Threadless : A growing novel

The room they were given looked less like a guest chamber and more like a misfiled memory.

Aro stepped through first, eyeing the crooked grandfather clock, the floral armchair perched suspiciously atop a bookshelf, and the massive oil painting of a fox in mid-laughter. A plaque beneath it read:

"Absolutely Not Haunted."

Behind him, Rin stifled a laugh, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. "Well," she murmured, "at least it's... quiet?"

A voice from the corner corrected her. "It won't be at night."

They both turned.

The caretaker—Bram—looked like he hadn't slept since the First Treaty. Thin, pale, eyes like ink stains. "Rooms like this don't sleep. Not when they remember things you've forgotten.

Aro blinked. "That's cryptic even for this place."

Bram shrugged and shuffled off, muttering something about rearranged candlesticks and "the laughing chandelier."

Once alone, Rin paced the room with light steps, pausing beside a faded mosaic in the floor—a circle of broken tiles shaped like a vine-wrapped eye. "Have we been sent to rest," she whispered, "or to remember something we shouldn't?"

Aro gave a dry glance toward the fox painting. "Possibly both."

They didn't have long to wonder.

By sundown, a knock rattled the door open—and in came Jun, arms full of what appeared to be… snack crates and ink-stained scroll tubes.

"Don't worry, I brought reinforcements," he

grinned, dumping everything onto the velvet sofa.

A biscuit tin rolled dramatically off the edge.

"You said you were bringing research," Rin deadpanned.

"I did!" Jun retrieved a parchment. It was titled:

'Evidence of the Threadworm: Myth or Royal Cover-Up?'

Subsections included:

Possible Immortal Scribes

Why Fox Statues are Lying to You

The Gala Punch Was Spiked (Again)

Rin tried not to laugh, failed completely, and sank into the nearest chair. Even Aro's scowl softened.

That's when Mei arrived.

She didn't knock. She didn't greet. She merely stepped inside, placed a silver mechanical owl on the table, and clicked its beak.

The owl whirred, popped open—and immediately exploded in a poof of feathers, scattering coded messages across the room.

"Delivery complete," Mei said.

"...She's terrifying," Jun whispered in awe.

Mei sat down beside the fox painting like it owed her something.

Later that evening, while the others debated the meaning of the term "cognitive echoes" over hot tea and conspiracy pie, Rin grew quiet.

She held her brooch to her palm—it pulsed faintly when near the cracked floor tiles.

Aro noticed. "Is it reacting?"

"I don't know." She knelt, placing her palm to the mosaic.

It was faint—so faint she thought it might be her own heartbeat—but no. Something thrummed beneath the stones.

A name.

No, less than a name. A sound with weight. Something she almost knew.

She jerked her hand back.

Bram's voice drifted from the hallway. "Some places in this wing are older than the crown. Best not to listen too long to the floor, miss. They listen back."

That night, as the hallway candles dimmed and sleep took the others, Aro sat awake in the guest room's far corner.

He couldn't shake the feeling of being watched.

His gaze fell to the leg of his bedframe. Something glinted.

He crouched, fingers tracing the edge of a warped panel—then pried it loose.

Inside was a single page. Torn. A dream journal entry, faded by time and touch.

Only one line was legible:

"She remembered him before his name. That was the mistake."

He turned toward the adjoining room. Rin stirred faintly in sleep, one hand twitching against her pillow, as if threading lines that weren't there.

He closed the hidden panel and sat back, eyes never leaving the door between them.

Outside, the hallway groaned. The fox painting chuckled.