The dreamscape tasted of bitterness and ash.
Celesse Threadwalker held herself suspended in the space between waking and sleep, where curses revealed themselves as colored filaments only she could see. The vengeance-hex sprawled before her like a poisoned web—black-violet threads pulsing with malice, anchored somewhere in the waking world and stretching through the merchant Torvald's trade route like infected veins.
She'd been tracing it for the better part of an hour, following the threads back toward their origin point. Torvald claimed his competitor had cursed him, that every shipment turned rotten before reaching port, that his customers whispered of bad luck and refused his goods. The hex bore the signature emotional weight of vengeance: bitter, obsessive, the kind cast by someone who'd been wronged and couldn't let go.
Celesse's consciousness drifted closer to the thread's anchor point, her fingers—not real fingers, but the dreamscape manifestation of her will—reaching out to trace the final connection. If she could map where the hex was rooted, a proper mage could break it in the waking world. She'd collect her fee, pay another month's rent, maybe afford decent food instead of stale bread and river fish.
The thread pulsed warm beneath her touch. Almost there. Just a little—
It snapped.
Not frayed. Not dissolved. Severed. Clean and violent, as if someone had taken shears to it from the other side.
The backlash hit like a fist to the chest. Celesse's consciousness recoiled, the dreamscape fracturing around her in jagged shards of purple-black light. Pain exploded behind her eyes as the severed thread whipped back, its raw end catching her across the face like a lash. She tried to pull back, to wake herself gently the way she'd been trained, but the damage was already done.
Her body jerked awake with a gasp that turned into a wet cough. Warm copper flooded her mouth. Blood dripped from her nose onto the worn table where her head had been resting, spattering across the cheap pine surface and the map she'd been sketching—useless now, incomplete.
"What—" Torvald's voice cut through the ringing in her ears. "What happened? Where's the anchor point?"
Celesse pressed her palm against her nose, trying to stem the bleeding. Her vision blurred and doubled, the waking world refusing to settle into focus. This was the cost of dreamscape trauma—when something went wrong on the other side, your body paid the price.
"Someone cut it," she managed, her voice thick. "From your end. The hex is gone."
"Gone?" Torvald surged to his feet, his chair scraping against the floor of his cramped office. "What do you mean gone? I paid you to trace it!"
"And I was tracing it when someone severed the thread." Celesse fumbled for the rag she kept in her kit, wiping blood from her face. The room still spun. "Whoever cast it must have dismissed it. Or someone else broke it before I could map the anchor."
Torvald's face darkened. "You're telling me you failed."
"I'm telling you the hex was cut while I was inside it." Celesse pushed herself upright, gripping the table's edge for balance. Her skull throbbed in time with her heartbeat. "That's not failure. That's—"
"Convenient." Torvald crossed his arms. "Very convenient. How do I know you didn't just fake a trance and make up this story? Everyone knows threadwalking isn't real magic. You're not guild-certified. You're just some hedge-witch playing games."
The words hit harder than the backlash. Celesse had heard variations of this speech a dozen times—from clients who didn't want to pay, from mages who saw threadwalking as inferior craft, from guild officials who refused to acknowledge her work as legitimate.
"You watched me enter the trance," she said evenly, though anger simmered beneath her exhaustion. "You saw me mapping the threads before they snapped."
"I saw you sitting still with your eyes closed." Torvald moved toward the door, his intention clear. "Could've been sleeping for all I know. No results, no payment."
"We had a contract."
"For successful completion." He pulled the door open. "You didn't complete anything. Get out."
Celesse wanted to argue. Wanted to point out that she'd still done the work, still risked the dreamscape trauma that currently had her vision swimming and her head splitting. But she'd been doing this long enough to know when a fight was lost.
She gathered her materials—the half-finished map, her worn journal, the small leather case that held her silver compass and thread-samples—and shoved them into her bag. Every movement sent fresh waves of pain through her skull.
"If your shipments stay cursed, don't come crying to me," she muttered, brushing past Torvald into the narrow street beyond.
"Won't need to," he called after her. "I'll hire a real mage next time."
The door slammed shut behind her.
Celesse stood in the alley behind Torvald's warehouse, breathing in the familiar scents of the lower port district—rotting fish, tar from the boat-yards, smoke from cooking fires. The late afternoon sun did nothing to warm the autumn chill seeping through her threadbare coat.
No payment meant no rent. No rent meant her landlord would throw her out by week's end. Again.
She pressed her fingers against her temples and started walking.
The boarding house squatted between a tannery and a chandler's shop, three stories of sagging timber that smelled perpetually of leather and tallow. Celesse climbed the exterior stairs to her third-floor room, each step a small agony. The dreamscape injury was fading—it always did—but slowly.
She pushed open her door and froze.
A man stood in her room. Not rummaging through her belongings or threatening her with a blade—just standing beside her narrow bed with his hands clasped behind his back, wearing the formal livery of the royal courier service. Deep blue wool embroidered with silver thread. Too fine for this neighborhood.
"Celesse Threadwalker?" His voice carried the careful neutrality of someone accustomed to delivering news both welcome and dire.
Her hand tightened on the doorframe. "How did you get in here?"
"Your landlord was cooperative." He produced a letter from inside his coat, holding it out to her. "You're summoned to Resonance Palace. You have three days to present yourself to the King's Oath-Scribe."
Celesse didn't move to take the letter. Royal summons weren't given to people like her—freelance threadwalkers with no guild affiliation and a reputation for barely scraping by. "There's been a mistake."
"No mistake." He stepped forward and placed the letter on her table. "The seal is enchanted. Don't try to run."
Before she could respond, he was gone, footsteps already descending the stairs.
Celesse stared at the letter. The wax seal bore the dual crest of the Fenrial Crescent—a wolf and crown intertwined, rendered in dark blue wax that seemed to shimmer in the dim light. She reached out to touch it and pulled back instantly. The seal was warm, as if it held living heat.
Enchanted. Track-spelled. If she ran, they'd find her.
Her hands shook as she broke the seal and unfolded the heavy parchment. The script was formal, written in the elegant hand of someone trained in official correspondence:
By order of His Majesty Dacian Fenris, Wolf King of the Fenrial Crescent, the threadwalker known as Celesse is hereby summoned to Resonance Palace to render service to the Crown. Failure to comply will result in charges of defiance of royal edict. Present yourself to Oath-Scribe Renna within three days of receipt.
That was it. No explanation. No details. Just a command.
Celesse sank onto her bed, the parchment crinkling in her grip. She lifted it to her nose and inhaled—a habit from years of identifying hex-components by scent.
Iron and river-mist. Sharp and cold, like winter water over stones. She recognized it from the handful of times she'd been near wolf-pack territories: the signature scent-mark of an alpha's edict, magically bound to enforce obedience.
Refusing wasn't an option. Not really. Defying a royal summons meant exile at best, execution at worst. The Fenrial Crescent's laws were harsh when it came to disobedience, especially from someone without rank or protection.
But why did the Wolf King need a threadwalker? What kind of curse required her specific skills—skills that most of the realm dismissed as hedge-magic?
Celesse read the letter again, searching for clues hidden in the formal language. Nothing. Just the summons and the threat.
Three days.
She had three days to reach Resonance Palace, three days to figure out what she was walking into. Her nose had finally stopped bleeding, but her head still ached from the backlash. Her rent was overdue. She had maybe twenty silver fenris to her name, barely enough for travel and food.
And she had no choice.
Celesse folded the letter carefully and tucked it into her bag alongside her threadwalking tools. Whatever the Wolf King wanted, it had to pay better than Torvald's failed contract. It had to.
She let herself hope, just a little, that this might be the break she'd been waiting for—the job that would prove threadwalking was real magic, that would earn her enough to stop scrambling for scraps.
But as she packed her meager belongings, the scent of iron and river-mist lingered in the air, and something cold settled in her chest.
Refusal could mean exile or worse.
Which meant whatever waited for her at Resonance Palace, she'd face it with no way out.