There were nineteen ways a First Stitching could go wrong. Eleanor remembered copying them down, the chalk dust drifting through Lecture Hall V as Professor Ibram scratched the failures across the board. Misaligned resonance meant the compass needle spun endlessly until the Laceliner fainted. A mis-stitch sent coordinates scattering into barren regions of the Interlace where no world connected. The fractured sigil shattered you into pieces, scattering your identity across universes so you lived on only in fragments of memory. She had written all of them into her notes, careful lines of ink, but they had always felt like stories meant for other people. The disasters seemed too distant to belong to her.
But there was one danger the professors never delivered with distance. The Nullith.
It had not been included in the nineteen. Croft had once called it anomalous predation, though Eleanor had never known what that meant until she saw one herself. She had laughed at student jokes about collapsing during Stitching or losing your voice during a chant, but all of that had turned small and childish once she understood what it meant to draw the attention of a Nullith. Because the only failure that mattered was being seen by one. And she had been seen.
The lectures had never agreed on what Nulliths were. Some claimed they hunted resonance, that they were pulled by the sound of a multisigil straining to anchor itself. Others believed they were not creatures at all but rips in the Interlace that had shaped themselves into bodies. The most extreme theories imagined them as ruined Laceliners, their broken sigils echoing forever in distorted form. Eleanor had sketched in her margins while Croft spoke about them, thinking his warnings sounded dramatic. He had always ended with the same words: We don't know where they wait. We only know they appear when they choose. They cannot be tracked. They are untethered.
She was just thankful that the thread in her hand had burned, pulling her back into her own world.
"How was your First Stitching?" Eleanor's mother had asked. Her tone was flat and practiced. To a stranger it might have sounded like kindness, but Eleanor knew better. Elizabeth Kostova's voice never betrayed whether she cared about the answer.
Eleanor opened her mouth but the words tangled in her throat. She could not explain what she had seen. She could not speak of the shadow that had bent its faceless head toward her in the Interlace. She thought of saying It went well. She thought of lying, even for a moment, to give herself the space to breathe. But she remembered her classmates' eyes. She remembered the silence of the professors. She remembered how sharp that silence had felt. She could not pretend.
"I—" Her hand lifted to her collarbone. The faint trace of her Multisigil still burned beneath her skin. It quivered faintly, as if it too remembered the Interlace. "I think something went wrong."
Elizabeth's eyes narrowed. Not in surprise. In calculation. "Wrong? You are standing here. Whole. That already places you above most blunders."
"I didn't disappear," Eleanor said. The words stung as they left her mouth. "But I thought I had. For a moment, I really thought…" Her voice faded. She did not finish. She could not confess how much she had wanted to believe herself successful.
Elizabeth turned away. Her disappointment did not need words.
It was worse than scolding.
"But I went to the Interlace," Eleanor said quickly. Her voice cracked with desperation. "I saw it."
"You know that does not count as Lacelining, Eleanor." Her mother's reply was sharp and without hesitation. "Crossing means leaving and coming back. You didn't. You failed. Tell me—did you fail?"
"It was hard. There was a Nullith—"
Elizabeth's head snapped up. For a second, Eleanor thoughtcshe saw fear cut through her mother's face—then vanished. "If you drew a Nullith, you'd already failed. You know that."
Eleanor knew that. Nulliths were predators. They appeared only when a thread faltered. Professors had repeated this as though it were scripture: Nulliths did not come for the skilled.
This was the reason the University had built ward systems into the Resonance Chamber. It was why instructors stood cloaked in wardlace during the First Stitching. The wards kept Nulliths from detecting the raw resonance of students who were still learning to stabilize their multisigils.
"Nulliths are unpredictable predators that challenge every attempt at Lacelining," Professor Croft said. "The purpose of the First Stitching is not only to learn whether you can cross, but to measure if you are ready to survive the threats that exist within the Interlace. If you are not, the Nulliths will find you. They hover near weak or broken threads."
One of Eleanor's classmates raised a hand. "What can we do if there are Nulliths in our thread? Can we tune back to the universe?"
"You could," Croft replied. "But when a Nullith has already found its way into your path, it is often too late. No one has survived close contact. Nulliths cannot be fought and reasoned with. The only defenses are distance and the stability of your anchor ring."
Eleanor's pulse tightened. She wondered what counted as close contact. A meter? An arm's length? The Nullith she had seen during her First Stitching had bent so near she could feel the air hollow around her chest. By her measure, it had been too close.
Croft continued. "The best safeguard is perfect stitching and controlled resonance." His eyes swept over the room, pausing for a second on Eleanor before he spoke again. "But there are methods to keep yourself safe in the Interlace beyond technique alone."
"Wardlace!" someone called.
Croft inclined his head. "Yes. Wardlace serves as protection for those around the Laceliner. Its first purpose is to avoid detection by Nulliths. Its second is to prevent confusion. If a Laceliner perceives multiple active multisigils in their radius, the Interlace may mistakenly draw new threads. That can distort a path and jeopardize survival. Wardlace prevents this by masking surrounding resonances. But we have to remember that our wards don't stop Nulliths—they stop the Interlace itself from leaking in. Without that barrier, shadows might bleed through."
He paused, then his tone shifted. "What I am about to teach you goes further. It is a technique that allows a Laceliner to conceal their own resonance entirely. We call it nullmasking."
Eleanor's attention sharpened. No professor had ever mentioned this before the First Stitching. If she had known, she could have tried it. Perhaps she could have crossed.
"This technique was discovered by Elizabeth Kostova," Croft said. "She developed it during her last expedition into another universe."
Eleanor froze. Her mother. She had not known Elizabeth had done anything so important for the University. But then again, what did she truly know about her mother beyond her cold perfection? Her classmates turned toward her in unison. Their stares carried more weight than they spoke aloud, but Eleanor could feel the judgment behind their attention.
Croft went on. "When you enter the Interlace, your multisigil produces a resonance. That resonance radiates outward like a beacon, and it is what draws Nulliths toward you. Nullmasking collapses that beacon. Instead of letting resonance flow outward, you fold it back into yourself. To the Interlace, you vanish. To a Nullith, you are nothing."
Eleanor spoke before she could stop herself. "Why was this not taught before?"
Croft smiled faintly. "Because it is not sustainable. Nullmasking is exhausting, and it cannot be held long by the untrained. The longer you suppress resonance, the greater the strain on your multisigil. When the seal breaks, the backlash of resonance snaps outward with twice its force, and that can be dangerous. Your mother would have taught you if she believed you ready."
The words stung. Eleanor felt the humiliating weight of them settle against her ribs. She had never been trained. She had never been taught to do this. And she had never believed she would need to. Nulliths had always seemed like a threat for others—the reckless, the unskilled, the unlucky. She had assumed she would never linger long enough in the Interlace to attract one.
But now she knew. A Nullith had found her. And by the measure of the University, by the measure of her mother, she had failed.