The wind here didn't whisper.
It shrieked.
Back in Drav'nar — his birthplace — silence had been curated. A ritual, a restriction. A smooth, lifeless thing, enforced by centuries of law and fear.
But here… in this place beyond the boundary wall, in the ancient, frost-scarred corpse of a land once called Shiverwake, silence was something feral. It wasn't a lack of noise.
It was the sound of everything being devoured.
The snow here was not pure. Not white. It fell grey, like ash from a forgotten war. It stung skin like needles, wrapped around bones like regret, and blanketed the world like a lie that refused to melt.
He didn't remember how long it had been since exile.
Days? Weeks?
Time didn't behave the same here. There were no temple bells. No Seers to count the hours by light. Only the rhythm of his pulse and the endless shriek of wind.
And both had started to blur.
His feet were raw beneath torn wrappings.
His hands were red and pale and bleeding.
But the ribbon? Still there. Tied tight around his left wrist.
A faded, frayed strip of crimson silk — from Serah.
He didn't touch it often. But sometimes, he imagined it was warm. Not by magic… just by memory. By the last moment, someone had looked at him like he wasn't a mistake.
That made it the most precious thing he had.
Even more than a name.
Which he didn't have anymore.
The sky split.
Not by lightning — but by a woman.
She emerged through the swirling snow like a memory that refused to fade. A tall figure wrapped in cracked leather, stitched fur, and frost wolf hide. Her cloak looked scavenged, her boots beaten down by years, her blade too massive to be ceremonial.
It wasn't grace that made her stand out.
It was her stillness.
Even in the chaos of the storm, she moved like someone who had already survived everything that mattered.
She stopped just far enough away not to seem a threat — and stared.
Her face was half-covered, but he could see her eyes.
One was milky white. Blind.
The other? Sharp as obsidian, narrow, and sunken into a scarred brow that twitched like it still remembered pain.
"You reek of Drav'nar," she said flatly. "Threadless?"
He didn't respond.
"You're young. Too young. They're tossing kids now?"
She sniffed once. "Figures. They must be scared."
She took a few slow steps toward him, her boots crunching against a frozen root. Her hands didn't go to her weapon. She didn't look like she needed to.
Then she crouched.
Not in pity. Not in threat.
Just… tired curiosity.
Her fingers brushed the ribbon.
"Crimson silk." She muttered. "A girl gave you this. You didn't make this knot."
Still, he said nothing.
She stood again, slowly.
"My name was stolen," she said. "But you can call me Yren."
They sat beneath a dying pine — one that had been split in half by old frost. Burn marks laced its roots like veins. Beneath it, Yren made a fire from moss, salted bark, and crushed bone-coal.
He watched her as she worked.
Every movement she made told a story. The limp in her left leg. The scar that kissed her cheekbone. The way her blade was lashed in bone and sinew, not leather.
She didn't ask him to talk.
Not yet.
Instead, she offered him food — a slice of dried meat roasted over bark that smelled like cinnamon and blood.
He didn't eat.
"You're from Drav'nar," she said. "They probably told you to only speak when spoken to. That smiling's a sin. That silence is safety."
She leaned forward.
"That silence won't save you here."
Her eyes flicked down to his palm.
The sigil was faint — a spiralling glyph of soft gold, glowing like a memory in the dark. He'd tried to cover it with his sleeve. But the firelight had betrayed him.
Yren's voice dropped.
"…where'd you get that?"
He looked at it.
"I… dreamt it."
Her lips parted slightly.
Then she sat back and stared at the flames.
"They called it a myth," she muttered. "The Ghost Sigil. The 'Threadless Thread.' A mark that wasn't born from a kingdom — that didn't belong."
She pulled back her sleeve and showed hers.
A twisted flame etched in dark ochre, shaped like a tear falling backwards.
"This one's mine. The Kas-Nur - "Ash That Remembers." I was born in Kasveth-Ra,the Land of Regret."
She tapped it with a cracked nail.
"It lets me burn a moment. Then relive it. Once. Doesn't bring it back. Just reminds me what it cost."
Her eyes turned sharp again.
"But yours? That spiral?"
She shook her head. "That's not from any of the Fourteen Lands."
She stirred the fire with the tip of her bone knife.
"You know there are Fourteen Kingdoms, right?"
He nodded. Of course, he knew. Every child of Drav'nar was taught the Map of Threads.
She continued anyway.
"Each land is shaped by a ruling emotion, a trait carved into the marrow of its people. Silence. Hunger. Regret. Flame. Memory. Pride. Pain. Grief. You name it."
"Each has its sigil — a mark given during the Sermon of Threads. It tethers you to your land, your law, your purpose. A living contract."
She tapped her chest. "You saw mine."
He nodded.
"Most people get their nation's sigil. Sometimes, rarely, they get a neighbouring one. That's… unusual, but not impossible."
"But yours?" She glanced again at his palm. "Yours is impossible."
"There is no record. No story. Not even in the old songs of Kasveth-Ra. And those songs remember everything."
He spoke quietly now, for the first time in hours.
"I saw a spiral. In my dream. Alive. Moving under the snow. It… whispered."
Yren stilled.
"What did it say?"
"Vaern. Nurath. Eln."
She hissed between her teeth.
"That's Veresh," she muttered. "Old Veresh. Older than the Spiral Empire. Older than flame."
"What does it mean?" he asked.
"Thread. Soul. Hollow."
She rose abruptly and walked to the tree.
"You're sure those were the words?"
"Yes."
She paced now like something inside her was unravelling.
"Those words… they were written in a book. A forbidden one."
He looked up.
"I've seen a book too, in my dream... once. Bone-bound. Blank pages. But when I touched it… it disappeared."
She looked at him. surprised, blurted, "You're not just a Threadless exile," she whispered. "You're a Wound. A tear in the Tapestry."
Morning came cold and violent.
Yren roused him with a bark.
"Up. You'll learn to fight, or you'll die like a whisper in the wind."
She tossed him a smaller blade. Not ceremonial. Practical.
They walked into the white, to a clearing of frost-cursed trees. There, something waited.
It didn't charge.
It cried.
A beast — furred, spined, but with a face twisted like a grieving infant. Its cries were warped, echoing sorrow and hunger.
"Don't let the face fool you," Yren said. "It's called a Weeper. Lures emotion. Then eats it."
He hesitated.
She didn't.
"Strike or die."
It lunged.
So did he.
The blade hit flesh. Black blood sprayed. The Weeper howled, not in pain — in rage. But his hand didn't stop. He kept stabbing the beast until his fingers went numb... until they were drenched in blood.
When it fell, there was no triumph.
Just cold.
And the sound of his breathing.
"He didn't stop when the beast fell. He didn't stop when the blood soaked his bones. He stopped when the silence whispered that he wasn't killing it anymore—he was becoming it."