When Miro woke it was to a smell of wet paper and something like iron steeped in tea. His head had the slow, heavy ache of a pot left too long on the fire. A small lamp blinked at his right. His wrist felt empty and raw where the copper band had been. For a dizzy moment he could not remember the street — then the memory of the fight came rushing back like a river, and with it a throb: the echo of a man's laugh, the angle of a blade, the taste of rain on someone else's tongue.
"You absorbed a fray," the woman said, as if she had read his thoughts. He blinked. She sat across from him, cleaning her nib with a rag. The plain clothes were not plain at all once you noticed the tiny stitches along the cuffs — a loom-mark, discreet. She moved like someone who had used names for barter and also for art.
"You didn't hand me in," Miro said. His voice sounded raw.
"I could have," she answered. "But you would have been a footnote in a ledger. Vanishing. A cautionary tale. Not interesting."
"Not interesting?" Miro echoed, and tasted how small his life had been.
The woman put down the rag and leaned back, shadow drawing down her face. "My name is Lysa Korr. I am of the Loom-Keepers, though not the kind with velvet rooms and gilded ledgers. We train those who can handle frays. The Namekeepers take the straight path: record, punish, be done. We take the crooked path: rescue, train, and sometimes use."
"Use," Miro said slowly. The word turned and showed its teeth. "So you owe me nothing."
"I owe the City balance," Lysa said, "and sometimes balance means taking an outcast and making them useful. You're a Hollow, Miro. That is not a flattering title. It means your resonance is not a singing note but a space — a place where fragments will fit instead of repel. Hollows were hunted after the Lattices collapsed because they could become walking archives, and archives cannot think well if they hold too many voices."
"How many voices did I take?" he asked. He'd had the sensation of a single man: a captain's strike, a night's rain, a stubborn laugh. It had been strong enough to move his hands like gears.
"Only a fray," Lysa said. "Not the whole name — just a shard. You took it from a registered captain, which makes it… visible." She hesitated. "There are better things than registered captains. There are Names older than the City. Names that the Lattice remembers poorly. Those are dangerous to the unprepared."
Miro swallowed. "What do you mean — visible?"
Lysa's eyes were flat. "Captain Tharn Mal's ledger is full and cross-noted. A missing token of his will be noticed today when the caravan reports. Namekeepers will file a claim. If they discover an unauthorized weave, you'll be a theft against a registered entity — and the law tends to prefer cages to explanations." She reached into her satchel and produced a thin scrap of parchment. On it, written in spidery hand, was his own name and three small notations: "Low resonance; Hollow; recent fray: Tharn Mal (partial)."
He flipped the script with numb fingers. "You wrote my name down."
"We write things down," Lysa said. "So we do not eat the same mistake twice. If you come with me, you will be hidden from the first ledger long enough to learn the first rules. If you run, the Namekeepers will likely be merciful to you only as a story. If you surrender, they will decide for you what story you become."
Outside, the market's noise threaded up through the cracks: a vendor calling his wares, the dull ring of a bell, the faint chant of a child learning letters. Miro thought of his stall and the people who trusted him to write their apologies and the way a name warmed when it was folded into a pocket. He thought of how he had felt when the copper band had sung and the soldier's life had pushed into him like water.
"What do you want from me?" he asked.
"Two things," Lysa said simply. "First: you must learn how to anchor fragments so they do not rot your mind. Second: we will teach you to weave names into purpose, not theft."
"You said people were hunted for being Hollows," he said. "So why train me? Why risk yourself?"
Lysa's mouth softened. "Because Hollows can do things other Weavers cannot. We are becoming an age of brittle names. More wars. More fragments. Names fall like teeth from the mouths of the dead. Someone has to pick them up, mend them, and give them a place. There is profit and there is necessity. And because —" she hesitated, glanced at the door and thinned her voice to a conspiratorial thread — "because strange things are waking in the archives. The Lattice is not as stable as it was. Names older than the City — echoes of the Founders, of the Memory-Mothers — have the power to rewrite intent. If Hollows learn to hold those threads carefully, we may not be swept away."
"Rewrite intent," Miro repeated. The phrase tasted like the space between a question and an answer. "What do you mean?"
Lysa's fingers found the nib and scrolled it across a sheet of clean paper, drawing a small diagram: circle for a name, line for a token, a knot for the anchor. She drew the Lattice as a woven grid across the paper. "Think of every spoken name as a movement on a loom. Most people can handle the smaller stitches — a name of a baker, a fisher, a lane. You can weave a pattern that is solid. Hollows can accept fragments — shards from contested names — but those shards are like splinters; they bite if you hold them wrong."
"You said I stole a fray from Tharn Mal," Miro said, eyes tracing the lines. "What does Tharn Mal give me?"
"A captain's fray gives you the echo of discipline and the ways of a soldier. It will help you take up arms, find formations, remember small percussive motions. It will not make you him. It will not give you his rulership or his social weight." Lysa tapped the circle with her nail. "It gives you a pattern to follow as though someone had traced their hands in the air and taught you a dance. You must practice it until it becomes part of your own weave."
Miro felt the memory in the pit of his stomach — the rain, the laugh — like a rubbed coin. He closed his fist and the coin slid away. "If I learn to keep it," he said, "will it leave? Will I be left empty again?"
"It may," Lysa said. "Fragments bait the mind. They can be dug out, stored, and either returned to the world or kept for later. That is what we teach. We will give you a Loom-anchor — a small thing that will let you tie a fragment into a pocket of yourself so it does not bleed into everything. And you will earn it. Hollows do not get anchors without earning them."
There was a footfall beyond the door. Miro's heart kicked like a mason's hammer. Lysa's hand went to a hidden pocket and withdrew something no bigger than his palm: a needle threaded with an unremarkable white thread.
"This is a Hollower's needle," she said. "It will not give you power. It will let you stitch a fragment into the weave of who you are without tearing your edges. It must be used with ink of intent — a drop of your life and a vow. You will earn one more way: you will gather a token from someone willing to lend you a name. That says you are not a thief. Or, you can take time and practice binding frays that have been left unclaimed."
Miro stared at the needle. He felt like a boy in front of a constellation. The thought of leaving his stall, his small ledger of scraps, and stepping into a world where hooks and threads and names shaped destinies was frightening and intoxicating.
"Will it hurt?" he asked.
"Learning hurts," Lysa said. "Sometimes the world will ask your bones what they are for and the answer will be sharper than you expect. But you will not be alone."
He thought of Captain Tharn Mal and the taste of his laughter. He thought of the kid with the ribbon and how small the gesture had been to make a child live another day. He imagined the Namekeepers' spiral closing on him like a trap if he stayed where he was.
"All right," he said. "I will learn."
Lysa's smile changed then, not the tight professional curl but something close to something like relief. She slid the needle into his hand. Her fingers were warm. "We leave at dusk," she said. "There's a place beneath the southern stacks where ink dries slow and names go to sleep. We'll get you a cloak and your first lesson. After that, you will choose how far you want to go. There are paths that lead to ledger-lines, and there are ones that walk toward the old memory-banks. Both are honest."
He looked at the needle and then at his hands. For the first time in his life he felt the hum of possibility like a pen skimming fresh paper.
Outside the narrow window of the room the city went on, trading names for bread and grief for promises. The Namekeeper was still out there, somewhere with his spiral. The market had already begun to stitch a new story from today's ragged thread.
Miro tucked the Hollower's needle into the hollow of his palm and pulled his fingers into a fist like a child who had found a secret coin. He did not know yet what a Hollow might become. He only knew that the world had opened a seam, and that with the right stitch he could sew his life into something that was no longer only small and