"Even when you are the entire world, sometimes all you can do is watch."— Aki, The Not-Quite-Omnipotent World
✦ The Journey Begins
It was dusk when Liora left the grove.
No grand send-off. No parade. Just a half-filled pack, a dull traveling staff, and the soft rustle of branches making way for her path.
I watched her take her first steps into the unknown. Not just as a curious elf girl leaving home—but as one of the Threadbound.
She was a fragment of clarity in my otherwise chaotic awareness. I could feel her with more precision than even the hero boy, Tatsuo. It wasn't just her location I tracked—it was her breath, her heartbeat, even the way her dreams curled around her soul like smoke around a candle.
She wasn't like the others.
She didn't walk on me.
She walked with me.
And I couldn't help but be drawn to that.
✦ The Valley of Teeth
Liora's route took her west—through a stretch of land the locals called the Valley of Teeth.
It was named for the jagged rock formations that jutted out of the ground like the open maw of a beast. Centuries of wind had carved the stone into sinister shapes—curved like fangs, hollowed like eyes. The sun cast long shadows that moved like specters, even when no one walked there.
Of course, I hadn't named it the Valley of Teeth. That was the humans.
I had called it the Spine Ridge. It was once part of a great continental fissure—one of the scars from when I was first forming. Back when my consciousness was still scattered, bleeding into the atmosphere, screaming silently with no one to hear.
I hadn't visited that place in decades.
But now that Liora was there, I turned my attention toward it.
And I remembered.
✦ The Memory Bloom
As she stepped between the stone fangs, a memory bloomed in my mind.
A man.
Short. Black hair. Round glasses.
Me.
He was standing near a printer. Holding a cup of lukewarm convenience store coffee. Looking down at a printout—some quarterly report, no doubt—when he muttered:
"I'm tired."
That's all it was. Just a sliver of a memory. But it hit me like a tidal wave.
I felt my human self again.
For one flickering instant, I wanted to cry.
But then Liora stopped walking.
And I focused.
✦ Something Moves in the Rocks
She wasn't alone.
I felt it—disturbances in the leyline crust, localized mana fluctuations, and a subtle tremor beneath the topsoil. Even before she noticed, I knew something was stalking her.
I couldn't see it directly.
But I could feel its absence.
Like a smudge on a page. A tear in my awareness.
Something was eating magic.
"Nullbeasts," Liora whispered.
She'd read the signs correctly.
Good girl.
✦ Nullbeasts: Predators of the Forgotten
Let me explain.
Nullbeasts aren't natural. They don't belong to the world.
They're parasites—creatures born when a dream dies violently. When a vision is abandoned, crushed under despair, or consumed by fear, sometimes the leftover energy doesn't just vanish.
Sometimes… it rots.
And sometimes, that rot hatches.
They can't be seen by magical detection. They don't radiate heat, don't cast shadows. They drain mana, erasing traces of themselves as they move.
They are silence made flesh.
And one was here.
Hunting Liora.
✦ The Girl Who Dreamed Fire
She kept moving, but slower. Her hands trembled. Her staff shook. But she didn't run.
That mattered.
Running would have triggered it.
Instead, she whispered.
"Sleeping One, guide my steps."
I didn't answer.
Couldn't. Not without revealing her to the beast.
But I listened.
She crouched behind a jagged outcrop, pulled a leather pouch from her side, and sprinkled a handful of crushed blue moss across the ground. The powder shimmered faintly in the dimming light.
Dreamdust. Harvested from my oldest trees.
It reacts to spiritual presence.
And sure enough, a few seconds later… the dust dissolved into the ground in a jagged trail.
The beast was moving. Fast.
✦ The First Strike
It pounced.
A blur of nothing. A ripple in space. A shape made of hunger.
Liora spun, slammed the butt of her staff into the dirt, and shouted a word in Ancient Verdic.
"Tir'thaless!"
The ground around her exploded in vines—sharp, glowing, laced with silverbark sap. They didn't try to bind the beast. That wouldn't work. Instead, they detonated, scattering glowing shards of pollen like glass rain.
It wasn't meant to kill.
It was meant to reveal.
For one brief moment, the Nullbeast's outline shimmered—long, spiderlike limbs, no eyes, a mouth that opened sideways and kept going. It had no real form. Just hunger shaped by instinct.
It screamed without sound.
And then charged.
✦ Liora Bleeds
The first claw caught her in the side.
Even through her leather tunic, the blow was deep. I felt her pain like a splinter under my fingernail.
She hit the ground hard.
Coughed.
Blood stained the dust.
I screamed—internally. Every instinct in me wanted to hurl a tree at the thing, raise a mountain between them, drop a boulder the size of a cathedral.
But I couldn't.
Interfering directly with a Nullbeast risks making it stronger. My energy feeds it. It grows with my attention.
She had to win on her own.
And she knew it.
✦ The Dream Loop
Bleeding, shaking, teeth clenched, Liora pressed one hand to her chest. To the mark—the thread bound spiral etched just below her collarbone.
"Show me… what I've forgotten…"
A ripple of energy burst outward.
And suddenly—I felt her mind loop.
She called on a dream.
Not one I had planted.
One she had made.
A fragment of a future that could be. A vision she'd painted in her sleep years ago and forgotten.
It activated.
And the world twisted.
✦ Memory Magic: Loop of the Second Flame
To the outside world, nothing happened.
But inside the Nullbeast's perception, reality shifted.
It lunged again.
But the Liora it struck vanished—a ghost.
In her place stood another Liora.
One from six seconds ago.
Same wound.
Same stance.
But armed with new knowledge.
She sidestepped.
Spun.
And this time, she struck the beast in the jaw.
Her staff lit up with golden fire.
Dreamfire.
It didn't burn flesh.
It burned memory.
And the Nullbeast screamed—not in pain, but in confusion.
It forgot why it was hunting.
It forgot who it was.
It forgot how to move.
✦ A Silent Victory
Liora stood still, trembling, blood dripping from her waist.
The Nullbeast convulsed.
Then collapsed.
And with a flicker—disintegrated into ash.
She didn't cheer.
Didn't smile.
She just sat down.
And wept.
✦ I Was Proud
I couldn't tell her.
But I was proud.
Not because she won.
But because she listened.
To herself. To her dreams. To me.
Even when she was terrified. Bleeding. Alone.
She didn't run.
She stepped forward.
That mattered more than victory.
✦ A Forgotten Thread Tugs
As she lay there, breathing slow and ragged, the wind whispered through the valley.
And the thread on her chest pulsed.
Somewhere, deep beneath the Ridge, something woke up.
A lost leyline.
A sealed thought.
A dream I hadn't dared revisit.
"You are not the first Dreamwalker," it whispered.
"And you will not be the last."
Liora blinked, exhausted.
But the words embedded themselves in her.
Even as sleep claimed her… she dreamed again.
And this time…
She saw me.
✦ END OF CHAPTER 4 ✦
Next: Chapter 5 – Camels, Chaos, and the Clash of Threads