The confrontation within the brass conduit was not a duel of strength, but a clash of fundamental laws. On one side stood Silas Thorne, a boy who had turned a hole in his soul into a furnace; on the other, the Unspun Warden—a living testament to the world's decay. The creature's movements were erratic, its form unravelling in real-time, leaving trails of gray, ash-like threads that seemed to smoke as they touched the metal floor.
"The... Loom... is... hungry," the Unspun wheezed, its voice a discordant symphony of grinding teeth and tearing fabric. It lunged, the bone-needle in its hand blurring with a speed that transcended the physical.
Silas didn't flinch. The "Blue Heaven" refinement was a cold, crystalline fire in his veins, granting him a perception that stripped away the fog of the slums. He saw the world as a complex weave of Aetheric frequencies, and the Unspun was a massive, vibrating knot of static.
He sidestepped the thrust, the bone-needle whistling past his ribs, leaving a trail of entropic frost on his "Infiltrator's Garment." Silas retaliated with a reverse-cut of his obsidian dagger. The blade, now shot through with cerulean and violet energy, sliced through the creature's tattered shoulder.
There was no blood. Instead, a geyser of gray ash erupted from the wound, accompanied by a sound like a thousand dry leaves being crushed.
Don't just cut the meat, Silas, Kaelen's voice suggested, his tactical acumen now fully integrated into Silas's instincts. Find the Anchor. Every Unspun is held together by a central thread of corrupted Aether. Sever that, and the whole garment falls apart.
The chest! Drax's voice added, a visceral roar of certainty. Look at the way it guards its sternum. The bone-needle is just a distraction. The heart is the needle's eye.
Silas narrowed his eyes, his "Void-Adept" vision piercing the creature's gray miasma. He saw it—a single, vibrating thread of obsidian-dark Aether pulsing deep within the Unspun's ribcage. It was the source of its purposeful movement, the link to the "Great Unweaving."
The Unspun realized its vulnerability was exposed. It let out a shriek that rattled the brass walls of the conduit, and its form expanded. The gray threads unspooled from its body, forming a literal web of entropy that sought to entangle Silas. Each thread was a hungry vacuum, ready to drain the vitality from anything it touched.
Silas felt the pressure rising. The air in the conduit became thin, cold, and heavy. He could feel the "Blue Heaven" in his veins reacting to the entropy, the two forces grinding against each other like tectonic plates.
"I am the one who stitches," Silas declared, his double-toned voice echoing with a regal authority.
He didn't retreat. He triggered the "Refined Void."
Instead of drawing in Aether, he projected the dark filaments of his "Stitching" in a radial burst. The spectral threads collided with the Unspun's web, and for a moment, the conduit was filled with a blinding, chaotic light. The "lack" met the "decay." The dark filaments didn't just break the entropy; they consumed it, feeding the hunger of Silas's Void-Soul.
The Unspun staggered, its form flickering. It was losing its connection to the source.
Silas closed the distance in a single, fluid stride. He ignored the bone-needle as it grazed his arm, the pain a distant, insignificant thing. He drove his right hand, the palm glowing with a dark, cerulean intensity, directly into the creature's chest.
"Unspool," Silas whispered.
The dark filaments burrowed into the Unspun's ribcage, wrapping around the Anchor-thread. Silas felt the creature's history—not its human life, but its centuries of existence as a scavenger of the void. He felt the cold, indifferent hunger of the "Great Unweaving."
He didn't just sever the thread; he harvested it.
The Unspun exploded into a cloud of gray ash, the bone-needle clattering to the floor. The entity was gone, returned to the nothingness from which it came. But Silas was left with something new—a sliver of entropic power, a thread of "Void-Gray" that now wound itself around his heart.
He stood in the silence of the conduit, gasping for air. The victory was absolute, but the cost was visible. His "Infiltrator's Garment" was scorched, and his stitching scars now pulsed with a tri-color light: cerulean, violet, and gray.
A Tier-Three Unspun Warden, Kaelen's voice mused, tinged with a new level of respect. Lord Valerius is more desperate than I thought if he's calling upon the entropy-spawn to do his dirty work.
We need to move, kid, Drax warned. The death of a Warden leaves a scent. The others will be coming. And they won't send a scout next time.
Silas picked up the bone-needle. It was warm to the touch, vibrating with a residual, dark energy. He tucked it into his belt, alongside the obsidian daggers. He was no longer just a boy from the slums; he was a walking arsenal of forbidden powers.
He looked toward the exit of the conduit. The path to the High Spires was no longer a dream; it was a tactical necessity. He needed answers, and he needed the man who had tried to turn him into an engine.
The first stitch of the war was over. Now, it was time to sew the shroud.