The oil lamp in Meridian Pavilion flickered as Lin Wan tucked the thread-eater fragment into a hidden drawer beneath her worktable—its hum now faint, as if subdued by the layers of ash-gray silk she'd wrapped around it. Shen Yan stood by the window, his frost-threaded coat catching the last glimmers of dusk, watching her with eyes that seemed to see through the pavilion's carved wooden panels.
"You're hiding something," he said, his voice low. "Not just the fragment—something about your mother's embroidery."
Lin Wan closed the drawer, her silver prosthetic hand brushing the edge of a jar filled with moon-white silk. "Everyone has secrets. You still haven't told me why you can recognize the thread-eater pattern. Or how you know about my mother."
Before Shen Yan could reply, a slow, deliberate knock echoed at the door—three taps, then a pause, then two more. It was a rhythm Lin Wan hadn't heard before, but there was something familiar in the weight of it, as if the knocker carried a memory tied to the pavilion itself.
She glanced at Shen Yan, who nodded slightly—his hand drifting to the pocket of his coat, where the faint glint of a bamboo needle peeked out. "Let them in."
The door creaked open, and an elderly woman stepped inside. Her hair was tied back in a neat bun, streaked with silver, and she wore a plain indigo cotton robe patched at the elbows. In her hands, she held a small, weathered wooden box, its surface carved with tiny peony motifs—exactly the same style as the boxes her mother used to store finished embroidery pieces.
Lin Wan's breath hitched. "You… you knew my mother?"
The old woman smiled, her eyes crinkling at the corners. "We were apprentices together, at the old Su Embroidery Workshop. I'm Madame Wei." She set the wooden box on the worktable, her fingers lingering on the peony carvings. "Your mother made this box for me, fifty years ago. She said the peonies would 'keep memories safe from the wind.'"
Shen Yan stepped closer, his gaze fixed on the box. "What memory are you here to retrieve, Madame Wei?"
Madame Wei's smile faded. She opened the box, revealing a tattered piece of silk—pale silver, like moonlight on water, stitched with half of a peony bloom. The other half was missing, as if torn away roughly. "It's the memory of the day your mother and I finished our masterwork: a screen embroidered with a hundred peonies, each representing a memory shared by the workshop's apprentices. But when the workshop closed, the screen was split up. I lost my half of the final peony—and the memory of what your mother whispered to me as we stitched it."
Lin Wan's fingers brushed the silver silk. It hummed softly, a warm, gentle vibration unlike the sharp hum of the thread-eater fragment. This was "moonlight silk," her mother's signature—dyed with dew collected at midnight under a full moon, used only for memories of deep, unshakable friendship.
"The cost," Lin Wan said, her voice steady, "is your happiest memory from the workshop—something you're willing to trade for the one you lost."
Madame Wei's eyes filled with tears. "I'll trade the memory of the day we graduated. Your mother gave me a spool of moonlight silk, and we promised to 'stitch memories for the world' together. It was a beautiful day, but… I need to hear her whisper again. I'm dying, you see. And that whisper is the only thing I want to take with me."
Lin Wan nodded. She reached for a spool of moonlight silk from her shelf—her last one, saved from the fire—and threaded it through her bamboo needle. But as she prepared to prick Madame Wei's finger, Shen Yan's hand closed over hers.
"Wait," he said. His voice was urgent, his eyes on the torn edge of the silk fragment. "That tear isn't accidental. It's cut with a thread-cutter—one used by the same people who sent the thread-eater pattern. Your mother's masterwork wasn't just embroidery, Lin Wan. It was a map."
"A map?" Lin Wan frowned.
Madame Wei nodded, her hands trembling. "Your mother told me once, 'The hundred peonies hold the key to something forbidden.' She never said what, but she warned me to hide my fragment if the workshop ever closed. Now I realize—she was talking about the thread-eater. The screen was a way to track where the forbidden patterns were being used."
Shen Yan pulled a small piece of silk from his coat—another fragment, this one black, stitched with a quarter of a peony. "I found this in the ruins of a village destroyed by memory corruption. It's part of your mother's screen."
Lin Wan stared at the two fragments: the silver one from Madame Wei, the black one from Shen Yan. Together, they formed three-quarters of a peony. The missing quarter, she realized, must be in the possession of the people who set fire to her family's studio.
"We need to find the last fragment," Shen Yan said, his eyes locking with hers. "It's the only way to stop them from using the thread-eater to unravel all memories of the forbidden embroidery."
Lin Wan's prosthetic hand tightened around the bamboo needle. For three years, she'd avoided confronting the truth about her mother's death. But now, with Madame Wei's memory hanging in the balance and the thread-eater's threat growing, she had no choice.
She pricked Madame Wei's finger, and a drop of blood seeped into the silver silk. The fragment glowed, and Lin Wan closed her eyes, weaving the memory into the thread: the smell of jasmine in the workshop, the soft clink of spools, her mother's voice whispering, "The key is in the root of the peony."
When the final stitch settled, Madame Wei touched the silk, and a smile spread across her face. "I hear her," she whispered. "Thank you."
She left, the wooden box tucked under her arm. Shen Yan turned to Lin Wan, his coat's threads humming softly.
"The root of the peony," he said. "That's a reference to the Su Embroidery Workshop's old garden—there was a peony bush planted by the entrance. Your mother must have hidden something there."
Lin Wan nodded. She knew that garden—she'd played there as a child, chasing fireflies among the peony bushes. "We need to go there. Tonight."
Shen Yan's lips curved into a faint smile—the first genuine one she'd seen from him. "I thought you'd never ask."
As they prepared to leave, Lin Wan glanced at the hidden drawer. The thread-eater fragment hummed once more, a warning. But this time, she didn't feel fear—only a quiet determination. She was going to find the truth about her mother, stop the forbidden embroidery, and get back the memory she'd traded.
And she wasn't going to do it alone.