~ "Not all threads are spun. Some are torn free." ~
The bridge behind her vanished the moment she stepped off it.
Spidey stood at the edge of a pale, silent field. The sky was neither night nor day just a soft, silver stillness. Fog clung low to the ground, and the world seemed stitched together from old memories and forgotten breaths.
Even Nyxi was quiet now.
> "Where are we?" Spidey whispered.
Nyxi finally answered, voice hushed.
> "The Memory Marsh. Where the Web hides what hurts too much to remember."
Spidey's boots sank slightly into the silver grass as she walked, the air thick with unshed tears. Shapes drifted in and out of the mist not people, not creatures. Just impressions. A chair left out in the rain. A cracked teacup. A spinning top that never stopped.
> "These… were loved once," she murmured.
> "Every memory buried here was. Until someone chose to forget."
---
They walked until they reached the shore of a slow, rippling stream. It wasn't water that flowed but thread. Loose strands of golden silk and ink-black yarn, weaving themselves gently along the current.
> "We need to cross this," Nyxi said.
> "It's shallow," Spidey said, stepping in.
But the moment her foot touched the thread-current—
FLASH.
Her vision exploded.
She was five again.
Rain fell through a broken ceiling. She was curled under a table, clutching her knees, her mother screaming in another room. The sound of something shattering. Her father's voice fading down the hall. A door slamming. Her sobs silent, small.
> "No," she whispered. "I forgot this on purpose—"
> "It remembers you," Nyxi said softly. "You can't walk the memory stream unless you face what floats within it."
> "I don't want to," Spidey cried.
> "Then the threads will pull you under."
The stream tugged at her ankles not hard, but certain. Like hands made of silk. Whispering.
So she took a breath.
And let herself remember.
---
Each step forward brought a vision:
She remembered being laughed at for the webs in her notebooks. The sting of loneliness at birthday parties where no one showed. The echoing silence the day she whispered to a real spider for the first time and it whispered back.
> "Why must I relive all this?" she asked.
> "Because forgotten pain becomes someone else's curse," Nyxi said. "The Weaver is twisted by what others buried. To mend the Web, you must carry what was once dropped."
By the time Spidey reached the other side, her heart felt heavier but steadier. Her feet were soaked in memories, but her eyes were clear.
> "You didn't drown," Nyxi said.
> "I didn't run either."
---
Beyond the stream was a mound of broken statues, each one shaped like a faceless child curled inward. Between them, a single loom stood tall, old, splintered at the edges.
It hummed.
A red thread was half woven through it, pulsing faintly. The moment Spidey neared, the thread lashed out like a tongue.
And wrapped around her wrist.
A voice boomed, not from the sky, but from within her bones.
> "WHO WEAVES A THREAD THAT IS NOT THEIRS?"
Spidey gasped. "I—I don't know what you mean—"
> "THE THREAD OF BLOOD. THE THREAD OF BOND. YOU CARRY A NAME THAT WAS NEVER YOURS."
> "I was never told my real name…" she whispered.
The thread tightened.
And the world split.
---
She was in a room again. But not hers.
A nursery.
Dust in the sunlight. A crib. A lullaby playing faintly. A spider dangling above the crib's edge.
A woman crying softly, holding a letter.
> "She'll never be safe here. They'll find her if they know she's ours."
A man with gentle eyes. "We have to give her up."
> "But her name-her name is sacred. If we erase it what will be left of her?"
> "A chance to survive."
Spidey watched herself, a tiny baby wrapped in red silk. A rune stitched onto the blanket.
> "My name…" she whispered. "I was… someone before I was Spidey."
---
When the vision ended, she fell to her knees before the loom.
> "You were adopted into forgetting," Nyxi said softly. "But the Web did not forget."
> "What was my name?" she asked.
> "Only the Web can answer. But if you truly wish to reclaim it… you must pull the thread."
Spidey reached for the pulsing red strand.
> "I want to know. Even if it hurts."
She pulled.
The loom screamed.
A thousand broken voices poured from it not in pain, but release.
And then, quietly, a whisper echoed:
> "Arachnelle."
Spidey froze. "That was… me?"
> "It is you," Nyxi said. "Spidey was the name you gave yourself. Arachnelle was the one you were given. Both are true. One thread spun by choice. The other by fate."
Spidey stood slowly.
> "Then I'll weave them together. I'll be both."
The loom quieted.
The red thread glowed.
Another star stitched itself back into the sky.
---
> "That was the second trial," Nyxi said gently. "The Trial of Name."
> "That felt like… unraveling a soul," Spidey breathed.
> "And yet you're still here."
Spidey looked down at her hands her fingers stained with red silk, her eyes flickering with starlight.
> "What's next?"
Nyxi turned toward the darkening horizon.
> "The Thinning Thread. Where reality frays."
> "Will I survive it?"
> "We won't know until we walk it."
And with that, Spidey stepped forward again, into the fog where truths were thinner than breath, and shadows held scissors.
---
TO BE CONTINUED…
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