The next morning, the Hermit said nothing.
He simply handed Casamir a bowl of steaming root-tea, then turned into the forest without a word. His footsteps were slow, steady—like following a path no one else was meant to see.
Casamir followed.
He was sore. Not in bone or limb—but somewhere older. Thread-worn. Hollowed. Quiet.
His skin still felt stretched thin. His breath, tangled with the aftertaste of yesterday's grief.
And yet—
the world had shifted.
The trees no longer whispered intruder.
Only unfamiliar.
—
They arrived in a quiet glade, where seven willow trees bent low, frozen mid-dance. The wind here moved differently—circular, reflective, cautious.
The Hermit knelt.
With one finger, he drew a circle in the soil. Then lines radiating outward like spokes from a wheel.
"This," he said, "is how most people learn to see the world. Direction. Intention. Everything moving outward. Like conquest."
He smudged the lines into spirals.
"But the Threads…" He looked up. "They don't march. They meander. They twist. They wait. They resist being led."
Casamir crouched beside him. His voice was low, but not idle.
"Then how do you follow them?"
The Hermit's smile was frayed, like parchment left too long in rain. Not amused. Not cold.
Just… old.
"You don't," he said. "You listen. And when they pull—you choose. Follow. Or let go."
He lifted his hand.
A single thread—silver and alive—rose from the dirt, curling around his knuckles like breath made visible.
"There are three truths," he said, "for any who would walk the Threads."
He let it drift back into soil.
"If you learn them, the Threads may remember you.
If you forget them… they won't."
—
"First truth: All Threads remember."
He passed his hand through the air.
A dozen lines shimmered into visibility—tree to stream, root to sky, heartbeat to memory.
"Every kindness. Every betrayal. Every vow. The Threads carry them—not as power, but as memory."
Casamir reached out—too quickly.
The Hermit caught his wrist. Gently. Firmly.
"Not yet. You don't touch a memory until you feel it remembering you."
Casamir nodded. His breath stilled.
There was something holy about that.
⸻
"Second truth: Threads bind by consent."
"Magic isn't command," the Hermit said. "It's relationship.
You don't take. You ask."
He walked to a withered bush—its leaves bitten by frost—and crouched.
No chant.
No sigil.
Just presence.
A faint thread rose. Brushed his palm.
One leaf turned green.
No more.
He stood.
"You offer silence. A little truth. And sometimes—a thread offers something back."
He faced Casamir again.
"The more you demand, the less you are given. Threads remember how they were touched."
Casamir's gaze lingered on the bush.
"What if someone lied?" he asked. "What if they offered something false, and the thread believed them?"
The Hermit gave no immediate answer.
He crouched again, palm hovering above the soil.
A thread rose. Delicate. Pale blue. It brushed his hand—and recoiled.
"Then it breaks," he said. "Not visibly. Not always at once. But somewhere—along its line—it forgets how to trust. And the next time someone comes to offer truth…"
He straightened.
"…the thread remembers being deceived. Even if it no longer knows the words."
Casamir nodded, slower this time.
Understanding wasn't gentle.
But it was beginning to take root.
Casamir looked at the bush, not with envy—but longing.
Not to control it.
To be trusted by it.
⸻
"Third truth: No thread exists alone."
He returned to the dirt-circle, pressing his finger to a place where two spirals intersected.
"Pull one—and others follow. Heal one root—and a distant branch may bloom.
But wound one—and unseen sisters bleed."
Casamir frowned.
"Then how do you act without harm?"
The Hermit pressed both palms to the earth, closing his eyes.
"For every wound we see," he murmured, "a hundred more remain hidden. To walk the Threads is to accept that you will move through places still in pain. That your presence—however careful—leaves shape."
A beat of silence passed.
"Your duty is not to be clean. It is to be conscious."
The Hermit paused.
"So to answer, you don't. Not always.
Sometimes, harm is part of healing. That's the burden of those who see."
⸻
He reached into his satchel and unwrapped a bundle bound in bone and aged twine.
Inside: a stone.
Black as pitch.
Threadless.
Casamir touched it.
It felt like forgetting.
"These are Knots," the Hermit said. "Places so wounded they refuse to remember."
He looked up.
"Some can be unbound. But never with force.
Only with something deeper."
Casamir's brow furrowed. His voice was quiet.
"Like what?"
The Hermit studied him.
"Someone who knows what it means to be both wound… and weaver."
Not a prophecy.
A possibility.
⸻
That evening, they came to the river.
The day thinned slowly—light catching in thread-tangles above them, gold becoming ash, and ash giving way to bruise-colored dusk.
Casamir said little. But something in his posture had changed.
Not lighter.
Not looser.
But aligned.
Like a thread that no longer resisted the pull of its own weave.
The Hermit led them in silence to a break in the trees, where the sound of water should have greeted them—
But didn't.
The river ran.
Shallow. Fast. Too fast.
And silent.
No birds. No insects.
Only current.
"There's a Knot forming here," the Hermit said. "I won't guide you."
Casamir stepped forward.
No hesitation.
He thought of the Hermit's truths. Of the tree that had wept without sound. Of how silence wasn't absence — but memory waiting to be met.
He crouched by the edge. Closed his eyes. Opened his breath.
And listened.
Not to sound.
To strain.
The water sang with tension.
Not in words.
Not in waves.
But in strain—like the sound of something holding its breath too long. The surface shimmered with false calm, but underneath: a tearing. A twist.
Casamir sensed it even before he touched it—the war between what had been, and what should never have been allowed.
One thread bled sorrow. The other, rage. Both were old. Intimate. Bound like kin who had turned away.
He reached.
Two memories pulled beneath it—love curdled into betrayal, protection shattered into ruin.
Between them, a third thread stretched thin.
Fraying.
He reached.
It snapped—sharp.
A vision seared into him: fire swallowing home. A hand once gentle raised in fury. A scream underwater.
He gasped, choking.
Everything in him wanted to retreat.
But he remembered.
Second truth.
No demand.
No force.
So he offered something instead.
His own memory:
Ash drifting like snow.
Karnox crumbling.
The silence after Narel's voice faded.
He didn't try to fix the river.
He let it remember him.
The thread trembled.
It didn't thank him.
It didn't open like a flower in spring.
It shuddered—as if startled by its own decision to live. It gripped him for a heartbeat, holding the memory he'd offered like a relic too fragile to name.
Then—
It let go.
Not with relief.
With release.
The river's tempo changed. Not calmer—but cleaner. Like a fever breaking.
One memory faded.
One held.
The river shifted.
Not gentler.
But clearer.
Like it, too, had made a choice.
Casamir fell back, breath shuddering.
The Hermit approached.
He did not praise.
He did not scold.
He sat beside the boy, watching the current realign itself beneath fading starlight.
"You didn't purify it," he said. "You gave it enough truth to decide what mattered."
Then, softer.
"That is the difference between weaving and severing."
He glanced upward—past the trees, into a sky already shifting.
"Threadwalking isn't magic. It's mercy."
The Hermit turned to look at Casamir.
"You've begun to thread-walk," he said. "Not perfectly. Not safely. But truly."
He placed a hand on Casamir's shoulder.
"You still carry Karnox inside you. But that burden may reach where no Thread dares go."
Casamir didn't speak.
But when the wind moved through the glade—
It no longer whispered.
It hummed.