The first thing Zayn learned about the new world was that it had no patience for men who stared at the sky.
"Keep moving," the stranger grunted, tugging his arm.
Zayn stumbled after him through a narrow, rain-slick alley choked with hanging wires and dripping laundry. The stones here were uneven, patched and repatched with different kinds of mortar, as if the street had been laid down in layers over old bones. Lanterns burned behind coloured glass panes above them, bleeding red and green light onto the wet ground.
His head throbbed. Each step sent a dull ache pulsing behind his eyes. The name he had just spoken—Zayn Morel—still felt like a stone on his tongue.
"Where… is this?" Zayn asked.
The man snorted. "South Weir. You hit your head harder than I thought." He shot Zayn a quick, wary glance. "You sick, Thread-burnt, or just stupid?"
The word Thread snagged on something inside Zayn, like a hook catching cloth. There was an instinctive flinch, a sense that the air should hum with more than chill and fumes. It didn't. Not here.
"Answer," the man said.
"I don't know," Zayn replied.
Not a lie. The old sense of the world—Elric's world—was gone. No faint warmth of minds anchored to his, no soft pressure of a hundred memories waiting to be nudged. Behind his ribs, where a familiar vibration should have been, something new lay coiled and silent, like a beast not yet deciding whether to wake.
They emerged from the alley onto a broader street, and the city opened itself a little.
Buildings leaned inward on both sides, five or six stories tall, their brick faces streaked with old rain and smoke. Iron balconies jutted out, hung with laundry, cages of pigeons, and faded prayer ribbons. Overhead, a web of cables and pipes crisscrossed the street like low clouds. Small carts rattled past, pulled by squat, horned beasts or by harnessed labourers. People moved in dense streams: workers in oil-stained coats, merchants wrapped in layered shawls, children darting between legs with more agility than sense.
Zayn stopped without meaning to. The crowd flowed around him, grumbling.
There were Threads here. He could feel them now that he paid attention—fine, invisible lines running through the people around him, humming softly at the edge of hearing. Each one carried a different note: a faint hunger, a flicker of sound, a trickle of rust. The world was a low, constant chord.
But it was… wrong.
In the empire, Threads had always been wrapped in ritual. Priests with painted cords on their wrists. Loom‑Court officials wearing their Domains openly like titles. Here, no one bowed or crossed themselves when that unseen hum brushed their skin. No temple bells tolled a schedule for sanctioned use.
Instead, he saw:
A woman at a stall snapping her fingers sharply. Her Thread flickered; jars on the table rattled as the smells inside—spice, sugar, bitter herbs—intensified for a heartbeat. People flinched and then crowded closer, coins in hand.
A man on a corner leaning against a lamppost, eyes half‑closed. Those who passed close relaxed their shoulders, their faces smoothing. Guilt and worry slid from them like water. His Thread wrapped around them and then snapped back when they moved on. They left lighter, and he looked more tired.
A boy chasing a brass hoop that refused to fall, rolling in perfect circles as if an invisible hand kept nudging it back upright.
No prayers. No oaths. No Loom‑Court sigils. Just Threads as tools, folded into the grime and commerce of the street.
"This is…" Zayn began, then stopped. The word different felt too small.
"City of Weirs," the stranger said. "South side. Mills that way, clinics that way, river and market that way." He jerked his chin in three directions. "Name's Renn, by the way. You can thank me later, once I know you're not going to vomit on my boots."
Zayn's gaze slid past Renn to the skyline.
Far above the tight streets, higher than the rooftops, a dark tower speared the clouds. It was not smooth like the Loom‑Court spires of memory. This one bristled with metal frameworks and ringed platforms, cables snaking down its sides into the city. Near its top, pale light pulsed, not regular like a beacon, but in slow, irregular beats, as if it were breathing.
Something in Zayn's chest tightened. His Thread—whatever it was now—twitched in answer.
"What is that?" he asked.
Renn followed his gaze. "Central Weir," he said. "Heart of the Threads in this city. Don't stare; it makes the guards nervous."
Thread Wells, Elric's memory supplied, unbidden. Places where the Loom bulges close to the world. In his old life they had been temples and fortresses, carved in stone and gold.
Here, the Weir was half‑temple, half‑machine.
He saw small shapes moving on high walkways, tiny glitches in the light where people crossed in front of whatever shone within the tower. At its base, dirty streets fed into a broad plaza lined with official buildings: tall faces of dark stone, banners hanging limp in the damp air. Even from this distance, he could sense Threads there vibrating stronger, more tightly bound.
"Who controls it?" Zayn asked.
Renn shrugged. "Same as everything that matters in Weirs. The Council, the churches, and whoever they can't prove is on the syndicates' payroll. Come on. You keep gawking like that, the Wardens will think you're casing the place."
He pulled Zayn along again, heading toward a row of low, squat buildings marked with faded blue symbols above the doors. A line of people waited outside, some coughing into cloths, others staring glassily at nothing. A tired woman in a white coat moved along the queue, touching foreheads, sometimes making a note on a slate, sometimes shaking her head.
"What are they?" Zayn asked.
"Clinics," Renn said. "Thread‑burn, Null poisoning, regular sickness. If you're lucky, they patch you up. If you're not, they send you to the research halls to be 'useful'."
Thread‑burn. He tasted the term. In Elric's world, they had called it Fray, Thread Sickness, Loom‑Wound. Here, the word was leaner, colder, like something that could be measured and billed.
As they walked, the neighbourhood shifted. The narrow alleys fell behind; streets grew a little wider, buildings taller and more regular. Signs in careful lettering hung over doorways: Thread Regulation Office, South Weir Wardens' Hall, Licensed Domain Services. Officials in neat coats and stamped badges appeared among the crowd, their Threads bright and tightly controlled.
Zayn slowed as they passed a low stone structure with iron bars over its narrow windows. The air around it felt dead. Not quiet the way a temple at night did, but truly empty. His newly knotted Thread recoiled.
"What is that?" he asked.
Renn grimaced. "Null block. Local one. Heavy core stone under the foundation; cuts everything off inside about ten paces. Holding cells, 'voluntary observation', and treaty rooms. Anywhere they don't want Domains interfering."
Null Zones, Elric's memories whispered. Places where Threads go silent.
He watched as a pair of Wardens led a struggling man toward the door. The man's eyes were wide with panic. His Thread flailed around him like a snared animal, lashing out at the air, at the cobbles, at the Wardens' boots. When they crossed an invisible line near the door, it simply… vanished. One instant there was a vibrating presence; the next, nothing.
The man sagged. Whatever Domain he had wielded was gone to him, at least for now. The Wardens dragged him inside, their faces blank.
"Useful things, Null blocks," Renn said. "Also terrifying. People go in and some don't come out."
Zayn could imagine why. For someone who had always felt the world through a Domain, losing it—losing that hum—would be like going blind and deaf at once.
"What about…" Zayn hesitated. "Places where Threads are stronger?"
Renn snorted. "You really did knock something loose, didn't you?" He jabbed a thumb toward the Weir tower. "That's the big one. There are smaller Weirs under the churches and halls. Any place with money and power has a private tap on the Loom."
They took a side street that ran downhill, the smell changing as they went: less smoke, more water and refuse. The sound of the river grew louder, a constant rush under the noise of the city. Ahead, arches opened onto a broad stone embankment where barges were moored, their hulls low in the murky current.
Along the wall, someone had painted a crude mural in peeling colours: a vast white web stretched over a dark circle, stick figures hanging like knots on its strands. Below, in jagged letters, was a phrase Zayn did not fully understand but somehow felt:
CUT THE THREADS, FIND THE TRUTH.
Renn noticed his stare. "Don't mind that," he said. "Broken Loomers. They think the only way to be free is to snap your own Thread. Or other people's. Half of them end up in clinics, the rest in Null blocks or the river."
"Do they… succeed?" Zayn asked.
Renn shrugged. "Depends what you mean by succeed. Some go quiet. Some go mad. Some vanish. The Seers say you don't break the Loom, it breaks you."
Seers. Another word that meant more than the syllables.
"Tangle‑Seers?" Zayn asked.
This time, Renn's look was sharper. "You do remember something," he said slowly. "Yeah. We've got a few in Weirs. The Council keeps them close, when it can. Syndicates grab the rest if they're not careful."
"And the churches?" Zayn said.
Renn spat into the river. "The churches talk about balance and repentance and the Loom's will. They bless Thread‑bindings one day and sell indulgences for Thread‑abuse the next. If you've got coin or secrets, you can buy almost anything from them."
Zayn said nothing. In Elric's world, the Loom‑Court had played priest and judge at once. Here, faith and law and profit were separate on paper, but braided together in practice.
He looked out over the water.
The river cut the city in two, a dark band of motion under low, clouded light. On the far bank, the buildings rose steeper, cleaner: pale stone facades, high windows, fenced gardens. Above them, on a rocky outcrop, another structure loomed—broader than the Weir, its roof line bristling with spires and statues. Banners hung from its walls in deep green and white, stirring in the damp breeze.
"That?" Zayn asked.
"High Loomist Temple," Renn said. "They claim to speak for the Loom in this city. Their Seers declare which Threads are 'blessed' and which are 'dangerous'. They also run the better clinics. Or the worse ones, depending who you ask."
Zayn watched the banners shift. Somewhere behind those walls, people were being judged not just for what they had done, but for what their Domains might allow them to do. Old and new worlds overlapped for a moment in his mind, like two images failing to align.
In the old empire, the Loom‑Court had cloaked itself in certainty: this Domain for war, that one for penance, another forbidden altogether. This city had no single lawgiver, but the same fear threaded through it, thinner but still present.
"What do they call this place?" Zayn asked. "Not just the city. The world."
Renn blinked at him. "Whole world? What do you mean, what do they call it? It's the Loom's Tapestry. It's always been that."
"Always," Zayn repeated.
The word tasted different now that he had seen the Loom itself, bright and indifferent and endless. Always, to these people, meant as far back as they remembered. For him, it also meant the mountain, the fall, the choice.
Renn studied him. "Look," he said. "You obviously know enough to ask dangerous questions, but not enough to keep your head down. You need food, a bed, and someone to check you for burn. If that Thread of yours is as quiet as it feels, either you're lucky, or you're about to get very unlucky."
"You can feel it?" Zayn asked.
"Can't you?" Renn said. "Everyone with a Thread can, if they pay attention."
Zayn focused inward.
There it was: a coil of cold, tight power, bound around the hollow where Memory had once lived. It did not feel like Elric's Thread—warm, full of other people's lives. This one was heavier, like a knot of dense shadow, humming faintly with the ache of things not there.
If he reached for it, he sensed not images, but blanks. Doors that could be closed. Gaps that could be widened. Names, faces, facts that could be not just altered, but erased, leaving behind a shape of absence where something should have been.
He drew his attention back sharply. The Thread subsided.
"I can feel it," he said.
"Good," Renn replied. "Then maybe you won't walk into a Null block by accident. Come on. There's a boarding house near the lower Weir that doesn't ask questions, as long as you don't light anything on fire or bring Wardens to the door."
They turned away from the river, climbing a set of worn stone steps back toward the beating heart of the city.
As they walked, Zayn watched, listened, and let the world begin to root itself in him.
He noted the way people glanced up when the Weir tower's light pulsed stronger, as if feeling the Loom's breath tighten. He noticed how those with frayed gazes and trembling hands were steered—gently or not—toward clinics and temples. He caught snatches of argument in open doorways about regulated Domains, licenses, and whether the Council would declare certain Threads "too dangerous" this season.
This was a world that had taken the same unseen forces that once wore robes and crowns and wrapped them in permits, contracts, and clinic charts. The Loom had not changed. People's stories about it had.
Zayn Morel walked at Renn's side, carrying within him the ash of a man who had tried to force a different story onto his world and been thrown from a mountain for it.
Under the city's weight of smoke and stone and whispered prayers, his new Domain lay quiet.
For now.