Stone cracked under impossible weight.
The thing's fingers — each one longer than Tibbin's body — dug into the cliff face like it was soft clay. Veins of molten gold pulsed through their skin, casting sickly light across the group.
Koro was already on his feet, bow drawn, string humming with tension. "No one move," he growled. "If you make it feel cornered, it will—"
The creature's voice folded over his words, deep and without air.
"Threadbearer. Do not run."
Lenara stepped back until her heel met the cliff wall. "What in all the Chambers is a threadbearer?" Her voice was low, sharp — a deliberate mask over the tremor beneath.
Aaren didn't answer. He couldn't. The words were still sinking into his skull like hooks, dredging up something he didn't know he had.
One of you carries the forbidden thread…
He felt Levitine's weight shift in his palm, not physically — but in thought.
We can't fight this. Not here.
"Then what—" Aaren began, but the creature surged again. The cliff shook. A fissure split beneath their feet.
Withered Flame's hand shot out, gripping Aaren's collar. "We move. Now."
"But—Tibbin!" Lenara barked.
"I am moving!" Tibbin squeaked, clutching the fork he'd retrieved like it could shield him from cosmic horrors.
---
They bolted, sprinting along the ridge as shards of rock rained down from the thing's climb. Every time one of its hands found purchase, the air thickened — the mist recoiling and collapsing around them, as if space itself bent to make room.
Aaren risked a glance back.
That eye was still locked on him.
Not them.
Him.
---
"Down there!" Koro pointed to a jagged slope of rubble leading toward a darker patch of fog.
Lenara swore. "We're running into more fog?"
"Better fog than that thing's reach," Withered Flame shot back.
They slid down the slope in a storm of gravel and grit. The ground here was unstable, every step sinking slightly as if the earth were breathing. The mist muffled sound, but the scrape of those claws against stone still cut through, closer with every second.
Tibbin stumbled, and Aaren caught him by the arm. "Don't stop—"
"I'm not stopping! My legs are stopping!" Tibbin yelped.
---
The air shifted.
Levitine's voice pressed into Aaren's mind again, quieter now.
There's a way to lose it. But you won't like it.
"What is it?" Aaren hissed.
Before the sword could answer, the creature's voice filled him again — stronger, closer:
"You cannot sever what you carry. You are the thread."
A cold realization pooled in Aaren's stomach.
It wasn't after Levitine.
It was after him.
---
They broke into a hollow — a depression in the ridge ringed by black, vine-choked stone. The air here was different, sharp with the scent of metal.
"This way," Koro said, pulling aside the vines to reveal a narrow cleft in the rock. "It won't fit through here."
The first claw slammed down just meters away, sending cracks spiderwebbing through the ground. That eye, impossibly huge now, peered over the rim of the hollow.
"Run," Lenara whispered.
They didn't have to be told twice.
One by one, they dove into the cleft — darkness swallowing them whole as the creature's hand scraped the opening, unable to force its bulk inside.
The last thing Aaren heard before the shadows took them was that voice, soft and certain:
"You cannot hide from what you were made