Threadless : A growing novel

[Thread 1: Rin Moves]

Rin stepped down from the courtyard, her soles brushing the moss-covered stone — and the world beneath it breathed, like an old dream stirred awake.

She didn't know where she was going, only that her body was moving ahead of her mind.

And behind her, the courtyard began to fade — not vanish, but retreat, like it knew it was no longer needed.

Wind grazed her cheek like the fingers of a memory.

The sky above dimmed slightly, as if aware that light would be too much right now.

"I shouldn't be alone anymore, should I?"

She passed a hallway of doorless frames.

Each one showed flickers — moments that hadn't happened yet.

In one, Aro looked over his shoulder. In another, Iris tied a ribbon back into Selene's hair.

And in the last, Alin faced her directly, but her face kept changing.

Rin stopped.

"Is this… what I looked like to you?" she whispered.

The door dissolved.

Beneath her feet, the stone lit up briefly with the symbol from the beginning — not a name, not a rune. A threadmark.

One only weavers could see.

You're approaching a crossing, it read.

She kept walking.

And this time, she wasn't afraid.

[Thread 2: Protocol 0-Null-Thread]

Deep within the system archive — beneath recursion, beneath render, beneath memory — a dormant container unlocked with a click no one heard.

The Developers had sealed it before they agreed to forget.

Because it didn't hold a person.

It held the memory of remembering someone who no longer exists.

And now… that memory was stirring.

[RECOGNITION FLAG: False identity detected in true pattern]

Response: reactivate failed soul-mirror

Reason: Subject Rin has begun path toward absolute recall.

The screen blinked once.

Twice.

Then the box cracked.

The glass fogged inward. Inside was no one. But shadows circled it — looking for a shape to copy.

Outside, far away, Rin paused mid-step. She touched her chest. Her heart beat once, then staggered — not painfully, but out of rhythm.

Like her body remembered dancing with someone it had not yet met.

[Back to Rin]

A shape passed through her peripheral vision.

Familiar.

Not Aro.

Not Selene, Alin, or Iris.

Someone she knew before her name.

She turned.

No one.

But a note fluttered to her feet, borne by no wind.

It was folded carefully, stained at the corners.

She opened it.

It only said:

You weren't supposed to remember this way. But you did anyway. That's why I stayed.

No signature. But her hands began to shake.

"Who wrote this?"

She looked up — and for the briefest moment, the Threadwriter's silhouette stood at the path's edge, coat fluttering against a wind no one else felt.

When she blinked, he was gone.