Threadless : A growing novel

"In places like this, time doesn't pass.

It threads."

The forgemaster handed Aro a pair of mirror-laced gloves.

"They'll protect your mind," she said. "Mostly."

The forge in front of her glowed faintly, a quiet whirlpool of golden thread, moving as if stirred by breath.

Aro stepped forward.

A spooled thread hovered above the light — silvery white, nearly weightless.

"Whose is this?" she asked.

The forgemaster didn't answer.

Instead, she said:

"Breathe onto it. Memory responds to intent."

So Aro did.

She leaned in. Exhaled softly.

The thread vibrated — once.

Then unfurled like it had been waiting to be seen.

What appeared wasn't just image. It was feeling.

A hallway she didn't remember walking.

A boy standing before a wall of ink.

A sentence being written as if whispered into stone:

"The thread isn't a path.

It's a wound that never closed."

She staggered back.

"That wasn't mine," she whispered.

The forgemaster turned toward her, slowly now —not startled. Not surprised.

"Not yet," she said.

"But it's being shared."

Elsewhere, Rin stood in the mine.

The basin of ink began to ripple.

He didn't speak.

But in his chest, he felt something pull — like a thread being forged at a distance.

Above them both, in the logging void, the developers broke protocol.

One whispered:

"They're syncing."

Another added:

"The boundary between roles has thinned."

Then, quietly — a warning:

"If they remember each other's pasts,

they may begin to write their own."

The forgemaster turned away, tending to another spool.

But Aro stayed still, staring at the thread she'd breathed life into.

It shimmered again — as if it wanted to be seen.

Then, without her touching it, the thread began to replay a moment:

A boy — younger, quieter, but unmistakably Rin — standing at a windowsill during sunset.

He's holding a cracked marble. He's crying, but not from pain.

From knowing something is missing, and no one else can remember what.

Aro watches from across the field.

But it isn't Aro.

It's her eyes, yes.

But someone else's name stitched into the

school uniform.

The memory ends.

The forge dims.

And in her hand, the thread has reshaped — a knot now forming at its center, like a question tying itself shut.