Chapter Twenty-Five: Crossed Lines
The town had adjusted to the Second Circle with surprising speed.
Though some scoffed at its purpose, labeling it a "graveyard of delusions," others visited it like a shrine—leaving behind griefs that had no place in history, only in hearts.
For a time, peace held.
Until someone crossed the line.
---
It was midday when the shriek echoed from the Pillars.
Ellie sprinted from the archive hall, heart pounding.
By the time she reached the First Circle, a small crowd had gathered. Ruth and Elder Price stood at the edge, eyes narrowed.
At the center, the golden stone of the First Circle—untouched by fiction—was smoldering.
A thread pulsed on the ground. Pale silver, tinged now with red.
It had been ripped from the Second Circle and forcibly woven into the first.
"Who did this?" Ellie asked, breathless.
A boy stepped forward.
Barely seventeen. Soot on his hands. His eyes wide and wild.
"It was mine," he whispered. "I just wanted people to know what could've happened."
Ruth's expression hardened. "You crossed sacred ground."
"It was better than the truth!" he cried. "In my thread, I saved my sister. In that truth-ruled Circle, I let her drown!"
The Circle pulsed.
Then shuddered.
The entire web trembled—dozens of threads vibrating in response, like a tuning fork struck out of harmony.
> And then… one of the true tethers snapped.
A loud, discordant crack split the silence.
A blue thread, anchored months ago by Elder Vin, withered to ash.
Gasps erupted around the Circle.
"That was my mother's memory," someone said shakily.
"She remembered the day her daughter survived the sickness," whispered another. "But now… she says she never had a daughter at all."
Ellie's stomach turned cold.
"Pulling a lie into the First Circle rewrote a truth."
---
They met that evening in the Hollow Hall.
Candles flickered along the walls as the council gathered, tense and grim.
"We have to destroy the Second Circle," said Elder Price. "It's too dangerous."
"No," Ellie said firmly. "That boy broke the law. Not the Circle."
Ruth nodded slowly. "But it proves a risk we hadn't accounted for. The threads are not entirely separate. The root system between the Circles… it's shared."
Price stood. "If even one thread from that fiction-pit can infect our truth-weave, then everything we've built is vulnerable. Do you want another collapse like the mines? Another 'accident' made real because someone imagined it?"
Ellie remained still.
Then asked softly, "Do you still remember your wife?"
Price hesitated. "Of course."
"I saw your tether. It flickers sometimes."
He paled.
"I think you moved a thread too. Before we even realized it could happen."
The hall fell silent.
He didn't deny it.
"I couldn't… live with the way it ended," he said hoarsely. "So I rewrote it. Just a little. So she said goodbye."
Ellie closed her eyes.
"You see? It's already begun. The Second Circle didn't create the danger—it revealed it."
---
The next morning, the ground beneath the Circles bloomed with red fungi.
Ruth bent to examine it, touching the fragile caps gently.
"Blood rot," she murmured. "It feeds on contradiction."
The threads that crossed paths pulsed faintly, and beneath them, the spores grew thicker.
It wasn't just truth and fiction anymore.
It was contagion.
---
Ellie stood alone at the edge of the forest that night, lantern in hand.
She whispered a tether into existence. Pale, green-tinged, uncertain.
In the memory, she hadn't let Mei fall.
In the memory, they had both walked away from the ravine, hand in hand, laughing.
She held the thread gently.
Didn't anchor it.
Just stared at it—trembling in the dark.
Yarrow appeared beside her.
"You're not going to join it, are you?"
She jumped slightly. "No. I just… needed to see it."
He nodded.
"Everyone's been tempted. Even me."
"Do you have a tether you haven't told the Circle?"
Yarrow hesitated.
Then nodded.
"In mine… I never left. I never ran away that winter. I stayed, and my brother didn't drown."
Ellie looked at him.
"Would you ever anchor it?"
"No," he said. "But I understand why someone would."
---
The council issued a new decree the next morning:
Thread Wardens would now be stationed at both Circles. Every tether would be verified, watched, and tracked. Movement between Circles became forbidden.
Any thread found crossing lines would be purged.
Still, Ellie wondered how many lies already lay hidden, wrapped in the beauty of seeming truth.
She knew the worst danger wasn't malicious.
It was yearning.
Everyone wanted to be forgiven.
Everyone wanted to be better than they were.
And stories—whether true or false—were how people learned to live with pain.
Now they were also how people rewrote the past.
And the Circle had never been designed for that.
---
As night fell, something flickered deep beneath the roots of the Pillars.
A third glow.
Not blue.
Not green.
Not gold.
It pulsed black.
And it was hungry.