Threadless : A growing novel

"You weren't forgotten. You were paused. I'm here to press play."

It started with silence.

Not the kind that follows a glitch or error.

The kind that feels intentional — like the world holding its breath.

Rin and Aro stood before a rusted door. It hadn't been there before.

The hallway they were in had no end — until this.

"This isn't in the map," Aro said.

"It wasn't in our version," Rin replied.

The room inside was hollow. Not abandoned — never filled.

Threadlines coiled in midair like roots searching for a memory.

Desks. Walls. Blackboards. All empty. All waiting.

It wasn't a classroom.

It was a drafting room.

Aro reached out.

A quill appeared in his hand — unbidden.

📟 Elsewhere — Observation Deck

Mei slammed her tablet.

"Why aren't you recording?"

The screen flickered, then glitched into a blank page.

Only a blinking cursor remained.

Then a message:

"He is writing now. Please wait."

🧵 Back in the Drafting Room

Rin touched the wall.

It wasn't solid.

It rippled like silk. Behind it, she saw herself, not now — the version she had almost become.

A life that was overwritten.

Aro dropped the quill.

It didn't fall.

It floated upward and split into a thousand tiny symbols — words trying to form.

Then the threadlines in the air began to glow.

First red. Then blue.

Then something else.

White. Alive. Still stitching.

He didn't enter through a door.

He wrote himself into the scene.

A silhouette of moving thread.

No face. No skin.

Only a cloak of loose storylines — each line made of the words characters had forgotten.

A heartbeat.

A pause.

Then he looked at them.

Not as an overseer.

As someone who had been waiting.

🎙️ The Voice

The Threadwriter's voice was a whisper of borrowed phrases.

Every word he spoke sounded like something someone else had said once — but said with understanding this time.

"You were meant to break," he said.

"You didn't. So here I am."

He stepped forward.

"This story... I left it open. They called it a bug.

But I knew one of you would crawl back through it."

He raised a hand.

The room reshaped — not violently, but gently rewritten.

The blackboard behind them now held a scene from Chapter One.

But Rin wasn't in it.

"That's the first version," Aro whispered. "You weren't there yet."

"She was always there," the Threadwriter said. "You just didn't write her in."

🧶 The Reveal

His form settled — still wrapped in unfinished words.

His eyes were hollow like page margins — still waiting.

He looked not just at them, but through them. At what they used to be.

And then, finally, he spoke in a voice that was his.

"You weren't forgotten.

You were paused.

I'm here to press play."

⚠️ The System Reacts

Mei's tablet blinked with new code:

[AUTHORITY OVERRIDE DETECTED]

[UNREGISTERED ENTITY: THREADWRITER]

[STORYLINE LOCKS — FAILING]

Kaen and Elu, back in the chamber, watched as threadlines in their chamber began to mirror the ones in the drafting room.

"He's not accessing the system," Elu whispered.

"He is the system's abandoned outline."

Rin took a step forward.

She remembered something. A word.

Not a name.

A phrase she wrote in a margin, once, as a child.

A word no one ever read.

She whispered it now.

"Threadwriter… your name… it wasn't a title, was it?"

The figure tilted its head — not in pride.

In sorrow.

Then the light dimmed — not fading. Just making room.