The shed at the edge of Spirit‑Root Village looked like it had already resigned itself to falling apart.
Its thatch roof sagged. One corner had sunk where the ground turned soft in the rains. A faded talisman clung to the doorframe, ink almost washed into nothing.
Tonight, everything around it was too still.
No cricket song.
No rustle of leaves.
The air in front of the door shimmered like heat over a cooking fire, except it was night and the air was cold.
Ifabola—Xiao‑lan—stood barefoot in the dirt, breath clouding faintly. Her right palm burned where the hunger's curve and river's spiral clashed. The stone bead at her neck throbbed in sympathy, as if remembering another sky.
TARGET: PROXY DOORWAY (Incomplete).
Local Integrity: 41% and rising.
Est. Time Until Manifestation: 32 minutes (±7).
Recommended Action: Immediate Interference.
"Yeah, I gathered," she muttered.
A thin, oily darkness seeped from the edges of the talisman, drifting a handspan into the air before curling back, as though testing the world beyond.
Not full shadow.
Not full presence.
Like the early stages of mold on forgotten food.
"System," she whispered in her head, "tell me something useful. I'm five. I can barely walk to the river without wobbling. How do I close a hole between worlds before it spits out something with too many teeth?"
Analyzing Available Assets…
– Hunger Fragment (37% sealed)
– River Counter‑Spiral (Active)
– Name‑Thread Flexibility (High)
– Local Qi Perception (Lv.2)
– Physical Strength (…Minimal)
"Thanks for that last one," she hissed.
Proposed Strategy:
Link your Name‑Thread to the forming Proxy Pattern.Overlay River‑Spiral constraints on Hunger vectors.Re‑route excess into System Anchor for containment.
Risk: High.
Side Effect: Possible spontaneous Path formation. Unknown long‑term consequences.
"In other words, make me the plug," she said.
Affirmative.
"It'd be nice if someone else took a turn," she muttered, stepping closer anyway.
Each pace felt like walking into deeper water.
The closer she got, the thicker the air became—not with heat, but with intention. The forming doorway wanted something. To widen. To drink. To be more.
On the other side of the worlds, Ajani snarled at the stone in his hut, pressing his forehead against it until the cracked anchor cut his skin.
"Why isn't anything happening?" he shouted. "You promised—"
I promise nothing, the hunger murmured fondly. You simply shout nicely.
Its power poured along the broken circuits anyway, chasing threads wherever they went.
One thread reached here.
Ifabola placed her left hand flat against the shed wall. The rough wood scraped her palm. With her right, she lifted her marked hand toward the trembling air.
"Okay," she whispered. "Let's weave."
She inhaled.
Qi slid into her chest, thin and reluctant.
The System overlaid a ghost‑diagram of the doorway: circles of twisted script, angular marks that echoed EJEH's letters but were not fully formed. It was like watching a word being written in the air from both ends at once.
Proxy Pattern:
Base Name: [REDACTED]
Local Expression: 22% formed.
Weakness: Incomplete syntax. External noise.
"Noise," she repeated. "Like…other names?"
Correct.
Suggestion: Introduce foreign Name‑Thread at intersecting points to destabilize.
"My name is already a mess," she said. "Might as well put it to use."
She pressed her right palm into the darkness.
Pain hit like she'd grabbed a live coal.
It screamed up her arm, into her shoulder, across her jaw. Her teeth ached. Her vision went white around the edges.
On the other side of the crack, the hunger jolted.
Ah, it hissed. There you are.
The Proxy Pattern wrapped greedy tendrils around her Name‑Thread, eager to drink.
The river‑spiral flared.
The System slammed instructions into her mind.
Hold. Do NOT pull back.
Visualize your Name‑Thread as flexible but anchored.
Insert segments into Pattern like wedges, not food.
Images rose unbidden: cowrie shells wedged under a crooked table leg; stones jammed into a riverbank to redirect water.
She focused.
Instead of letting the Proxy's pull drag her in, she pushed.
Her name—IFABOLA—uncoiled within her: each syllable a piece of story, each memory a knot. Kike's laugh. Dupe's scolding. Baba chanting. The taste of yam. The feel of river mud. The ache of another sky.
She slid those knots into the forming letters like pebbles into fresh clay.
The Pattern stuttered.
Where one of the angular marks should have completed its stroke, an "I" lodged instead, refusing to take the shape it wanted.
Where another curve reached for a feeding hook, it met "BA," twisted and snagged.
The darkness around her fingers howled.
Lights burst behind her eyes.
On the other side, in Ajani's hut, the half‑circle stone flared white, then black, then green—an alien color in that cramped, smoky space. Ajani staggered back, clutching his hands, now burned.
"What did you do?" one of his followers screamed.
Ajani stared at his palms, blisters rising.
"I…don't know," he gasped.
The hunger seethed.
Someone else is holding the other end, it growled. Annoying child.
In Spirit‑Root, the Proxy Doorway shivered.
Its surface rippled, trying to slough off the foreign Name‑Thread.
The river‑spiral tightened, each of its delicate loops glowing brighter.
Water‑cool intent flowed down Ifabola's bones.
This door is not only yours, the goddess's earlier words echoed faintly. You overreach.
Engaging River‑Constraint Subroutine…
Binding Partial Pattern. Redirecting overflow to System Anchor…
Ifabola felt something new open behind her.
Not a physical space.
A…notion.
A little hollow in reality, carved just big enough to hold a handful of letters.
Power surged along the Proxy Thread.
Instead of bursting fully into her world, half of it bent sideways, funneled into that hidden hollow.
The rest slammed against her palm and scattered, scrambled by the wedges of her name.
The shed groaned.
Wooden beams cracked.
The old talisman flared once, for the first time in years, then burned to ash.
A shockwave rippled out from the door, kicking up dust in a ring. It knocked Ifabola off her feet, tossing her backward into the dirt.
She hit hard, breath woofing out.
For a few heartbeats, she lay stunned, staring up at the harsh scatter of stars.
The Proxy Doorway flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then—like a soap bubble popped by a child's poke—it burst.
Not with a dramatic explosion.
Simply…gone.
The air where it had been was too clean, like the moment after a storm blows the dust away.
Silence crashed in.
Then the world rushed back: cricket song, distant snoring, the drip of water.
Ifabola rolled onto her side, coughing.
Her right hand smoked faintly.
The mark there had changed again.
The hunger's jagged curve was still trapped under the river‑spiral, but now a third pattern overlaid them both: a tiny knot of lines, like a stylized door seen from above, with her own letters woven through it.
[NEW PATH NODE FORMED]
"ANCHOR‑KNOT – Lv.1"
Effect: Allows limited storage of hostile Name‑Fragments in isolated pocket bound to Host. Capacity: 1/3.
Current Contents: [REDACTED HUNGER SUBROUTINE – 4%].
"Four percent?" she wheezed. "That…felt like more."
You diverted the bulk back along the crack, the System said calmly. This fragment chose to cling.
"How generous of it," she muttered.
Status Updated.
Realm: Mortal (Name‑Weaver Initiate)
Sub‑Realm: "Thread‑Sense Stage" (equivalent to early Qi‑Gathering for System functions).
New Attribute Unlocked: [Name‑Weaving Lv.1]
A thin new bar appeared beside her Spirit‑Sea measure, this one a deep, shimmering violet.
It contained a single, tiny sliver of light.
Her first "cultivation level," in her own strange path.
Of course she had gotten it by sticking her hand into a world‑ending crack.
"Bat…shit," she breathed, smiling weakly.
Her laughter dissolved into another coughing fit.
From the nearest house, a dog barked.
A moment later, a light flared—a lamp being lifted.
"Who's there?" a man's voice called.
Panic stabbed her.
If they found her here, alone, by a half‑collapsed shed that smelled of burnt talisman and wrong, how would she explain?
"System—" she began.
Suggestion:
– Pretend to have been knocked down by minor spirit disturbance when going to relieve yourself.
– Weak body excuse is plausible.
"That's…not completely a lie," she croaked.
She staggered to her feet, swaying.
The shed door hung askew, blackened at the edges.
But no gaping maw, no monster.
Only the faint memory of badness, like the aftertaste of rotten meat.
She took two shaky steps toward the path.
Her knees buckled.
She hit the ground again, this time with less drama and more inevitability.
The lamp's light washed over her a heartbeat later.
"Xiao‑lan?" Old Farmer Hu squinted down at her, lamp held high. His thin gray braids swung. "What in the—Girl, why are you here? Your mother will skin you."
"I…" she managed, letting her eyes roll slightly. "Felt…strange. Went…outside. Then…boom."
"Boom?" He sniffed the air. His gaze slid to the shed. "Huh. Smells like…charms. Maybe a loose talisman discharged."
He grumbled. "Been telling them to replace that thing."
He bent with a groan and scooped her up—she really was alarmingly light—and carried her back toward the village.
Her head lolled against his bony shoulder.
Behind him, the System hummed quietly.
EMERGENCY QUEST COMPLETE: "PATCH THE LEAK."
Outcome: Proxy Doorway Neutralized.
Local Casualties: None (This World).
Cross‑World Backlash: 2 minor deaths, 5 injuries (Ayétórò).
Reward Granted:
– Path Node: Anchor‑Knot Lv.1
– Name‑Weaving Lv.1
– Slight increase to Spirit‑Sea Capacity (+5%).
"Wait…'two minor deaths'?" she croaked in her mind. "Who?"
Scanning…
Casualties linked to Ajani's ritual. Names: Saka, Tola.
Relation to Host: Distant acquaintances.
Faces from Ayetoro's market flickered—boys who had once chased her and Kike with sticks, laughing, then had grown too old to play with small children.
Guilt stabbed.
"I couldn't…stop that," she thought raggedly. "I barely stopped this."
Correct, the System said. You are not omnipotent. Adjust expectations.
"Systems are rude," she muttered, echoing Dupe.
Far away, in the abandoned hut, Ajani lay in the wreckage of his own making.
Two of his followers did not rise.
Others bled from ears and nose, stunned by the backlash.
The half‑circle stone at the center of the room had cracked further, a new line splitting its surface. Dark residue smoked faintly from it.
Ajani himself sat propped against the wall, hands blistered, eyes wild.
For a moment, through the pain, he had seen something: a little girl under a foreign sky, hand pressed to a door, laughing like a madman as power tore through her.
The hunger's presence coiled around his thoughts, less gently now.
You failed, it said. I reached, and another hand pushed mine away.
"That…child," Ajani rasped. "Who is she?"
A door, the hunger said. A knot. A splinter in my tongue. Displeasure colored its tone…mixed with something like interest. She will be fun to eat.
Ajani shivered.
But some part of him thrilled.
If a mere child could stand against such power for even a heartbeat, then perhaps this game was not as rigged as he had thought.
"What now?" he asked.
Now, the hunger said, cool again, we refine you.
A trickle of black‑gold light seeped from the cracked stone into his burned hands.
He bucked as it sank into his veins.
[NEW CULTIVATION PATH BESTOWED – "DEVOURING GOSPEL OF BROKEN NAMES"]
Words he did not know yet wrapped around his marrow.
Power. At a price.
Ajani grinned through his pain.
"Fine," he whispered. "If I cannot smash their shrines with stones, I will chew at their foundations from inside."
Back in Spirit‑Root, Ifabola groaned as Farmer Hu shouldered open her house door.
"Mei! Your girl is sleep‑walking again!" he called.
Lin Mei jolted awake, eyes wide.
"What—Xiao‑lan!" She rushed to take her from Hu's arms, hands fluttering. "What were you doing outside? You'll catch cold and die all over again."
"Not…planning to," Ifabola mumbled.
As her mother fussed, tucking blankets around her and scolding between relieved kisses, Ifabola let her eyes drift shut.
The shed was safe.
For now.
Her new Anchor‑Knot hummed softly, a tiny trapped fragment of hunger squirming in its pocket.
Her System quietly updated some unseen ledger.
Name‑Weaving EXP +37.
Threshold for Lv.2: 100.
She smiled faintly.
"Cultivation," she whispered, somewhere between amusement and exhaustion. "Ayétórò version: piss off unspeakable entities until they give you stats."
Sleep finally claimed her.
Outside, the night moved on.
Under Ayetoro's sky, Baba's dreams were full of rivers running upward and his daughter's laughter echoing where it should not.
Under the Nine‑Fold Heavens, in a mountain the villagers had never seen, something ancient stirred as a new, foreign name blinked onto the Script like an unexpected star.
Only one thread among countless.
But threads, woven right, could bind giants.
And Ifabola—Lin Xiao‑lan—had just tied her first knot.