Chapter 3: The Dirty Circuit

Liora's knees ground into the cold stone of the Loom floor, her left palm throbbing beneath the Great Loom's primary drive-spindle as she knelt, the indigo-and-blood brand pulsing like a second heartbeat. It was a rhythmic, agonizing heat, radiating outward from the meat of her thumb to the tips of her fingers. Every time the Loom’s massive spindle rotated—a groaning, tectonic heave of bronze and bone-white porcelain—the brand flared. 

Her vision was beginning to fray. It wasn't just the darkness of the chamber; it was the monochrome "frayback" that came when a Weaver’s soul-thread started to thin. The vibrant, oily sheen of the Loom’s lubricants and the rich, amethyst glow of the power-channels were leeching away, leaving a world of jagged grays and charcoal shadows. 

"Bind or break," she whispered, the words a dry husk in her throat. "Bind or break."

She reached out with her right hand, her fingers twitching instinctively in the air, tracing the invisible ley-lines of the Weaving Chamber. She wasn't looking for the sanctioned threads of the city’s commerce or the tidy knots of the Guild’s ledgers. She was hunting for the jagged, pulsing leak of the Dirty Circuit—the heretical bond she had forged in a moment of panicked survival.

She found it, and her breath hitched. 

The bond felt like a length of rusted iron wire wrapped in silk, vibrating at a frequency that set her molars on edge. It didn't just connect her to Thorne; it anchored her to him. And through that anchor, the sensory bleed was intensifying. 

Suddenly, her own throat felt constricted, as if a heavy gold wire were tightening around her windpipe. She gasped, her hand flying to her neck, but her skin was smooth. The pain wasn't hers. It was Thorne’s, sitting in the lead-lined restraint chair twenty paces away. Along with the phantom pain came the taste of copper and the cold, predatory weight of his cynicism. It sat in the pit of her stomach like a stone, a dark amusement that watched her struggle.

*You’re pulling too hard, Weaver,* his voice echoed in her mind, not as a sound, but as a vibration in her marrow. *Slow down. You’ll snap your own neck trying to hold onto mine.*

"Be quiet," she hissed, though there was no one near enough to hear. 

*I can feel your terror,* Thorne’s mental presence loomed closer, testing the edges of the bond. *It tastes like lanolin and old ink. It’s pathetic. Is this what the Conclave trains you for? To kneel in the dirt and tremble?*

Liora shut her eyes, but the monochrome world remained. She could see him through the bond—a silhouette of jagged black glass against a gray void. He was the Thirteenth Strand, the Unbinder, the one thing the Loom couldn't categorize. And right now, he was her battery. Her lifeline.

"This knot’s tightening," she muttered, her fingers dancing faster, trying to braid the excess energy back into the Loom’s primary drive. "Bind-bind-bind it now."

The Great Loom emitted a low, dissonant "dead-tone." It was a sound that shouldn't exist—a vibration of decay. To the Junior Binders huddled in the shadows of the secondary spindles, it was the sound of a nightmare. Liora didn't need to see them to know they were staring at her. She could feel their judgment, a collective thread of "Stained" and "Frayed" woven into the atmosphere. They saw her as a leper, a Weaver who had touched the Forbidden and come back smelling of rot.

"The indigo is spreading, Liora." 

The voice was cool, measured, and came from above. Liora didn't look up to the High Observation Gallery. She knew Elder Maros was there, leaning on his bone-white cane, watching the indigo light of the brand leak from her palm like spilled ink. 

"I am stabilizing it, Elder," she said, her voice clipped, a ritual command to herself as much as an answer to him.

"Are you?" Maros’s footsteps began to rhythmically tap against the spiral staircase as he descended. *Click. Tap. Click. Tap.* "The Loom screams in a tone I haven't heard in forty years. The Arch-Binders want your head on a platter of silver wire, my dear. They see a heresy. I see... a necessity."

Maros stepped onto the Loom floor, his eyes tracking the mercury-like stains of indigo crawling up Liora's wrist. He didn't look at Thorne, not directly. He looked at the connection. To Maros, they weren't people; they were components in a machine that was rapidly breaking down.

"The rot at the center is deep," Maros whispered, leaning closer, his voice obscured by the groan of the machinery. "The Loom is dying, Liora. The Purists would have us die with it, clinging to old laws. But you... you have bypassed the safety dampeners. You have found a new way to draw power. Even if it is... dirty."

"It’s not power," Liora spat, her fingers knotting an invisible loop. "It’s a parasite."

*Ouch,* Thorne’s voice flickered. *And here I thought we were becoming close. I can feel your heart hammering against your ribs, Weaver. Or is that my heart? It’s getting hard to tell.*

"Quiet!" Liora shouted, the word echoing off the lead-lined walls. 

Thorne laughed—a dry, hacking sound that Liora felt in her own chest. "The Elder is right about one thing. The Loom is rotting. I can taste the mold in the threads. It’s been dying since before you were born. Since the day your parents tried to fix it and ended up as nothing but frayed ends on the floor."

The memory hit her like a physical blow, forced through the bond by Thorne’s deliberate malice. She saw it again: the flash of white light, the sound of a soul snapping like a tensioned cable, the way her mother’s eyes had gone blank as her thread was violently unbound from the world.

"You can't just pull at fate's hem like it's your favorite cloak—watch the weave, or it'll unravel us both," Liora whispered, her voice trembling.

"Enough," Maros commanded, sensing the spike in the bond. "Stabilize it now, Liora. Or the guards will be forced to sever the connection with steel."

Liora looked at the Archival Guards. They stood at the perimeter, their spears tipped with thread-disrupting alloy, their faces hidden behind masks of brass wire. They were ready. One command from the Gallery, and they would end the heresy by ending her.

She forced herself to crawl closer to Thorne’s chair. The indigo contagion on her hand reacted to his proximity, the ink-like stains beginning to glow with a fierce, violent light. The "dead-tone" of the Loom spiked, a teeth-rattling hum that made the Junior Binders cover their ears.

"Give me your hand," she commanded Thorne.

"I’m a bit tied up at the moment," he replied, gesturing with a tilt of his head to the heavy lead shackles.

Liora didn't argue. She reached out and grabbed his forearm, ignoring the hiss of the lead against her branded skin. The contact was electric, a brutal surge of metaphysical resonance that threatened to tear her soul-thread from its moorings. She wasn't just touching his skin; she was touching the Thirteenth Strand, the void where a thread should be.

She began the ritual. Her fingers moved in a frantic, blurring pattern, attempting to braid the raw, unrefined energy bleeding from Thorne into the structured weave of her own essence. Indigo and blood-red light spiraled between them, a miniature vortex of hererical magic.

"Bind... bind... bind it now," she chanted, her voice a frantic litany. 

She wasn't just fixing a connection; she was forcing two incompatible things to coexist. She used her own life-thread as the bridge, feeling it fray and thin as she stretched it across the gap between her and the Unbinder. 

Thorne’s cynicism flickered. For a moment, his predatory mask slipped. He felt the sheer, agonizing weight of her resolve, the way she was willing to burn her own soul to keep the world from unraveling. It wasn't bravery—it was a compulsive, terrifying need for control.

*You’re insane,* he thought, and for the first time, there was no mockery in it. *You’ll kill yourself to save a machine that’s already dead.*

*I won't let it break,* she threw back at him. *I won't let anything else break.*

The "dead-tone" began to subside, settling into a low, uneasy thrum. The Indigo Brand on her hand dimmed, though the stains remained, darker and more permanent than before. Liora slumped against the base of Thorne’s chair, her breath coming in ragged gasps. 

Maros watched from a few feet away, a thin, predatory smile touching his lips. "Remarkable. A stable Dirty Circuit. The Conclave will have much to discuss."

He turned and began to walk away, his cane tapping a triumphant rhythm. "Keep her under guard. And ensure the battery remains... charged."

Liora didn't look at him. She couldn't. Her vision hadn't returned to color. The frayback was total now. She looked at Thorne, and he wasn't a man; he was a silhouette of shifting shadows in a world of gray. 

She reached up to wipe sweat from her brow, but then she felt it—a sudden, sharp pull at the base of her skull.

Thorne leaned his head back against the restraint chair, his eyes locking onto hers. He didn't speak aloud. He didn't need to. Through the bond, he reached out and flicked a finger against the imaginary thread of her consciousness.

*You think you’ve tied me down, Weaver?* his whisper echoed, feeling like his breath against her ear even though he hadn't moved. *You’ve just given me a front-row seat to your collapse. Look at your hands. You aren't weaving anymore. You’re just holding the pieces together while they turn to ash.*

Liora tried to pull away, to snap the invisible thread of his influence, but her fingers fumbled. She felt a sudden, terrifying crack in her resolve. It wasn't just her pain anymore; it was his strength, bleeding into her, a dark, cold lure that promised she didn't have to carry the weight alone.

The Loom’s dead-tone surged one last time, a final, mourning note. Liora’s vision shuddered, the last vestiges of the chamber’s physical form dissolving into a sea of monochrome static. She couldn't see the floor, the spindle, or the guards. 

She could only see him. 

His eyes were two pits of darkness in a gray universe, and his voice was the only sound left in the world.

"Bind tighter, Weaver," Thorne whispered in the silence of her mind, "or we both unravel."