The Hollowed District wasn't silent. It was worse.
Arielle stepped over a collapsed fence, her boots crunching on glass. The streets were empty, but she could feel the echoes. Threads once bound to the people here had been devoured so completely that they left behind faint afterimages, flickering like ghost-lights along the walls.
She touched one. It was cold, brittle — a memory of a bond that no longer existed. A man's laughter drifted faintly, then vanished like mist.
The hum in her chest spiked, and before she could stop herself, her hand tightened on the flickering thread. The cold shot up her arm, searing and electric, and then the hum surged into a near-deafening roar as the thread dissolved into her palm.
Arielle gasped, stumbling against the wall. Her vision exploded with flashes — a woman cooking, a child's hands clutching a stuffed animal, a street musician tuning his guitar. Hundreds of fragments, all at once, flooding through her mind like a river breaking its dam.
Her knees buckled. She dug her fingers into the pavement, panting as the energy swirled inside her. It wasn't like weaving. Weaving was deliberate, controlled. This was… consumption.
The whisper returned, low and smooth, curling around her like smoke. See? You're already doing it. You don't need threads to weave when you can make them yours. No more broken bonds. No more pain.
Her hands trembled as she pressed them to her temples. "Stop," she hissed. "Get out of my head."
The whisper chuckled. I'm not in your head, Arielle. I'm in your blood now. That hum? That's not me. That's you. The more you take, the stronger it gets.
A flicker of motion broke her focus. A dark figure stepped out of a ruined shop across the street — not Draven, but one of his marionettes, its movements jerky and unnatural. Its threadless body lurched toward her, hollow eyes glowing faintly violet.
And as it reached for her, Arielle felt the hum shift, coiling in her chest like a predator. Her fingers twitched, and to her horror… she wanted to pull the energy from the puppet, to rip whatever kept it standing and make it hers.
She didn't. Not yet.
But as the puppet lunged, Arielle realized something terrifying: the hunger wasn't going away. And the more bonds Draven broke, the more she wanted to feed.