There were nineteen recorded ways a First Stitching could collapse, but Eleanor had never believed any of them belonged to her. She remembered copying each failure with dutiful precision while chalk dust drifted through Lecture Hall V, settling on her sleeves like pale stars. Professor Ibram had carved the disasters across the board with the same grim confidence he used for every warning: threads tearing loose, coordinates scattering into empty regions of the Interlace, sigils fracturing until the Laceliner's identity splintered into unreturnable pieces. She had filled those lines into her notebook, neat ink, organized, distant.
But one danger had never stayed distant. No professor could make it feel theoretical. They never placed it among the nineteen, perhaps because it refused to sit beside ordinary failure. The Nullith belonged to no list.
She hadn't understood that word until she saw one.
For years she had listened to classmates joke about fainting in the Chamber, about mangled sigils and brief memory loss. None of those anxieties had prepared her for the moment she realized something in the Interlace had turned toward her. Something that should not have been able to see her at all.
She remembered its shadow bending, its formless face lowering as if scenting her pulse.
And it had seen her.
After she snapped back into herself—thread burning between her fingers, anchor dragging her home—she had barely been standing upright when her mother asked the question Eleanor had dreaded since childhood.
"How was your First Stitching?"
Steady tone. Smooth. The kind of voice that offered concern without ever holding it.
Eleanor tried to answer. The memory of the shadow pressed against her collarbone where her multisigil still throbbed, a faint echo of the Interlace. She could not shape the truth into anything simple. She could not lie either. Not after the silence in the Chamber, the way her professors avoided her eyes.
"I think something went wrong," she breathed.
Her mother narrowed her gaze. Not in shock—Elizabeth Kostova did not waste emotion on shock. It was the narrowing of someone calculating cost.
"You are standing. Whole. That already places you above most mishaps."
Eleanor swallowed against the dryness in her throat. "I didn't vanish. But I thought I had. For a moment I really thought—" She stopped. Shame bled into her words before she could finish.
Elizabeth turned away. Silence moved between them like a verdict.
"But I was there," Eleanor said quickly. "I reached the Interlace. I saw it."
"That does not count as crossing. Leaving requires returning. You did not return. You failed." Elizabeth's voice sharpened. "Say it. Did you fail?"
"There was a Nullith," Eleanor whispered, almost to herself.
Elizabeth's head snapped upward. Something flickered through her expression—fear, or the closest she ever came to it—but vanished before Eleanor could name it.
"If a Nullith appeared, the failure had already happened," she said. "Nulliths come only for those who lose control of their thread. You know that."
Yes. Eleanor knew. Everyone knew. That lesson had been repeated until it felt carved into the walls of every lecture hall. Nulliths surfaced when resonance faltered. They hovered near broken threads like vultures waiting for collapse.
The University had built wards around the Chamber for this very reason. Instructors stood cloaked in wardlace not to protect themselves but to mask the raw resonance leaking from the students attempting their first crossings. It was their presence that kept Nulliths distant.
Yet one had reached her.
Later, in Croft's class, the memory branded itself deeper as he spoke with grave patience about threats inside the Interlace. He moved around the room as though tracing invisible patterns, his cloak shifting softly behind him.
"Nulliths challenge every attempt at Lacelining," he said. "The First Stitching reveals more than your capacity to cross—it reveals whether you can survive what awaits in the paths between worlds. Shadows hover near unstable threads."
Someone raised a hand. "If we sense one, can we tune back to our universe?"
Croft considered the question. "You may try. But once a Nullith has entered your thread, tuning might not matter. No one has survived close contact. They cannot be fought or reasoned with. Your strongest defense is distance and the stability of your anchor ring."
Eleanor watched the grain of the desk beneath her fingertips, trying not to flinch. She could still feel how the air had thinned when the Nullith leaned close, drawn toward her trembling sigil. If Croft's definition of distance mattered, she had been too close.
He continued walking, voice steady. "The best safeguard is perfect stitching. But technique alone is insufficient. There are methods to obscure yourself."
"Wardlace," a student said.
"Yes. Wardlace protects the surroundings of a Laceliner. It prevents the Interlace from misreading multiple resonances and drawing unintended threads. It masks nearby signals. But remember—wards do not stop Nulliths. They stop the Interlace from tearing open further. Without them, shadows bleed."
He paused long enough for the room to still.
"What I will teach you today goes beyond wards. It conceals your own resonance entirely. A technique known as nullmasking."
Eleanor lifted her head. She had never heard of this.
Croft's tone deepened.
"This technique was discovered by Elizabeth Kostova during her final expedition."
A quiet pressure settled into Eleanor's ribs. Her mother had invented something essential—something withheld from her.
Her classmates turned. Their glances carried curiosity edged with judgment, and she felt each one as if it pressed against her skin.
"When you enter the Interlace," Croft explained, "your multisigil emits a resonance that radiates like a beacon. Nullmasking folds that resonance back inward. To the Interlace, you vanish. To a Nullith, you do not exist."
The thought stung. If she had known this hours ago—if she had been taught—perhaps she could have avoided being seen.
"Why wasn't this taught before?" she asked.
Croft gave a patient, almost sympathetic smile.
"Because it is taxing. The strain of suppressing resonance tears at the sigil. When the seal breaks, the snap of resonance can be twice as strong. It is dangerous if practiced by the untrained. Your mother would have taught you when she believed you ready."
The words slid into her like cold water. Eleanor lowered her eyes, feeling the weight of a lesson withheld. She had spent years assuming Nulliths were misfortunes reserved for others—the reckless, the unlucky, the students who drifted too far into the Interlace without enough discipline.
But one had found her.
And by the measure of the University, by the measure of her mother, she had failed.