Midnight fell with no stars.
Li Shen sat cross-legged in the crumbling bell tower, breath steady, posture still as bone. Around him, the remnants of old war banners fluttered in the wind—faded cloth soaked with the memories of blood and fire. No one visited this place. It was too steep. Too broken. Too forgotten.
Which was why he chose it.
His hand rested on the worn stone floor, fingers tracing invisible threads, not by sight now, but by feel. The more he practiced, the more his body adjusted—not just his eyes, but his nerves, his sense of balance, the rhythm of his pulse. He could feel threads vibrating through matter. Through space. Through intention.
And tonight, the loom within stirred again.
"The Second Pull," he whispered.
He did not know how he knew it. The loom had no language. But the knowledge came, inscribed on instinct.
There were nine pulls. Nine foundational patterns of unraveling. The first had awakened his perception.
The second would grant him his first true weave.
He closed his eyes and opened his mind.
The threads around him appeared—like thousands of strands of mist-laced silver, suspended in a great lattice across the night. They passed through stone, air, insects, even drifting moonlight.
And one of them pulsed.
It was connected to him.
Not the physical body—but a version of him that could exist.
It was memory, possibility, and failure all braided together.
And it was wrapped around a scar.
He reached toward it.
Pain gripped him instantly—like nails driven into his soul. His spine arched as visions crashed through him:
—A younger Li Shen, begging an elder for basic guidance.
—That elder, laughing, before ordering him to scrub the outhouses for speaking out of turn.
—His spirit root shattered in a sparring match. Onlookers clapped.
—His name erased from the promotion scrolls. Twice.
Each thread wrapped around another—trauma entwined with clarity. Each humiliation, each dismissal, each moment where they turned away. They had not just denied him advancement.
They had crafted a perfectly silent weapon.
"You are not nothing," he thought. "You are refused."
He reached deeper, hands trembling not with emotion, but effort—manipulating the impossible. Weaving from something that should not give form.
And then—
A shift.
The thread folded.
And he wove it.
It bled into his dantian like ink, not strengthening it, but warping its structure. Twisting it into a new shape—not a vessel for Qi in the traditional sense, but a loom, small and flickering.
He had made the first weave.
It didn't increase his cultivation.
It transformed his foundation.
Hours later, he descended the bell tower, the sun cresting low on the horizon.
A sect attendant passed him and dropped a scroll.
Li Shen caught it before it hit the ground and handed it back.
The man blinked. "Thank you, senior—oh, you're…"
His voice trailed off as he met Li Shen's eyes.
And Li Shen watched it happen again—a thread of fear, thin but unmistakable, flicking upward in the man's chest. The thread wobbled. Trembled.
And Li Shen, without touching it, tightened it.
The man bowed and stumbled away, not even knowing why his stomach had turned cold.
Li Shen did not smile. But this time, he almost did.
Far above, in a high tower obscured by mist, Elder Xu Ming turned from the scrying pool with a scowl.
"His resonance just shifted again," he muttered.
Another elder stepped forward, frowning. "A breakthrough?"
Xu shook his head. "Worse. Not advancement. Evolution."
They said nothing for a long time.
And below, Li Shen walked beneath the early sun, a ghost with a shadow that no longer obeyed the light.