The boardroom on the 87th floor smelled of cooling coffee, ozone from overworked servers, and the faint metallic tang of fresh ink on legal documents. Midnight had passed three hours ago. The city beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass was a glittering lattice of light—every window a node, every transaction a thread.
Elias Thorne sat at the head of the long table, sleeves rolled to the elbows, tie discarded somewhere around hour thirty-four. The final signature had dried seventeen minutes earlier. A three-hundred-and-twelve-billion-dollar hostile takeover, executed with surgical precision: leaked patents at dawn, short positions whispered through encrypted channels at noon, boardroom votes bought with favors that would never be called until they were. The target company's stock had cratered at 3:14 a.m. By 3:17 the deal was irrevocable.
He leaned back, exhaled once, and allowed himself the smallest of smiles.
Then the sigil appeared.
It did not burn at first. It simply was—black, spiraling, perfect, etched into the skin of his left wrist as though it had always been there and he had only just noticed. No pain. Only pressure, like the moment before a margin call is delivered by courier.
The room dimmed.
Not the lights. Reality itself folded at the edges.
The glass towers beyond the window warped, stretched, became fog-choked spires of brass and iron. The hum of air-conditioning became the distant groan of steam trams. The scent of toner became coal smoke and wet cobblestones.
Elias looked down at the contract in his hand.
The paper was no longer paper.
It was vellum. Singed at the edges. The text had rearranged itself into copper script he could not yet read, though he understood every implication.
The sigil pulsed once.
Then the pain arrived—clean, surgical, absolute.
It was not fire. It was the sensation of every Thread in his old life being severed at once: bank accounts zeroing, alliances fraying, lovers forgetting his name in the same heartbeat, the entire lattice of his empire collapsing into a single, impossible point. And from that point, a new Thread—cold, colorless, unbreakable—lanced outward and anchored itself to his soul.
He did not scream.
He did not have time.
The boardroom dissolved.
Fog rushed in.
He fell—through glass, through code, through probability—until he landed on his knees on wet cobblestones.
Vellum Street.
No. 17.
The pawn shop door stood ajar, gaslight spilling onto the threshold like spilled gold.
Elias rose slowly. His coat was the same charcoal wool, but the cut had changed—Victorian, high collar, brass buttons. His wrist ached. The sigil was still there, now faintly luminous beneath the cuff.
A brass clockwork owl perched on the cornice above the door tilted its head.
Gears clicked once.
He looked at his palm.
The fountain pen from the boardroom was still clutched between his fingers—only now its nib was obsidian, and it no longer required ink.
A single copper coin rested in the center of his other palm. Edge worn smooth. It had not been there a moment ago.
The fog pressed closer.
Somewhere in the distance a steam whistle sounded—low, mournful, like a creditor clearing his throat.
Elias Thorne—no.
Elias Varn now—stepped across the threshold.
The brass bell above the door chimed once.
Soft.
Final.
Inside, the pawn shop was dark save for a single lamp behind the counter. An older man with ink-stained fingers looked up from polishing an astrolabe. He did not seem surprised.
"Evening, sir," the man said, voice gravel and resignation. "The office is ready upstairs. Ledger's open."
Elias regarded him for a long moment.
Then he spoke—voice low, dry, carrying the faintest trace of amusement at the absurdity of it all.
"Apparently," he murmured, "the margin call has arrived."
He moved toward the narrow staircase at the back.
Each step echoed.
The sigil pulsed twice—slow, patient.
Above him, on the landing, a black silk glove waited on the desk.
It twitched once.
As though it had been expecting him.
The gas lamps along Vellum Street dimmed for half a heartbeat.
Then brightened again.
And the city of Aetherforge exhaled.
Welcome, Weaver.
The weave begins.