The village of Drifting Realm – 172 shimmered with warmth that night.
Every year, when the constellations shifted in their wandering sky, the people celebrated the Festival of the Drifting Sky. For one night, drifting fragments of worlds above aligned, their stars said to watch more closely.
Lanterns were carved from pale reeds and painted with glowing pigments. Musicians beat steady rhythms on hide-drums, while the women hummed songs that carried through the air like threads of memory. Families gathered at the central square, cooking meats and roots until the smell of smoke and spice filled the cool air.
Matthew walked among them quietly. His eyes wandered upward to the strange sky, where constellations slid across one another in slow, impossible arcs. He alone saw more than stars—lines of thread connecting them, vibrant and restless, as if the heavens were a woven tapestry alive with motion.
For a moment, he felt wonder. For another, he felt the same familiar alienation: This sky doesn't belong to me… and yet… I can see its weave.
---
"Oi, thread-eyes!"
Liora's voice rang out. She was bright as ever, dark hair tied back, sparks flickering faintly across her fingertips as though fire already liked her. She grabbed Matthew's wrist before he could slip away and dragged him toward the children's circle.
"Come on. You can't mope through the whole festival."
Mira, the soft-voiced girl from the potter's family, tugged on his sleeve. "You should sing with us! Everyone's joining the chorus tonight."
Bren, the rowdy son of a hunter, smirked. "Or wrestle. Bet you can't last three breaths against me."
The children laughed and shoved playfully at each other, their joy infectious. At first, Matthew shifted uncomfortably under their attention. On Earth, he had been the quiet one at the edge, tolerated but never truly included.
Yet here—though they teased, though they pushed—they still pulled him into their games. Mira's laughter, Bren's daring, and Liora's fierce eyes all welcomed him in their own way.
Hesitant, awkward, he finally allowed himself a smile. For the first time, he felt something Earth had denied him: acceptance.
---
Later, as the fires burned brighter, the elders gathered everyone around. The oldest woman in the village raised her staff and pointed toward the drifting constellations.
"Once, these were not fragments," she said. Her voice carried like wind through leaves. "Long ago, the realms were whole. But the Loom of the Sky unraveled, and worlds were torn apart, cast adrift across the Frontier."
The crowd murmured, children wide-eyed.
"The Loom is the force that ties what remains. It is what keeps us from falling into nothing. To honor it, we gather, and we bless our children, so they may be caught by good threads."
Charms of woven reed were tied onto the children's wrists and necks, painted with star-patterns. They were said to draw blessings from the drifting heavens.
Matthew shivered as he listened. The Loom of the Sky… The words echoed his own visions, his own sense of the world's threads.
---
But not all voices were joyful. In hushed corners, hunters shared news of beasts with twisted limbs prowling the edge of the forest. Others whispered of "black stars" seen in the heavens—an omen of corruption.
Matthew's gaze flicked upward. Above the glowing lanterns, he caught faint filaments of black thread drifting through the air like smoke.
"Don't worry," Liora muttered beside him, as if sensing his unease. "The elders are always worrying. It's just shadows. If beasts come, we'll fight them."
Her bravado made him want to believe, but the threads told him otherwise.
---
The festival's heart came when lanterns were released. Dozens of glowing orbs were lit and set free, drifting upward on threads of smoke and prayer. Children cheered, clapping as the lanterns rose into the sky to join the stars.
One lantern faltered, its reed frame broken. It tumbled sideways, its glow dimming—until Matthew, almost without thought, brushed against the threads binding it.
The weave shivered. The lantern steadied. Its flame caught again, rising true among the others.
The crowd clapped, never noticing. But Liora had. She stared at him, eyes narrowed. For a moment Matthew panicked, afraid.
Then she smirked. "Weird," she whispered. "But useful."
---
When the songs faded and fires dimmed, laughter lingered like warmth in the air. Matthew sat with Liora, Mira, and Bren beneath the last lantern light. For the first time, he thought: Maybe this world could be home.
Inside him, the Origin Weaver System stirred.
[New Trait Strengthened: Child of the Loom – Bonds deepen. Threads of destiny converge.]
Above, hidden in the drifting constellations, a single star pulsed faintly black.
Only Matthew saw the threads that writhed from it, silent and hungry.
________
Chapter 49 (2) – Shadows Beneath the Lanterns
The night after the Festival of the Drifting Sky should have been peaceful.
The lanterns had long since floated into the heavens, their faint glows still visible like drifting fireflies stitched into the tapestry of the constellations. Families returned to their homes with full bellies and tired smiles, children falling asleep to stories of the Loom of the Sky.
But Matthew couldn't sleep.
From his bed of straw, he stared through the cracks of the hut's wooden roof. The threads above trembled unnaturally. They weren't bright, nor warm, but sickly—black filaments coiling between the stars like mold spreading across a wall.
His chest tightened. He had seen whispers of corruption before, but tonight it was thicker, heavier. Alive.
---
The first scream came from the western huts.
A woman's voice, shrill and desperate, cut through the village night. Matthew jolted upright as more shouts followed—men calling for weapons, children crying, dogs barking wildly.
"M-Matthew!" His mother clutched him, fear in her eyes. "Stay inside!"
But he could already see it. The threads of the hut walls, the woven roof, the very ground—they all vibrated with disturbance. Something unnatural was pressing against the weave of the realm itself.
---
Outside, hunters rushed past with spears and torches. Matthew pushed to the doorway, ignoring his mother's pleas, and saw the source.
At the edge of the square, where lanterns still smoldered on their posts, a creature staggered into view.
At first it looked like a wolf. But its body was twisted, stretched in wrong proportions, bones jutting like broken spears through skin. Its eyes burned faintly red, and from its paws leaked a trail of black threads that poisoned the ground.
Corrupted.
The hunters shouted, forming a line. "Hold fast! Don't let it near the huts!"
Another scream—this time from the trees. Two more beasts emerged, their movements jerky, like puppets pulled by invisible strings.
The black stars had answered the whispers.
---
Matthew's heart pounded. Liora was there, standing behind her father, a torch in her hand. Her face was pale, but her jaw was set. Mira and Bren were nowhere to be seen—likely dragged into their homes by terrified parents.
The wolf-beast lunged. Spears met its body, but where blood should have spilled, the wound instead unraveled into threads of shadow that writhed and pulled at the hunters' weapons. One man cried out as his spear corroded in his grip, the wood turning brittle, the iron flaking into dust.
Matthew's eyes locked on the threads. He saw it clearly: corruption gnawed at the beast's weave, forcing its body into shapes it should never have taken. The threads were tangled, broken, yet bound by something dark.
If I pull… if I cut… maybe I can undo it.
But fear held him frozen. His mother's hand was tight on his shoulder. His promise to protect her warred against the burning instinct to act.
---
The battle in the square turned desperate. Hunters fell back, torches dimming under a suffocating pressure. Children screamed from their huts.
And then—it happened.
One of the beasts broke through the line, charging straight toward the huts where Matthew stood. His mother pushed him back, shielding him with her body, her eyes wide with terror.
Threads snapped in Matthew's vision. The hut's walls shivered, unable to withstand the oncoming weight.
Something in him broke loose.
---
[Emergency Protocol Activated.]
The faint lullaby-voice of the Origin Weaver System cut through the chaos.
[Thread Manipulation Unlocked – Basic Level.]
[Warning: User capacity unstable. Risk of backlash high.]
Time seemed to slow. The beast's corrupted weave stretched before Matthew like a knot of rotting rope. His trembling fingers reached out—not to touch its flesh, but the threads themselves.
He pulled.
For an instant, the corruption recoiled, threads snapping and hissing as if burned. The beast stumbled mid-charge, its body seizing unnaturally. But the strain hit Matthew like fire in his veins, and he gasped, knees buckling.
The wolf convulsed, snarling, its form unraveling at the edges before slamming back into coherence.
The hunters seized the moment, spears piercing its chest. The beast collapsed with a warped howl, dissolving into ash and threads of smoke.
---
Silence fell, broken only by the ragged breaths of the villagers.
The other beasts retreated into the forest, their black trails lingering in the night air.
Matthew slumped to the ground, sweat dripping down his face, his small body trembling. His mother clutched him, whispering frantic prayers, unaware of what he had done.
But Liora saw.
Across the square, her wide eyes locked with his. She had seen the shimmer around him, the impossible way the beast's body had faltered.
Her lips moved soundlessly before shaping one word.
"Weaver."
---
Matthew looked back up at the sky.
The lanterns were gone, swallowed by the drifting constellations. Only one star pulsed faintly black, threads of corruption dangling from it like a spider waiting in its web.
And for the first time, he understood: the black stars weren't omens.
They were warnings.