The new passage was unlike any before. No threads, no memory walls, no shifting symbols. Just stone pale, smooth, and silent. The silence was whole. Not absence, but presence. As if this was a place where even echoes bowed and fell still.
Finn and the reader moved carefully. Each step left no sound. The light here was ambient, without a source, fading only at the edges of sight. It made everything seem near and far at once.
"I thought there would be more," Finn whispered.
"There was. But something unspooled it."
"What could do that?"
She glanced around. "Something threadless."
They came upon a corridor split by a single seam. It ran down the center of the floor, vanishing into distant dark. The seam pulsed faintly, not with light, but with memory pressure. Finn crouched and touched it.
It showed him a thousand tiny collapses: names forgotten, promises dissolved, footsteps never taken. The weight of absence pressed into his palm.
He pulled back, exhaling sharply.
"Whatever this is, it's not part of the Archive."
"No," the reader said. "It's what was pushed away from the Archive. This is where the forgotten forget themselves."
A sound emerged ahead, faint and irregular. A slow ticking. Then a breath. Then a shuffle.
From the far end of the seam walked a man.
He wore no coat, no robes. Bare feet. A shirt too thin for the cold. His eyes were black from edge to edge.
Finn froze. "Do you know him?"
"I know what he was," the reader said.
The man stopped before them. His voice was flat. "You carry too many threads."
Finn stepped forward. "And you carry none."
The man nodded. "Because I cut them."
The seam glowed brightly.
And the reader whispered, "Threadcutter."
Then the stone beneath them split open.
And they fell.
They did not fall far. They did not fall fast. It was not falling as much as it was being unhooked from gravity. The sensation wasn't of movement, but of memory peeling away.
Finn landed on one knee. The floor beneath him was cold and dull, made of the same seamless stone as above. The reader touched down silently beside him. She was pale, her expression more uncertain than he had ever seen it.
They were in a chamber so vast it defied shape. No walls. No ceiling. Just dark space held up by nothing but presence.
All around them floated threadless figures. Men and women. Children. Old and young. Some wore cloaks, others only fragments of past clothing. All were silent. All lacked faces. Their eyes were blanks. Their mouths were sealed. Their feet did not touch the ground.
Finn stood slowly. "Where are we?"
The reader whispered, "The Unwoven."
As she spoke, the Threadcutter stepped into view again. He had not fallen. He had arrived.
"This is what comes of threads pulled without care," he said. "These are not the forgotten. They are the unmade."
Finn took a step forward. "You did this?"
"I completed what was already failing. The Archive once recorded all that could be remembered. But it hoarded. Hoarding leads to rot. I trimmed what no longer grew."
The reader looked around them. "These people were not rot."
"They were potential," said the Threadcutter. "Untethered from direction."
A hum began to rise in the air. It vibrated through Finn's bones. The figures began to shift, not closer, but denser. As if their presence pressed harder against the space they occupied.
Finn clenched his fists. "Why bring us here?"
"To show you what you protect," the Threadcutter replied. "And to ask what you would do if the weight grew too heavy to carry."
He reached into the air and pulled a blade from nothing. It was not steel. It was not ink. It was absence given form. A cut waiting to happen.
The reader stepped in front of Finn. "We don't want to fight."
"Then decide," said the Threadcutter. "There is still time to become threadless."
Finn felt something shift inside him. A thread, yes, but deeper than that. A coil tightening in his chest. He reached into his coat and pulled out the folded parchment he had received from the cocoon in the skein chamber.
Stay.
He unfolded it again. This time, the ink bled wider. More words emerged.
Stay. Choose. Carry.
He looked up. "I won't give it up. I won't become threadless."
The blade in the Threadcutter's hand began to fade. "Then you must prove it."
The figures around them stirred. One by one, they began to whisper.
Not with voices. With threads.
They spilled from invisible mouths. Tiny strands of memory, drifting toward Finn.
He caught one.
And saw a child he had never met.
He caught another.
And saw a sky he had never stood under.
He turned to the reader. She was crying.
"These are all that remain of who they could have been."
The Threadcutter lowered his hand. "Will you carry them?"
Finn nodded.
And the threads began to bind around his arms, his chest, his shoulders.
They did not weigh him down. They lifted him.
Thread by thread, he became not a bearer, but a loom.
And when the last thread touched him, the chamber trembled.
The Threadcutter stepped back.
"You wove them. So now they remain."
The stone cracked again.
And the way forward opened.