering memories I hadn't lived yet.
---