Elias Vale watched the last thread of smoke curl from his campfire and vanish into the silver canopy. His body hummed with fatigue from a day of training: wrists raw, ribs tender, legs heavy. The crystal shard lay warm in his palm, the pulse of it an anchor in the silence.
Silence didn't last.
Thread Sense throbbed—one long, heavy vibration, then another, then a staccato of lighter footfalls fanning out around him.
"Company," he breathed.
The timer in his skull ticked on, indifferent.
System Alert[Path Selection – 17:42:51 Remaining]
Options:
Threadbearer's Path – webs, traps, agility.
Predator's Path – strength, venom, ambush.
"Not yet," Elias whispered. "I need a little more time."
The forest answered with movement.
Shapes slid between silver-veined trunks: lean, low bodies with too many joints to be wolves and too much silence to be boars. Their hide was mottled with plates of chitin, and each skull armored behind a thorned brow. When they opened their mouths, their jaws hinged wrong, revealing serrated tongues slick with dark saliva.
Skitterwolves. The word wasn't in his head until it was—and he wished it hadn't arrived at all.
One padded forward, nostrils flaring at the blood that stained the camp soil. Two circled left. A fourth melted behind brush to his right.
Elias lifted his reinforced carapace shard. His hands were steady. His legs were not.
Use the web. Use the trees. Move first.
He fired a line and snapped into the canopy. The lead skitterwolf lunged; he was already gone, the wind a whisper against his ears as he swung. He landed on a branch, fired two more lines, and yo-yoed to a second perch, trying to make noise away from his camp.
The pack didn't chase noise. It chased him.
Thread Sense pulsed—two from the left, one from the right, one below. They were learning his rhythm, triangulating leaps. Smart. Hungry. Patient.
"Fine," Elias said, and his voice didn't shake. "Let's learn together."
He sprayed silk across a scaffolding of branches, tugged it tight, then layered a crude net in the middle—hasty, ugly, but under tension. He dropped, kicked the trunk, and snapped back up through his own weave, testing the give. Good. It held, barely.
The first skitterwolf took the bait with a bounding leap.
Elias cut a line.
The net sagged, then slingshotted up, tangling legs, rolling the beast mid-air. It hit a branch spine-first with a yelp. The other three exploded into motion, two vaulting to flank Elias on the branch and one sprinting the trunk as if it were flat ground.
"Too fast—"
He fired, missed, fired again, missed again. The third thread caught the climber's brow spike, yanking its head sideways into the bark. It hung for a heartbeat—just long enough for Elias to swing and kick. The impact wrenched his ribs, but the creature tumbled, bouncing off roots and vanishing into brush.
The remaining pair came together, a pincer in three dimensions: one leaping high, the other sweeping low along the branch.
Elias dropped. Fangs split the air where his face had been. He fired a line mid-fall, snapped around the trunk, and scissored his legs. His heel cracked a jaw. The wolf spun, recovered mid-air, landed backward, and immediately lunged again.
They didn't fear him. They feared hunger.
The crystal pulsed, and the System's voice sharpened, no longer patient, no longer clinical.
Emergency Protocol[Local Threat Assessment: PACK ENGAGEMENT / HOST VITALITY COMPROMISED]
[Path Selection Timer Accelerated]
Time Remaining: 00:05:00
Warning: Failure to choose will result in forced lock based on combat behavior.
"Five minutes—?!" Elias's chest seized. His eyes flicked to where he'd woven a second net; one good burst might split it. "Now? You want an oath in the middle of—"
The high leaper came again. Elias fired two lines, crossed them, and ripped. The silk scissored the creature's momentum; it yawed in the air, slammed sideways into the trunk, and fell with a hollow, bone-drum thud.
Three left. One tangled. One dazed. One climbing fast.
Predator promised power, the hot certainty of an ending blow. Use the venom, finish the fight, rule the ground.
Threadbearer promised movement, control, a map of invisible lines between branch and breath and target. Rule the space, not the body.
He'd survived by buying seconds and turning them into openings. He was not a hammer. He was the web.
"I choose," he whispered, and meant it.
Path Choice[Selection: THREADBEARER'S PATH]
Confirm?
Y/N
Elias didn't hesitate. "Y."
Path Unlocked – ThreadbearerImmediate Effects:
+1 Agility, +1 Perception
Silk Efficiency +20% (reduced energy cost)
Anchor Control: fire two anchors simultaneously.
Weave Stability: improvised nets and tethers resist +30% force.
New Skills:
Rapid Weave Lv. 1 – Create a small, tensioned web in seconds.
Tether Pull Lv. 1 – Reel in anchored targets or yourself with increased force.
Aerial Recovery Lv. 1 – Right yourself mid-air, reducing landing impact.
Unique Passive:
Thread Map – Briefly visualize lines of best motion between anchors, enemies, and terrain.
The world sharpened as if a veil dropped. White hairs along the leaves became lanes in his mind. Branch angles turned into summaries of force and failure. Nodes lit up where an anchor would hold—where it wouldn't—how a leap could break a spine or a misstep could break his own.
"Okay," Elias breathed, and this time he was the one who moved first.
The Web TurnsHe dashed along the branch and Rapid Weave snapped to his fingers like a drumroll. Silk flared, a five-point net braced across a V of trunks. He pivoted to a second V, wove a smaller catcher, then flipped, firing two anchors at once—one to the primary net, one to a high bough—and Tether Pull yanked him into a tight arc that slung him behind the climbing skitterwolf.
It never saw the kick coming. He didn't aim for mass. He aimed for angle. His heel drove the skull into bark. The wolf dropped, and his second anchor snapped it sideways into the fresh net. It hit, stretched, rebounded, and stuck. The weave held.
Two surged together, the dazed one now foaming and furious. Elias bled them toward the first sabotaged scaffolding, putting himself between trunks and a low ridge. He feinted a retreat; they took it, greedy. He fired one anchor past them and one to the ridge behind him, then cut the trailing line as he Tether Pulled the forward. He rocketed through the gap. Their pounce overshot into the tripped net, which sagged, sighed, and hugged both like an impatient parent.
"Stay," Elias panted—and ripped the support with a quick slash. The net collapsed around them, layers turning into belts. They snarled and tore, but Weave Stability refused to fail quickly. Not this time.
The first, still free, chose rage over caution. It bounded up the trunk and launched for his back.
Thread Map lit three lines: drop and roll (50% success, broken ribs), leap left to thin branch (70% success, branch snaps), or commit—Aerial Recovery into a dive, double anchor, then pendulum hard enough to break something that wasn't him.
He chose momentum.
He dove.
Claws whistled through his hair.
He fired two anchors into opposite trunks, hit the end of the lines like a brick on a rope, and let the world swing. The wolf overshot. Elias came back like a wrecking ball, boots first, and the air left the creature in a shocked bark. Before it could inhale, he snapped a line around its foreleg and Tether Pulled its face into the trunk. Something cracked. The wolf slumped.
He landed badly, but Aerial Recovery bled the fall's spite. His ankles screamed; they did not fail.
The netted two had almost gnawed through a seam. Almost. Elias darted in, laced a rapid criss-cross down the tear, and kicked one through the mesh; it spun, tangled anew. He slid the venom-coated edge of his shard along the other's tongue when it lunged. Its eyes glazed; it sagged.
The last free one staggered up, head shaking. Elias felt the choice in his chest: run it down like a predator, or prove his path mattered in the finish as much as the flow.
He didn't chase.
He cast.
Two anchors—a trunk behind the wolf and a stone to his right—then he sprinted not at the creature but past its line of retreat. The wolf did the expected hunting thing: it turned to keep him in front. That rotation was the opening. Elias flicked a line around its hind leg, crossed his anchors, and Tether Pulled. The world snapped tight. The line scissored the wolf's stance into a graceless skid. He stepped in and finished clean, a stab through the eye where the chitin thinned.
Silence returned in stuttering breaths, in the quiet creak of settling web, in the unpleasant scent of venom burned into earth.
Elias staggered back against a trunk and slid down it, cheeks sticky with sweat and ichor. The crystal shard buzzed faintly, warm and proud.
He'd chosen. He'd lived.
System Rewards[Pack Engagement – Resolved]
EXP Gained
Level Up! → Level 4
+1 Strength, +2 Agility, +1 Perception
Skill Growth:
Basic Thread Projection Lv. 4 → Lv. 5 (tensile strength up, micro-control improved)
Rapid Weave Lv. 1 → Lv. 2 (larger nets, faster laydown)
Tether Pull Lv. 1 → Lv. 2 (reel speed increased)
Materials Acquired:
Skitterwolf Hide (x3) – flexible, partially chitinous; armor potential
Thorned Brow Spikes (x3) – piercers; projectile potential
Skitterwolf Fangs (x2) – non-venomous; carving grade
Path Bonus:
Silk Reserve +10% (temporary stamina recovery on successful grapples)
Elias wiped his blade clean on grass and checked the timer.
System Alert[Path Selection – LOCKED: THREADBEARER]
[17:11:06 Remaining → Timer Cleared]
He let that sink in. The countdown was gone. The pressure, for the first time since waking in this world, eased. He could breathe without a number chasing each exhale.
He gathered the spikes and fangs, hands moving on automatic, and stitched a short, ugly sash from hide scraps and silk. It held the shard at his hip, the brow spikes at his back, and the core—still wrapped—in a pocket over his heart.
The forest shifted. Thread Sense rolled out, clean and bright, no longer screaming, merely informing: small things, far things, the distant thunder of something enormous turning in its sleep.
He banked the fire. He rebounded a few lines higher in the canopy and wove a tighter hammock, triangular and low-slung, with a simple silk canopy to break dew. Rapid Weave made it quick. Weave Stability made it decent. It would hold.
He lay back and stared at the twin moons, now stacked like coins on a tilted table. His ribs complained about everything; his wrists wanted a union. But his mind—his mind was a map of lines, a lattice of possibilities, intersections that belonged to him because he could see them, because he could make them.
He wasn't the strongest thing in the forest. He'd chosen not to be.
He'd chosen to be the one that controlled where strength mattered.
Somewhere to the east—faint, almost imagined—Thread Sense caught a rhythm that wasn't claw or hoof: a regular, artificial clatter. Not beasts. Tools. People.
Elias closed his eyes, and the hint of civilization ticked against his senses like a far drum.
"Tomorrow," he murmured. "I follow the lines."
The web he'd woven hummed in the night breeze, and for the first time since dying, the promise of sleep felt like a choice he'd earned.
[Status Screen – Elias Vale]Level: 4
Race: Human (??? – Synchronization 38%)
Path: Threadbearer (Locked)
Condition: Wounded / Stable / Web-Anchored Rest
Attributes:
Strength: 9
Agility: 12
Vitality: 6
Intelligence: 7
Perception: 9
Skills:
Basic Thread Projection Lv. 5
Wall Adhesion Lv. 2
Thread Sense Lv. 3
Web Weaving Lv. 2
Rapid Weave Lv. 2
Tether Pull Lv. 2
Aerial Recovery Lv. 1
Thread Map (Passive)
Titles:
[Survivor of the First Hunt]
Equipment & Materials:
Reinforced Carapace Shard (Crude Blade)
Skitterwolf Hide Sash (Improvised Harness)
Thorned Brow Spikes (x3)
Skitterwolf Fangs (x2)
Hunter's Arachnid Core (Sealed)