SWNOVELXO Chapter 39: Threadless — Interlude I
"This is not your memory. But it remembered you."
A forge.
Not the school's — older. Cracked stone and violet fire. A place that knew love once.
Someone stands at the edge of the flame, holding a thread between gloved fingers.
It shivers like it wants to become something.
"If I cut it, they forget."
"If I leave it, the story won't hold."
The voice belongs to someone silent in the waking world.
But here… here they speak.
A second presence stands behind them. Hooded. Made of ink and old paper — unburned even by fire.
They do not stop the cutter.
But they do whisper:
"If you sever them…
they'll still find each other again.
Just not as gently."
The cutter trembles.
Their hand lowers.
The thread is dropped, uncut — and drifts softly into the flame.
Far away, someone wakes in a dorm bed.
They don't remember the dream.
But they feel it — a soft ache in the ribs, like an echo of something that never happened… but still hurt.
The next morning, on Rin's desk:
A note.
Blank.
Except for a single thread woven into the paper.
Silver.
Uncut.
Tied once.
Never knotted.