"The world forgets what it cannot bind. But sometimes, a memory learns to speak on its own."
— The Hermit
⸻
The morning hung heavy with dew.
Casamir rose before the birds.
Light crept through the forest—hesitant, reverent. The air smelled of moss and bark and something half-forgotten.
Not silence.
A hush.
Like the Threads were waiting.
The Hermit wasn't in the glade. Not near the Ash-of-Many-Eyes. Not anywhere predictable.
But Casamir had learned by now—the forest didn't leave paths.
It left patterns.
Ferns bent where no foot had passed.
Stones held warmth longer than shadow allowed.
He followed.
Deeper than before. Past trees grown in rings like ancient hands. Past stones too deliberate to be natural—cut not by erosion, but by memory.
Beneath his feet, the moss seemed thicker, older. Each step pressed into soil that yielded not with softness, but with knowing.
Like the ground had already anticipated him.
Here, light didn't filter. It bent—threaded sideways between trunk and bough, refracting through dew-glass into broken rainbows that pulsed as he passed.
There was a hush—not absence, but presence.
Like walking into a temple with no name.
The further he went, the more the world grew deliberate.
As if each branch remembered how it had grown.
As if forgetting was no longer allowed here.
Even the birds were quiet here.
At last, through a spiral-grown grove, he found the Hermit.
The old man stood before a low mound of earth.
Seven weathered stones circled it, each half-buried, each faintly dusted with ash.
"This," the Hermit said, without turning, "is an echo hollow."
Casamir stepped closer.
And the Threads tightened.
Not with fear. With awareness.
Like breath drawn before a name is spoken.
He didn't wait for instruction.
He knelt.
The Hermit nodded once. "Good. You feel it."
A breeze stirred. But the leaves didn't rustle.
Threads shimmered faintly—blue, silver, pale green—threading between root and memory like veins beneath skin.
"Today," the Hermit said, crouching, "you won't follow.
You'll resonate."
Casamir frowned. "Isn't that what I've been doing?"
"No." The Hermit brushed a golden Thread. It curled gently toward him. "You've been hearing. Feeling. That's surface.
Resonance is deeper."
"Resonance," he said, "means becoming something the Thread recognizes.
Not a boy. Not a weaver. Not even a name."
Casamir blinked. "Then what?"
The Hermit's eyes flicked toward him.
"A mirror. A wound. A song.
Whatever it takes."
He gestured to the hollow.
"Try."
⸻
Casamir breathed out.
Reached.
Not with his hands.
With stillness.
A green Thread rose. Tentative. Watching.
He didn't pull. Didn't whisper.
He hummed.
The lullaby. Karnox's last sleep-song.
Not the tune. The feeling.
The Thread brushed his palm.
And the world changed.
Not a vision.
Not an illusion.
A becoming.
The shift was not gentle.
His body stilled, but his spirit moved—drawn down through bark and soil, memory and marrow.
He felt the hollow remember its own birth. A sapling surrounded by mourning. The ache of a name chanted in funeral silence. The first time a child fell asleep against its roots and dreamed of stars.
Emotion bled into him—raw and unshaped. Not grief. Not love.
Something older. Something before names.
His breath caught. His voice followed.
And the name left his lips like something unburied.
He felt roots digging. Rainfall. Bark thickening. A child weeping beneath these branches. A locket buried beneath stone.
A name whispered into the dirt like a promise that someone must remember.
And before he could think—
Casamir spoke it.
Aloud.
The Hermit stiffened.
"You said her name," he said, voice thin. "How?"
Casamir opened his eyes.
"I didn't mean to.
I just… felt it."
The Hermit looked away.
"Again," he said. "Another."
⸻
Casamir reached again.
This time, a red Thread rose.
Not bright. Not new.
Faded. Like old blood.
This memory had no name. Only heat. Only hurt.
It curled against his fingers.
And something answered.
Warmth.
Red-gold shimmer beneath the skin.
Not Threadlight. Not spellcraft.
Not fire.
Something older.
The Hermit was at his side in a blink. His hand clamped around Casamir's wrist.
"Stop."
The Threads snapped back—silent, severed.
Casamir gasped. "What was—?"
"That," the Hermit said, his hand still firm, "was not resonance."
Casamir met his eyes. "Then what?"
The Hermit didn't speak right away.
Only looked at the red-gold lines threading through the boy's skin—like coal veins tracing an ancient map.
"I've only seen that once," he said. "Long ago."
⸻
He stepped away.
Paced the spiral edge.
"There was a girl," he said. "Born in the Ashlands. No name worth charting. But the Threads bent toward her. Not from magic. From remembrance."
"She didn't cast. Didn't call.
But when she wept, the wind remembered how to grieve."
He stopped before the seventh stone.
"She didn't shape the Threads.
She made them remember they'd been broken."
Casamir swallowed.
"What happened to her?"
The Hermit's voice lowered.
"She was brought before the Mirror-Seers.
Judged 'unlawful resonance.'"
"They didn't kill her.
Didn't exile her."
He turned back.
"They forgot her."
Casamir flinched.
"You mean—"
"No," the Hermit said. "Not erased.
Unwoven."
He knelt beside one of the stones.
"I trained her," he whispered. "She could hum storms into memory. I watched her Threads bloom.
And now—" he touched the stone—
"I can't even remember her name."
The Hermit's voice trembled then. Only for a moment.
It was enough to silence the grove.
⸻
The Threads were quiet now.
Still.
But watching.
The Hermit's voice dropped.
"The Empire doesn't fear power. It fears what doesn't fit the Codex.
Every noble weaver is measured.
But you—what you just did?"
He shook his head.
"It doesn't fit."
Casamir lowered his gaze.
"I didn't mean to—"
"I know," the Hermit said. "That's why you must not do it again.
Not in front of others. Not until you choose what it will cost."
A long pause.
"Do you understand?"
Casamir nodded.
And meant it.
But meaning wasn't armor.
He felt it humming beneath his ribs even now—that thread, that answer, still lingering like a dream he hadn't fully woken from.
The Hermit's warning echoed in his bones. But so did the memory.
Not his own.
Not quite.
He couldn't name what stirred in him. Only that it wasn't gone.
It was waiting.
⸻
That night, he sat by a still pool.
No moon.
Only fireflies.
Drifting like stars that had lost their names.
He looked at his reflection. Pale face. Shadowed eyes.
Then slowly raised his hand.
The shimmer came—
Red-gold veins beneath skin. Not light. Not power.
A memory trying to find shape.
It pulsed once, like the ghost of a heartbeat.
Casamir let it linger.
Just long enough to feel the weight of it—like a song trapped in the bones of the world.
He closed his fist.
The glow dimmed.
The Hermit's words haunted him: "You must not do it again."
But he wondered if it was already too late. If the Threads had already marked him as something other than boy, other than wanderer.
If they had begun to remember him the way they once remembered the girl.
Tomorrow, he would learn to disappear.
He would keep his quiet. Hide his hands.
But tonight—
He let it burn.
Quiet.
Deep.
Alive.
And the Threads…
listened.