Threadless : A growing novel

"Some secrets aren't hidden. They're buried in patterns no one dares finish."

The lower levels of the academy weren't part of the student loop.

Even Elu needed special access to descend this far — and they didn't remember ever requesting it. The door had opened when they stood still long enough.

Kaen followed, gloves off, fists wrapped in ember-thread. Her expression was flat, but her pulse was sharp and rising.

"Why is it warm?" she whispered.

"We're underground."

Elu didn't answer. They were listening — not with ears, but with thread sense. The walls down here weren't silent.

They were breathing.

They entered a chamber carved from old framework — not built but grown through failed threadwork. Runes along the edges still pulsed faintly, each one bearing a name that had been crossed out in two inks.

At the center was a sealed column. Not a door. Not a vault.

A wound.

Threaded rings spiraled around it — jagged, hand-drawn, corrupted halfway.

Kaen stepped closer, raising her flame to the

symbols.

"I've seen this pattern before," she muttered. "In a rejection notice.

The one I got... before I was ever admitted."

Elu finally spoke.

"That's because this is the original campus core. Before the Developers standardized it."

They traced a sigil with a gloved finger. It twitched back.

"This was the original memory engine.

Where students like you — and me — were first written in."

Kaen stepped back.

"Are we even supposed to be real?"

"Depends on who you ask," Elu said.

"Or who you replace."

Back above ground—

Rin stepped between Jun and the static-cloaked figure wearing his smile.

It tilted its head.

Mirrored him.

Perfectly.

Wrongly.

"Who are you?" Rin asked.

The thing that looked like Jun smiled wider.

Then it glitched forward — one step too close — and whispered into Aro's ear:

"He's the version that got chosen."