ael returned to the village before dawn. His boots dragged soft lines through the ash-streaked path. Beneath the surface, his limbs ached. His skin still held the heat from the fifth binding. His mind buzzed with fragments — timelines that weren't real anymore, memories that didn't belong to him. The Hollow's mark had changed him. He hid it well. His tunic hung loose over the burns. His face wore the same quiet mask the villagers expected. A pathless, broken boy trying not to be noticed. They still underestimated him. Good. As he passed the square, smoke curled from the hearths. The elders were already stirring, whispering about tomorrow's visit — a minor Pathkeeper from the Outer Orders. A routine inspection, they said. Kael's pulse quickened. No visit was routine. And this early in the cycle? No, something had shifted. The threads are tightening. He ducked into the loomhouse and shut the door behind him. He didn't have much time before others would start asking questions. The fifth thread pulsed faintly under his skin, just beneath the collarbone. He had no idea what it would cost long term, but for now, it gave him clarity. With a whisper, Kael reopened the binding diagram. The ash lines flickered violet-red. He studied the five threads: Thread of the Unspoken Vow Thread of the Drowned Regret Thread of the Hesitant Blade Thread of the Lost Bird's Flight Thread of the Forgotten Pact Each was weak individually, discarded fragments from lives barely remembered. But together, they formed a net — a lattice of influence that let Kael tug gently at fate. Not control it. Not yet. But nudge it. Twist it. Make the wind blow a different way. Kael smiled. By midmorning, the Pathkeeper arrived. Kael watched from the shadows as the village elders bowed low. The Pathkeeper was a woman — tall, lean, wrapped in faded gold robes. Her veil covered everything but her eyes, which shimmered with the silver hue of someone long-bound to their thread. Her voice carried authority that cut through the air like a blade. "You will all be evaluated." Some of the children gasped. This wasn't normal. A Pathkeeper's visit usually meant observance, not testing. Kael remained hidden in the loomhouse loft, pressed between the old beams. His heart beat slower than it should've. A side effect of the fifth binding. Or a warning. The Pathkeeper raised her staff. "I smell disruption. Something unbound. Something… counterfeit." Kael didn't move. The woman tilted her head. "A Threadless soul has touched the Loom." Murmurs erupted among the villagers. The elder stepped forward, flustered. "We… we had one Pathless this cycle, yes. But he—he was denied." "Denied by the Loom," she said, "not by the Thread." She turned. Her gaze swept the air like a blade. Kael felt it pass over him — and falter. For a breath, her eyes paused. Narrowed. He exhaled silently and pressed the fifth thread, invoking a subtle bend. It wasn't invisibility. Just suggestion. The faint hint that he wasn't where he truly was. The Pathkeeper blinked. Her gaze moved on. But her expression hardened. She knew. Kael had maybe two days. That night, he didn't sleep. Instead, he prepared. He carved a new diagram, using ash from the Pale Hollow and a sliver of memory iron — a cursed metal only found in regret-burdened soil. It hummed when it touched the page. He needed another binding. A sixth. But not from the dead. This one had to be stolen from the living. It was a step he'd never taken. It was also inevitable. Kael crept from the loomhouse and headed toward the house of Rilo, the boy who had always hated him. The boy who had cracked his ribs in life thirty-one. Who would, in life forty, betray the entire village. Rilo was destined for the Path of Iron Tide. But tonight, his dream would falter. Kael knelt beside Rilo's window, holding the memory iron shard in one hand and a thread-bait vial in the other — a hollow-glass capsule filled with compressed emotional residue. Sadness. Envy. Regret. He whispered: "Let the sleeping surrender. Let the chosen forget." The vial pulsed. A faint silver mist rose from within the house — a living thread, tied to Rilo's future. It resisted, tried to recoil. Kael stabbed the shard into the diagram. The thread screamed. Not in sound — but in pressure, in a sickening twist of the world around him. His nose bled instantly. His skin split along his forearm. But the thread bent. And then, snapped. Kael caught it before it vanished, binding it into the sixth circle. He staggered back, teeth clenched, shaking. He felt something shift in the village's air. Like a drumbeat no one else could hear had gone quiet. Rilo's fate had been unwritten. By dawn, word spread fast. Rilo had awoken screaming. Disoriented. His thread gone. The elders panicked. The Pathkeeper demanded a full soul-audit. Kael sat at the edge of the loomhouse, watching flames curl in the hearth, his sixth thread humming faintly against his ribs. He was bleeding internally. He could feel it. But the thread held. And now, his net could do more than nudge. He could intercept choices. Change decisions. He could cut.
