The loom sat quiet at first.
It had arrived with no fanfare, tucked in the corner of her grandmother's attic beneath a dusty shroud, discovered only after the funeral. Lyra had reached for it on instinct. She didn't know why, only that her fingers itched at the sight of it, like the pull of an old scar in the rain. She had no idea then that this loom would open the locked doors of the past — not just her past, but the lives of others, stitched into every thread.
She began weaving without truly knowing how. There were no instructions, only bundles of dyed thread coiled in an old cedar chest that smelled of lavender and time. When she pulled the first thread taut across the loom and pressed her foot to the pedal, she felt something shift — in the room, in the world, in herself.
The thread whispered.
Not aloud. Not in words. But behind her eyes, behind thought. The memory came as a flicker, like an ember catching wind. She saw herself, age five, sitting cross-legged on the carpet, while her mother—Elira—sat nearby, humming a tune Lyra hadn't remembered until that moment. The memory was crisp, brighter than anything she recalled unaided. Her mother's voice, her scent, even the crack in her thumbnail were there, full and vivid. And then, just as quickly, it was gone.
Lyra sat back, heart hammering. It couldn't have been her imagination. Something had been called forward by the weaving.
She tried again the next night. A different thread, this one the color of moss after rain. The memory it pulled was not her own.
She was standing in a field under a red sky, holding hands with someone tall and faceless. Her dress was too long. Her hands, wrinkled. The ache in her chest was unfamiliar but real, like grief just beginning to curdle. When she gasped and let go of the shuttle, the loom groaned — not mechanically, but like a sigh escaping a heavy dream. The thread snapped.
Lyra didn't sleep that night. She couldn't. She sat beside the loom until dawn, knees pulled to her chest, waiting for some explanation to bloom. None came.
Days blurred. She worked the loom in secret, selecting threads at random. Each one summoned something different: her father's voice, a stranger's wedding, the shattering echo of war. She began to sort the threads by feeling, as though each one carried its own vibration — some warm and full, others brittle, trembling.
It wasn't long before she started searching deliberately. For Elira.
Her mother's memories, when they came, were elusive, disjointed. At first, Lyra was overjoyed — glimpses of her mother laughing in the kitchen, sketching symbols in her notebook, standing in the backyard at dusk whispering into the wind. But the threads soon changed. The memories turned darker.
Elira pacing the hallway at night, muttering under her breath. Her fingers twitching in her sleep, tracing unseen patterns in the air. Her journals, once full of sketches and ideas, became frantic, pages black with ink and urgency. And then came the last thread — a storm-grey cord that trembled in Lyra's palm.
The memory it held made her weep.
Elira stood before the loom — this very loom — eyes red, jaw clenched. "It's coming undone," she said, to no one. Or maybe to Lyra, watching from inside the memory. "I can't tell what's mine anymore. They're bleeding through…"
She turned sharply, as if sensing something behind her. Her voice cracked. "If I lose the edges… if I forget who I am—"
The memory ended mid-sentence.
Lyra staggered back, bile rising in her throat. That was the last time she'd seen her mother. After that night, Elira had vanished without a trace. The police had called it a disappearance. Some whispered madness. Others suggested suicide. But Lyra had always known it wasn't that simple.
And now she had proof.
The loom didn't just reveal memories — it collected them. It was a vessel, a conduit. And Elira had been using it long before Lyra.
The discovery was intoxicating and terrifying. Lyra couldn't stop, even as the memories grew stranger — things no human could have lived. The death of a forest. The drowning of a city that never existed. A man whose face was a mask of flame. The loom held more than lives. It held echoes of stories, dreams, nightmares.
Then came Thorne.
He arrived during the first frost, a stranger with eyes like ash and a coat that smelled of burning leaves. He found her at the market, staring too long at the blue thread tied around a vendor's wrist.
"You're the one using the loom," he said, not as a question.
Lyra stiffened. "Who are you?"
He didn't answer at first. Just watched her the way a hunter watches brush for movement.
"You don't know what it's doing to you," he finally said. "You think you're learning. But you're unraveling."
That night, she met him in the woods, where the trees swallowed sound and the stars seemed to listen.
"They're called memory weavers," Thorne explained. "People like your mother. Like you, now."
Lyra clenched her fists. "What happened to her?"
"She went too far. She crossed the threads too many times. The mind can only hold so much of what it was never meant to contain."
He tossed a stone into the river. "There are rules. You don't pull memories that don't belong to your bloodline. You don't weave at dusk or dawn. And you never braid more than one thread at a time."
"I've already done all of that," Lyra said quietly.
Thorne didn't look surprised. "Then you've probably heard it by now. The voice in the gaps."
She swallowed hard. Yes. In between memories, when the thread snapped or tangled, she sometimes heard a voice — not loud, but low, muttering from the edges. Not hers. Not Elira's. Something else entirely.
"What is it?" she asked.
"The thing that lives in the spaces between memory. It doesn't have a name, not one you'd want to speak. But it waits. And when someone weaves too deeply, too carelessly… it follows the threads back."
Lyra wanted to laugh. It was absurd. A ghost story. But her hands wouldn't stop trembling.
"You think I can't handle this," she said.
Thorne shook his head. "I think you're already being handled."
Later, back in the attic, Lyra stood before the loom, staring down at the woven cloth. Each panel was a memory made tangible, the past laid bare in silk and shadow. But something had changed. The last few rows… they weren't hers. They weren't anyone's.
They showed things that hadn't happened yet.
A door, hanging open.
A woman with her face, but older, eyes hollow.
A thread pulled from a throat like a silver scream.
Lyra backed away. The loom creaked, even though she hadn't touched it.
She had to find Elira. If she was alive, there was still time. If she wasn't…
The answer lay in the threads.
But even as she reached for the next skein, her fingers hesitated.
The voice was closer now. Not muttering, but calling.
And the thread in her hand wasn't a color she remembered seeing before. Not grey. Not black.
Red.
A red so dark it almost swallowed the light.
She looked down. There was a cut on her palm — shallow, new.
But she hadn't noticed it bleeding.
And the thread was warm.