Spencer's Thread Sight caught the black threads four minutes before the trap.
Three figures positioned among the trees along a narrow section of road — two with swords, one with a crossbow. Their threads pulsed with the moderate black corruption of dedicated Darkfriends, not casual opportunists. These were believers, not bandits.
But they weren't looking for Spencer.
Their attention focused on the road behind him, where a merchant caravan traveled at the leisurely pace of loaded wagons. The Darkfriends were planning a robbery, and their positioning suggested they'd done this before — professional ambush technique, practiced timing, the patient waiting of predators who knew their prey would come to them.
Spencer had four minutes to decide.
Option one: Ride past. Let someone else deal with it. Not my problem.
Option two: Warn the caravan. Get dragged into a fight I don't need.
Option three: Use what I have. Neutralize the threat without direct engagement.
The third option appealed to the systems engineer in him. Why fight when you could debug?
---
Spencer dismounted and led his horse off the road, circling wide through the forest.
Thread Sight mapped the Darkfriends' positions with Sharp-tier precision he hadn't possessed a week ago. The crossbowman perched on a fallen log, bolt loaded, finger near the trigger. The two swordsmen crouched behind a boulder, ready to charge once the crossbow shot signaled the attack.
The caravan was three minutes away. Spencer had time.
He focused on the crossbowman's thread — the corrupted signature that marked a soul sworn to the Shadow. The man's thread was tense with anticipation, his finger hovering near the trigger mechanism, his attention fixed on the bend in the road where the caravan would appear.
Twist. Not the whole thread — just the finger. A micro-redirect. Make the muscle twitch at the wrong moment.
Spencer reached for the Tier 2 power and pulled.
[Weave Intervention: Twist executed. Target: Darkfriend crossbowman — motor thread (trigger finger). Effect: Premature muscle spasm. Duration: Instantaneous. Cost: 11 Stamina.]
The crossbow fired.
The bolt slammed into a tree trunk fifty feet from anyone. The noise echoed through the forest — a sharp crack that shattered the ambush's silence.
Now the fun part.
The caravan guards heard the shot. Spencer could see their threads spike with alarm as they drew weapons and spurred forward to investigate. The two swordsmen behind the boulder broke cover in confusion, looking toward their crossbowman for explanation.
Spencer mounted his horse and rode calmly past the chaos.
---
The caravan guards charged into the ambush site as Spencer cleared the kill zone.
Behind him, shouts and the clash of steel — the guards engaging the confused Darkfriends, the crossbowman fumbling to reload, the swordsmen facing enemies they hadn't expected to be alert.
Spencer kept riding. Not his fight. The caravan guards were competent — their threads showed military training, probably retired soldiers earning honest coin. They'd handle three ambushers who'd lost the element of surprise.
Delegation. Let other people fight when the outcome doesn't require my personal involvement.
The Pattern doesn't need me to win every battle. It needs me to win the right ones.
The guilt of not fighting himself mixed with the relief of not fighting himself, and Spencer let both feelings exist without judgment. He was learning that competence included knowing when to step back.
---
A mile down the road, Spencer's Thread Sight showed him something new.
The trees along the roadside had always carried faint thread-signatures — the Pattern's way of acknowledging that living things existed and connected. But now those signatures had texture.
The bark of an ancient oak showed smooth thread-weave, undisturbed by injury or disease. A younger maple had frayed edges where a lightning strike had damaged its crown years ago. The grass along the road carried the crystalline pattern of morning dew mixed with the slightly muddy signatures of recent rain.
[THREAD SIGHT: Sharp tier achieved. PER 22 exceeds threshold (21). New capability: Thread texture reading. Smooth, frayed, knotted, oily, crystalline signatures now distinguishable. Range: ~50m (expanded from 40m). Note: This represents a fundamental upgrade in Pattern perception quality.]
Spencer pulled his horse to a stop and stared at the world with new eyes.
Everything had depth now. The road wasn't just traveled — its thread showed the knotted patterns of heavy wagon traffic, the smooth stretches where few people walked, the frayed sections where violence had occurred years or decades ago. A milestone ahead carried a crystalline ward-pattern, ancient and faded but still visible.
A merchant traveling the opposite direction passed Spencer with a polite nod. Her thread showed the frayed edges of worry — a difficult journey, maybe, or problems at home. Her horse's thread was smooth and healthy, but the pack mule trailing behind had the knotted signature of recent illness, now recovering.
I can read people's conditions. Not just if they're Darkfriends — their actual state of being.
Sharp Sight turns the Pattern into a diagnostic tool.
Spencer resumed riding, but slower now, taking time to observe everything his enhanced perception could show him. The forest became a tapestry of information: healthy threads, damaged threads, ancient threads, new threads. A deer watching from a thicket had the smooth signature of prey animals who'd survived long enough to be cautious. A crow on a branch had the frayed edges of something that had eaten carrion recently.
This is what the Codex was building toward. Not just seeing threats — understanding the world.
---
That evening, Spencer Thread-Traced Rand's group and found something wrong.
The ta'veren signature wasn't moving. It had been traveling southwest for days, but now it sat stationary — a blazing point of light that should have been in motion but wasn't.
Stationary could mean camp. They're resting, recovering from Falme.
Or stationary could mean crisis. Something stopped them.
Spencer pushed the trace harder, trying to read texture at continental range. It was like squinting at a star — he could see the light but not the details. The trace showed Rand's thread stable but tense, Mat's thread nearby with the Horn's resonance still fading, Perrin's wolf-gold signature burning stronger than ever.
They're together. That's good.
But something's holding them in place.
In the books, the post-Falme period involved recovery, revelations, and the beginning of the journey to Tear. Rand would need time to process the sky-battle, to accept what the Dragon declaration meant. The group would face internal conflicts — Rand pushing away those who cared about him, Mat dealing with the memories the Horn had given him, Perrin wrestling with the wolves.
Or the Portal Stone divergence changed something. Maybe they're facing a crisis I can't predict.
Either way, I need to reach them faster.
Spencer broke camp before dawn and pushed his horse harder. The road south stretched before him, and every mile brought him closer to answers he couldn't get from Thread Tracing alone.
---
The third day on the road brought Spencer to a crossroads village where Thread Memory proved its value.
A Darkfriend had passed through this village recently — Spencer could see the residual corruption in the threads of people who'd interacted with the man. The innkeeper's thread showed the faint stain of having shaken hands with Shadow-sworn flesh. A stable boy's thread carried traces of having cared for a Darkfriend's horse.
Thread Memory let Spencer archive these impressions, building a map of the Darkfriend's passage. The man had come from the north — Tar Valon direction — and headed southwest. Toward Rand.
The Shadow is sending hunters. Of course they are.
Rand declared himself to the world. Every Darkfriend with ambition is racing to find him, either to serve or to collect whatever reward Ba'alzamon is offering.
Spencer added the information to his mental file. The Darkfriend who'd passed through was likely just one of dozens converging on Rand's position. The Dragon Reborn had painted a target on himself visible from a thousand miles away, and every servant of the Shadow with a horse was riding toward it.
Which means I'm not just trying to reach Rand. I'm racing against hunters who want to reach him first.
Good thing I can see them coming.
---
The village inn provided a hot meal and a dry bed — luxuries Spencer had learned to appreciate since Winternight.
He sat in a corner and studied the common room through Sharp-tier Thread Sight. Thirty-two people present. Twenty-nine with white or gray threads — honest folk going about their lives. Two with the frayed threads of recent trouble — refugees from somewhere, probably displaced by the Dragon declaration's aftermath. And one with thread so smooth it was almost suspicious.
Spencer watched the smooth-threaded man for an hour.
He was young — mid-twenties — with the confident bearing of someone who'd received training. His thread showed no corruption, but the unnatural smoothness suggested discipline. Mental discipline. The kind of focus that came from meditation or military training or deliberate emotional control.
Not a Darkfriend. But not normal either.
Could be a Warder candidate. Could be a Seanchan spy. Could be a dozen other things.
Or could just be someone who learned to control themselves better than most.
Spencer filed the observation under "interesting but not immediately threatening" and returned his attention to his meal. Sharp Sight was showing him a world full of details he didn't have time to investigate. The skill of Pattern perception included knowing which threads to follow and which to let pass.
Focus on the mission. Reach Rand. Everything else is secondary.
The smooth-threaded man left the inn without looking at Spencer. Probably just a traveler. Probably nothing.
But Spencer added him to Thread Memory anyway. In a world where the Shadow hunted from every angle, even the innocent-seeming deserved a second look.
---
On the fourth day, Spencer's Thread Trace finally showed Rand's group moving again.
The ta'veren signature resumed its southwest trajectory, joined by the familiar threads of Mat, Perrin, and others Spencer recognized from the long journey. They were on the road to Tear — the Stone, Callandor, the next step in the Dragon's path.
Spencer adjusted his own route to intercept.
Five days to catch them. Maybe six. Depending on how fast they're moving and whether anything else gets in the way.
But I'm going to reach them. I'm going to be there for the Stone of Tear.
And this time, I'll have Sharp Sight and Thread Memory and everything I learned at the Tower.
This time, I'll be ready.
The road south stretched toward the horizon, and Spencer rode toward a destiny he was finally equipped to shape.
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