The wind had changed.
No longer the dry hush of cursed ash, nor the sterile silence of the cathedral streets. Now it was alive — humming with threads of memory, fragments of prayer, whispers that didn't come from mouths.
The Prayer Ruins reacted like an old wound disturbed.
As the boy and Iri stood beneath the broken archway, the carved stone beneath their feet shifted. Not physically — but spiritually. Dust spiraled upward against gravity. Glyphs long buried shimmered faintly beneath the grime, reacting to their proximity.
Their souls had echoed here before.
Even if neither of them remembered it.
Iri watched him.
She had so many questions she couldn't form into words — only impressions.
Why did she feel calm around him, when she should feel hunted?
Why did his presence tug at something behind her ribs, as though a thread from his soul had been tied to hers before either of them had names?
And why did the ash in the sky stop falling when he arrived?
He moved carefully — examining the ruin, tracing its etched corners with his fingers. No wasted movement. Everything calculated.
Yet even in his precision, there was something heavy in his silence.
"Who are you really?" she finally asked.
He didn't look at her. Not yet.
"I don't have a name," he said. "Not one that wasn't unmade."
"You were erased?"
"No." He paused. "I offered it. In trade."
"For what?"
He turned now — and for a second, the shadows around him pulled closer, clinging to his outline like chains that didn't want to let go.
"For something I couldn't afford to lose."
High above them, the fifth bell's toll faded.
With it, the city began to wake.
Not the people — they remained asleep in their illusions. But the Orders moved. Hunters left their perches. Memory Weavers adjusted their patterns. Scribes turned pages they were forbidden to read.
And one in particular — a woman with a burned face and eyes like frost-glass — stepped out from the undercity catacombs, gripping a jagged relic blade made from the spine of a cursed priest.
She walked alone.
But the city shivered around her.
Her name was Sevan. And once, long ago, she had known the boy who had no name.
He felt her approach long before she arrived.
The System didn't warn him.
His soul did.
She was marked — not by glyphs, but by regret.
[Thread Recognition: Sevan // Former Rank: Class-S Curse Hunter // Status: Exiled]
Warning: Thread Bond Detected. Strength: 91%. Conflict Predicted.
Iri tilted her head, sensing his tension.
"What is it?"
"Someone who remembers too much," he murmured.
Then, without looking, he added:
"She's already here."
Sevan stepped through the ash veil at the edge of the ruins.
She was tall, once-beautiful, now twisted by old wounds and worse decisions. One arm was wrapped in living thread — a punishment from the Order for defying a cleansing rite.
Her voice was dry and sharp as splintered bone.
"You always did have a flair for theatrics."
He didn't answer.
She looked to Iri, studied her with a gaze that cut deeper than any knife.
"This her?"
"Yes," he said simply.
"The Nullborn."
A pause.
"No sigil. No bloodline. No recorded birth thread. But the system recognized her anyway. And you… walked right to her."
He still didn't respond.
Sevan took a slow step forward. "They'll kill her, you know."
"I know."
"You could've stayed hidden. Erased. Let the city rot. But you chose to surface. Chose to bind again."
"I didn't choose the thread," he said quietly. "It chose me."
Sevan snorted. "Still hiding behind system rhetoric."
Now he looked up. And the cold fire in his eyes made even the ash hesitate.
"No," he said. "I'm done hiding."
A pulse rippled through the ruins.
Iri gasped — stumbling as a thousand images pressed against her thoughts all at once: fire, glass, shadows moving wrong, a child screaming without sound, a name she never learned but always knew.
Then — silence.
When she looked up, both of them were watching her.
"What— what is happening to me?" she asked, breath shaking.
Sevan's expression twisted.
"She's waking."
"To what?" Iri demanded.
The boy finally spoke.
"To what she was before they unthreaded her."
The air grew heavier.
From the cracked shrines came echoing laughter — cruel, childlike, distant. The Prayer Ruins were stirring. This was once a place of memory. Now it was a mirror. And mirrors reflect even what should not be seen.
A hand broke from the stone — thin, blackened, covered in ink-veins.
Then another.
Then five.
The boy stepped forward immediately, hand already glowing with curse-sigil light.
[Curse Invocation: Hollow-Wombed Wail: Phase II — Threadlash Marionette]
Effect: Bind and control any curse-born entity under Tier 3 within range. Duration: 00:14. Cooldown: 2 minutes.]
The twisted forms emerging from the shrine froze mid-motion.
He turned his hand clockwise — and they collapsed like puppets cut from their strings.
But it wasn't over.
Sevan hissed. "They're not normal echoes. Something is using them."
And then came the voice.
Not from above. Not from behind.
But from within the stone itself.
"You unbound threads that should have remained buried…"
"Now the Loom unravels."
Iri's eyes widened.
"I know that voice."
The boy's pulse slowed.
He knew it too.
It was the voice of the System.
But twisted. Not the one he bound to.
A counter-thread.
A corrupted version of the System he'd created through his vow.
Something… watching from inside the weave.
[System Alert: Foreign Authority Detected.]
Designation: "The Broken Loom."
Classification: Counter-System Entity // Unbound Law.]
Warning: It can rewrite pre-existing fate conditions.
Current Objective: Collapse your thread.
The stone under Iri cracked — and she screamed as black cords lashed out toward her chest.
Sevan moved first — blade flashing, relic-runes glowing.
The boy followed, hand glowing with tier-2 curse sigils, casting barrier runes mid-step.
Together, they severed the cords just in time.
Iri fell to her knees, gasping.
And the voice laughed.
"Two anchors. One memory. Let's see how long before you break."
Then it faded.
The ruins fell still.
But the sigils beneath their feet remained… glowing.
A countdown had begun.
Sevan wiped her blade and glanced toward him.
"We need to leave. Now."
He looked to Iri.
She was trembling. But alive.
He nodded.
"Agreed. The Loom's watching now."
And for the first time since the valley — since the vow — he felt it again:
A war was coming.
But this time, he wouldn't face it alone.