Moiraine's weave was silver light.
Spencer watched through Thread Sight as she knelt beside Tam, her hands hovering over the wound while threads of the One Power spun from her fingers into patterns too complex for him to follow. Silver-white filaments wrapped around Tam's fate-thread, isolating the black poison, pulling it back from the places where it had spread.
It was beautiful. It was terrifying. And it was working.
"He'll live," Moiraine announced after an eternity that was probably only minutes. "The poison had not spread too far. He'll need rest, but the danger has passed."
Rand slumped against the wall, relief written across every line of his body. "Thank the Light."
Spencer stayed in his corner and watched the Aes Sedai move to the next patient. Then the next. Each Healing drained something from her — he could see it through Thread Sight, the way her silver-blue thread dimmed slightly with every weave — but she kept working, methodical and relentless.
She'll save dozens tonight. Maybe more.
But she can't save everyone.
---
The girl's name was Eldrin Cauthon.
She was Mat's youngest sister — seven years old, brown-haired, with a gap-toothed smile that Spencer had seen briefly when he'd banged on the Cauthon door earlier that night. A Trolloc had gotten to her during the evacuation, its claws raking across her chest before Mistress Cauthon could drag her to safety.
The wound was too deep. Too ragged. Nynaeve had done what she could, but the girl was fading. Spencer could see it through Thread Sight: her white thread thinning, fraying at the edges, the light that had been bright and strong now guttering like a candle in the wind.
Moiraine was occupied. Three critical cases in front of her, each one demanding her full attention. By the time she reached Eldrin, it would be too late.
I could save her.
The thought came unbidden, rising from somewhere Spencer didn't want to examine too closely. The Codex pulsed with possibility. Thread Sight showed him exactly where Eldrin's fate-line was weakest, exactly how it was unraveling.
If I could just... strengthen it. Hold it together until Moiraine gets here.
The Codex can manipulate threads. That's what it's for. That's what the System Overview said.
I could save her.
---
He didn't remember deciding to move.
One moment he was standing in his corner, watching the chaos of the inn from a safe distance. The next he was kneeling beside Eldrin's still form, his hand hovering over her chest, his mind reaching for something he barely understood.
Thread Sight active. Focus on her thread. Find the weak points.
He could see it clearly now — the places where the thread had torn, where the weave was coming undone. It wasn't complicated, not really. Just a matter of willing the torn edges back together. Of pouring intention into the Pattern and asking it to hold.
Please. Please let this work.
Spencer reached.
---
The Codex responded.
It wasn't like channeling — Spencer had nothing to channel, no spark, no connection to the Source. But the Codex was something else. A different kind of power, operating on a different layer of reality.
He felt the Pattern resist. Felt it push back against his attempt to edit, to change, to manipulate. And he pushed harder, because the girl was dying, because he could see her thread about to snap, because he couldn't just stand there and watch another person die when he had the power to help.
Hold together. Please. HOLD.
Eldrin's thread didn't strengthen.
It shredded.
---
The sensation was indescribable.
One moment Spencer was holding the thread in his mind, willing it to stability. The next moment the thread exploded — that was the only word for it — into a thousand fraying filaments that dissolved into the Pattern's background noise.
The girl gasped once.
Then she was gone.
[WEAVE INTERVENTION FAILED]
The Codex's impression burned through Spencer's awareness like acid through tissue.
[Inexperienced manipulation detected. Thread damage: catastrophic. Subject thread terminated.]
[EXP PENALTY: -150 (failed intervention, innocent casualty)]
[WARNING: Weave Intervention Tier 1 requires Level 5 minimum. Current Level: 1. Success probability at current level: 2.3%]
Spencer's hands were shaking. He couldn't stop them. He was still kneeling beside Eldrin's body, but the body wasn't Eldrin anymore — it was just meat and bone, empty of everything that had made it a person.
I killed her.
I was trying to save her and I killed her.
She would have lived two more minutes. Two minutes for Moiraine to reach her. And I—
"Aldan?" Someone was talking to him. He couldn't tell who. "Aldan, are you alright?"
Spencer didn't answer. He couldn't form words. The Codex kept feeding him information — clinical, precise, completely useless — and he kept staring at the body of the girl he'd murdered with good intentions.
[Thread Analysis complete. Subject thread pre-intervention survival probability: 12.7%. Post-intervention survival probability: 0%.]
Twelve percent.
She had a twelve percent chance. Not zero. Twelve.
And I took that away.
---
The night continued without him.
Spencer found a wall. Sat against it. Stared at nothing. Villagers moved past him, wounded and bleeding and alive, and he couldn't look at any of them. Couldn't risk seeing their threads. Couldn't risk the temptation to help.
Because helping meant killing. At his level, with his skills, helping meant making things worse.
The Codex isn't a gift. It's a trap.
Power without control. Knowledge without wisdom. The ability to see exactly how badly you're about to fuck up and the inability to stop yourself.
The night greyed toward dawn. The Trollocs retreated — beaten back by the villagers' desperate resistance, by Lan's blade work, by Moiraine's fire. The dead were counted. Sixteen villagers, fewer than Spencer had expected, more than he could bear.
Seventeen, if you counted the girl who would have lived another two minutes.
---
Rand found him as the sun came up.
The Dragon Reborn — though he didn't know it yet, wouldn't know it for chapte rs more — sat down beside Spencer without asking permission. He had a cup of water in his hand, which he pressed into Spencer's grip.
"Drink."
Spencer drank. The water tasted like nothing.
"My father's going to be alright," Rand said. "The Aes Sedai — Moiraine — she said he'll recover fully. Thanks to you."
"To me?"
"You got him to the inn. Kept him moving when the poison was..." Rand trailed off, something dark crossing his face. "He would have died out there if you hadn't found him."
I saved Tam al'Thor. I helped save a dozen other people with my warnings.
And I killed a seven-year-old girl because I thought I could do more.
"I'm glad," Spencer heard himself say. The words sounded hollow, coming from somewhere far away. "He's a good man."
"He is." Rand was quiet for a moment. "That woman — the Aes Sedai — she says we need to leave. Me and Mat and Perrin. She says the Trollocs were here for us. For us specifically."
Yes. I know. I've always known.
"Do you believe her?"
Rand's expression was complicated — fear and denial and the beginning of acceptance all tangled together. "I don't know what I believe. But after tonight..." He shook his head. "Something's wrong. Something's been wrong for a while. And I think she's the only one who might have answers."
Spencer nodded slowly. The motion sent pain lancing through his skull — Thread Sight was still active, still draining him, and his Codex Stamina was hovering somewhere near empty.
I need to go with them. I need to join Moiraine's group. I have information she needs — about Fain, about the corruption, about what's coming.
But I can't help. Not really. Not without killing more people.
"You should go with her," Spencer said. "If she's right — if the Trollocs really were here for you — staying puts everyone you love in danger."
Rand flinched. It was a small thing, barely visible, but Spencer's Thread Sight caught the way his golden thread rippled with the impact.
"I know," Rand whispered. "Light help me, I know."
---
The morning brought work.
Bodies to count. Fires to extinguish. Wounded to tend. Spencer threw himself into the labor, using his exhausted body as a shield against his racing thoughts. He carried water and bandages, helped rebuild a collapsed wall, sat with a widow while she wept for her husband.
The Codex tracked everything. Level 2 now — the Winternight milestone had pushed him over the threshold, even with the penalty from his failed intervention. New abilities were unlocking in the background: Skill Archive (dormant until Level 3), Weave Intervention Tier 1 (theoretically accessible, practically suicide).
A system that rewards me for being present at disasters.
What a wonderful gift.
Moiraine moved through the village like a force of nature, Healing what could be Healed, asking questions that seemed innocent but weren't. Spencer watched her thread — silver-blue brilliance, controlled and purposeful — and felt her attention brush past him more than once.
She's noticed something. The way I knew which direction the Trollocs were coming from. The way I got Tam to the inn.
She's going to have questions.
And Spencer was going to need answers. Believable ones. Ones that didn't involve transmigration or cosmic systems or the ability to see fate-threads with his eyes.
"Impressions." That's what I told her I had. A Talent for sensing wrongness.
I need to make that story stick. I need to make myself useful enough that she takes me along, but not so strange that she decides I'm a threat.
I need to play the game.
---
Natti Cauthon's wailing echoed through the inn.
Spencer heard it from outside, where he'd been helping clear debris from the road. The sound was raw, animal, a mother's grief stripped of all pretense and dignity. He knew what it meant without having to ask.
They've found Eldrin's body. They've found the girl I killed.
He didn't go inside. Couldn't. The wound was too fresh, the guilt too sharp. Instead, he leaned against the inn's outer wall and stared at the scorched village green, counting the threads of people walking past.
Sixteen dead. Seventeen, counting mine.
Fewer than canon. My warnings helped. The numbers say I did more good than harm.
But numbers don't know Eldrin's name. Numbers don't hear her mother screaming.
The Codex offered a system notification:
[Milestone Event: Winternight (Modified). Casualties reduced 31% from projected baseline. EXP awarded: +200]
Spencer closed his eyes.
You're rewarding me. For a night where I killed a child.
What kind of system ARE you?
The Codex didn't answer. It never answered direct questions. It just sat in the back of his mind, cataloging and calculating, waiting for him to use it again.
---
Moiraine found him at midday.
She approached from the east, her blue cloak still dusty from the road, her ageless face revealing nothing. Lan walked three steps behind her, and Spencer's Thread Sight showed the Warder bond between them — a thick golden cord connecting their fate-threads, vibrating with shared awareness.
"You are Aldan Maeren." It wasn't a question. "The carpenter who warned several families before the attack."
"Yes."
"And who directed Tam al'Thor to avoid flanking Trollocs he could not have seen."
Spencer met her eyes. They were dark, deep, and entirely too perceptive. "I had impressions. Feelings about where the danger was coming from."
"Impressions." Moiraine's tone was neutral, but something shifted in her thread — interest, calculation, the careful attention of a woman who'd spent twenty years searching for signs and wonders.
"Yes. I don't know how else to explain it. Sometimes I just... know things. Feel things. The Wisdom says it might be a Talent, but she's never seen one quite like it."
"Nor have I." Moiraine studied him for a long moment. "These impressions — do they tell you anything about the peddler? Padan Fain?"
Yes. They tell me he's wrapped in Shadow corruption so thick it makes my teeth ache. They tell me he's been tracking the ta'veren for the Dark One. They tell me he's more dangerous than every Trolloc that attacked this village combined.
"He's wrong," Spencer said carefully. "Something about him is deeply, fundamentally wrong. Like a sickness wearing a human face."
Moiraine's thread flickered with something that might have been surprise. "That is... a very specific impression."
"I don't know what he is. I just know what he feels like." Spencer kept his voice steady, his expression open. "If I had to guess, I'd say the Shadow has touched him. But I'm a carpenter, Lady. I don't know anything about Darkfriends or Shadow corruption."
Lie. Lie lie lie.
But Moiraine couldn't know that. The Three Oaths bound her to speak truth, not to detect it.
"I will look into the peddler," she said after a long pause. "Your impressions may prove valuable. Tell me — do you sense anything from the three young men? Rand, Matrim, Perrin?"
Don't overplay it. Don't give too much.
"They feel... important. Like they matter more than other people." Spencer shrugged, the gesture of a man who didn't understand his own abilities. "I can't explain it better than that."
Moiraine nodded slowly. "Thank you, Aldan. You've been helpful."
She turned to go, then paused.
"We leave tomorrow," she said without looking back. "For Tar Valon. If your Talent is what I suspect, the Aes Sedai might wish to study it."
An invitation. Or close enough to one.
"I'll think about it," Spencer said.
Moiraine walked away. Lan followed, his cold gray eyes lingering on Spencer for just a moment too long.
---
That night, Spencer sat alone in Aldan's workshop.
The maps were still spread across the bench — evacuation routes and attack vectors and all the careful planning that had saved some lives and failed to save others. He should burn them. They were evidence, in a way. Proof that he'd known things he shouldn't have known.
But he couldn't make himself do it.
Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow Moiraine takes the ta'veren and runs for Tar Valon. Tomorrow the real story begins.
And I'll be going with them. Because I have information she needs, and because staying here means watching Emond's Field rebuild while I know that somewhere out there, the Shadow is moving.
I'll go. I'll help where I can. And I'll never forget—
Natti Cauthon's wailing echoed in his memory. Eldrin's thread shredding in his grip.
I'll never forget what this power costs.
The Codex hummed in the back of his mind, patient and merciless and waiting.
Spencer looked down at his carpenter's hands — Aldan's hands, hands that had saved lives and taken one — and made himself a promise.
I'll learn. I'll get strong enough to help without destroying. And until then—
Until then, I watch. I gather information. I play the long game.
Because in a world where the Shadow is rising and the Dragon is about to go mad, a man who can see the Pattern might be the only advantage the Light has.
Somewhere in the village, Moiraine was making plans. Somewhere in the darkness, Padan Fain was slipping away, his Shadow-corrupted thread trailing behind him like a disease.
And in a carpenter's workshop, a dead man from another world began to build a strategy for survival.
The game was just beginning.
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