Chapter 1: The Weft of Grief

Liora's fingers traced the shimmering Binding Thread between the supplicant's soul and his estranged daughter's, whispering "bind or break" as she pulled it taut.

The central hall of the Threadbinders’ Conclave was a cavern of dampened echoes and the heavy, sweet-bitter scent of indigo dye. Here, the air was never still; it hummed with the vibration of a thousand invisible lives tethered in a grand, agonizing loom. Liora ignored the weight of the collective. Her focus narrowed to the two strands before her—one a muddy, vibrating ochre belonging to the trembling man kneeling on the stone floor, the other a pale, flickering silver that trailed off into the distance toward the city’s lower docks.

“Hold your breath,” Liora commanded. Her voice was a whetted blade, stripped of any comfort. “If your pulse jumps, the knot slips. If the knot slips, you’ll feel her heart stop before yours does.”

The supplicant, a merchant whose greed had frayed his family ties to the point of snapping, turned a shade of grey that matched the Conclave’s mortar. He obeyed, his chest locking tight.

Liora reached into the empty air. To the uninitiated, she was clawing at ghosts. To her, the world was a messy tapestry of necessity. She caught the ochre thread between her thumb and forefinger, feeling the rough, abrasive texture of the man’s regret. It was poorly spun—lumpy with excuses. She pulled. From the silver strand, a faint, rhythmic thrum answered. The daughter. 

*Bind-bind-bind,* Liora thought, her mind a rhythmic shuttle. 

She began the Soul-Link. She didn’t just watch the threads; she fused her own perception into the junction. Suddenly, the taste of salt spray and cheap ale filled her mouth—the daughter’s current environment. A sharp pang of resentment flared in Liora’s chest, not her own, but the daughter's reflected through the silver line. 

“The tension is uneven,” Liora muttered, her fingers dancing in a complex series of loops. “She hates you for the debt, but she fears the silence more. I am grafting the fear to your sense of duty. Do not let it fray.”

She forced the two lines to overlap. It was like stitching through living skin. As the threads crossed, a jagged spark of white light flickered in the air—the friction of souls. Liora felt the familiar, cold needle of "frayback" pierce her own wrist. A dull ache spread up her arm, a reminder that every stitch she took in the world’s fabric cost a sliver of her own. Her life-thread didn't just exist; it was the needle, and it wore thin with every pass.

With a final, sharp jerk, she seated the knot. The two threads pulsed once, in unison, and then faded from the visible spectrum, tucked back into the messy reality of the mundane.

The merchant collapsed forward, gasping. “Is it… is she…”

“She will write to you by sundown,” Liora said, wiping her hands on a cloth stained with lanolin. The fat of the wool helped soothe the phantom burns on her fingertips. “Not because she loves you, but because I’ve made the silence between you physically unbearable. Watch the weave, or it'll unravel us both. Now, leave. Your coin is already with the tithe-master.”

She didn't watch him go. She never did. Gratitude was just another loose end she didn't have the patience to tuck in.

Liora walked toward the cooling basins at the edge of the ritual circle, her movements precise and rigid. She never slouched; to slouch was to let the vertical tension of one’s soul go slack, and slackness led to rot. As she walked, her fingers moved instinctively to her temple, unpinning a stray dark lock and beginning to braid it. Over, under, pull. Over, under, pull.

The ritual had been minor, yet the frayback lingered in her marrow. It brought the echoes back.

*Bind-bind-bind it now,* a voice whispered in the back of her mind—her own voice, ten years younger.

She could still see the Conclave floor as it had been that night: drenched not in dye, but in the shimmering, spilled essence of her parents' souls. They had tried to rebind a fractured lineage, a task too great for their combined strength. She had watched the threads snap. Not a clean break, but an explosion of golden fiber that had flayed the air. In the center of the ruin, their bodies had remained, but the things that moved the limbs were gone, unbound into the ether. She had been left with the remnants—the jagged ends of a family tree that ended in her bleeding palms.

A sharp tug at her periphery snapped her back to the present. 

Liora froze. It wasn't a physical touch. It was a resonance in the deep weave, a specific, discordant vibration she knew as well as her own heartbeat. Rennar. 

Her brother’s thread was a severed thing, a phantom limb that occasionally twitched in the dark. He was out there, somewhere beyond the Conclave’s jurisdiction, drifting without a tether. The tug was faint, impatient—a snap of a thread between thumb and forefinger. 

Liora mirrored the gesture in the air, her face hardening. He was a fool to reach out. Severed threads didn't rejoin; they only tangled.

“Still obsessing over the dead and the departed, Liora? You’ll go grey before you’re thirty if you keep trying to iron out the world's wrinkles.”

The voice was like a gust of wind in a stagnant room—uncontrolled, messy, and loud. 

Liora didn't turn. She knew the rhythm of those footsteps. They were uneven, loping, disrespectful to the stone. Thorne Quill stood behind her, and even without looking, she could sense the "wild" of him. His soul-threads weren't neatly aligned; they were a briar patch, leaping and snagging on everything they touched.

“The weave is in a state of constant decay, Thorne,” Liora said, her voice dry. “Someone has to maintain the tension. I don't expect a man who treats his own destiny like a tangled fishing line to understand.”

Thorne moved into her line of sight, leaning against a pillar with a slouch that made Liora’s teeth ache. He smelled of rain and something sharp—ozone, perhaps. He reached out, his hand moving toward her shoulder in a casual gesture of greeting.

Liora stepped back before he could make contact. Her movement was deliberate, charged with the intent of a bather avoiding a leper. “Do not. You know I don't permit casual interference.”

Thorne’s lopsided grin didn't falter, though his eyes—flecked with a chaotic amber—shrewdly tracked her retreat. “Right. Fatalism and personal space. You’re a riot, Voss. The High Weavers want us to head to the West Quarter. Apparently, there’s a 'snag' in the merchant's district that’s making the local authorities nervous.”

“A snag?” Liora’s fingers twitched. “That’s a vague term for a professional.”

“Well, you know how they are. They say 'snag,' they usually mean 'someone’s soul is turning inside out and leaking into the gutter.' They want a precision tool like you and a… what did they call me? A 'disruptive element' like me to handle it.”

Liora felt the knot in her stomach tighten. This knot’s tightening. Working with Thorne was an exercise in fraying. He didn't bind; he collided. He was the exception to her rules, a man who didn't seem to care if his threads were straight or if the world was a mess of knots.

“Fine,” she said, her words clipped. “But stay behind the ritual line. If you interfere with my casting, I’ll sever your connection to your own shadow just to see if you can learn to walk straight.”

“I love it when you talk shop,” Thorne quipped, though he straightened up, sensing the shift in her energy.

Liora turned to gather her tools, but as she reached for her indigo-stained satchel, her hand stopped. 

She felt it then. Not the distant, ghostly tug of Rennar, but something closer. Something wrong.

She cast her vision wide, opening her third eye to the Binding. The Conclave was usually a masterpiece of order, but near the western egress, a single thread caught the light. It wasn't ochre or silver or the vibrant gold of a healthy soul.

It was red. A deep, wet crimson, like a fresh wound.

The thread didn't vibrate; it shivered. It was frayed, the ends splaying out like grasping fingers, reaching for the connections around it and leaching the color from them. It wasn't just breaking; it was consuming. It felt predatory, a deliberate exploitation of a weak bond.

*The red thread whispers betrayal,* Liora thought, the personification chilling her blood. 

She reached out, her fingers tracing the air inches from the anomaly. Usually, threads reacted to her touch with a sense of recognition, a yielding to her mastery. 

This one hissed.

An icy dread began to coil in her chest, a sensation she hadn't felt since the night of the Great Unbinding. This wasn't a natural decay. This was a tear, forced open by someone who knew exactly where the fabric was thinnest.

“Liora?” Thorne’s voice had lost its edge of mockery. He couldn't see the threads as clearly as she could, but he could clearly see the way she had gone skeletal-still. “What is it? A minor snag?”

Liora didn't answer. She watched, mesmerized and horrified, as the anomalous red thread quivered, uncoiling not toward the supplicant, but straight for her own knotted heart.

**SCENE A**

Liora remained frozen, her hand hovering over the satchel, the tactile sensation of lanolin on her skin suddenly feeling like a layer of grease she couldn't scrub away. The ritual hall, usually a sanctuary of ordered lines and predictable geometry, felt as though its walls were leaning inward. Every indigo shadow stretched too far, mirroring the way that red thread seemed to elongate in her mind’s eye. It was an intrusion, a violation of the Conclave’s sanctity that she couldn't immediately categorize. 

Her mind, usually a repository of neat classifications—knots, loops, anchors, and tethers—stuttered. This wasn't a fray caused by neglect or the natural rot of a dying soul. This was deliberate. Someone had taken a blade to the weft of the world. She inhaled sharply, the scent of the dye catching in her throat, tasting like copper and old dust. To be a Threadbinder was to be an architect of the inevitable, to ensure that the connections which *must* be, survived the chaos of human frailty. But this red thread... it didn't belong to the loom. It was an invasive fiber, thick with an intent she couldn't parse.

She felt the prickle of frayback again, but this time it wasn't a dull ache. It was a sharp, biting cold that radiated from her wrist down to the tips of her fingers. Her own life-thread—that shimmering, translucent line that connected her to her own existence—seemed to hum in a minor key. It was reacting to the presence of the red anomaly, pulling away as if burned. 

*Bind-bind-bind,* she chanted internally, a rhythmic wall of sound meant to drown out the sudden, erratic static of the room. She forced herself to breathe, matching the rhythm of the braid she had just finished. She had to maintain the tension. If she went slack now, the fear would unravel her before the threat even reached her. She looked at her palm; the phantom scars from her parents' ritual seemed to pulse with a faint, ghostly light. To the world, she was Liora Voss, the most precise binder in a generation. To herself, she was a collection of jagged ends held together by sheer, stubborn force.

She turned her gaze slowly toward the cooling basins. The water was still, reflecting the high, arched ceiling of the hall. But in the deep weave, nothing was still. The world was a vibrating mess of interconnected fates, and she was the only one standing with a needle in hand, trying to stop the tapestry from becoming a pile of rags. The red thread was still there, a crimson tear in the fabric of the room, whispering of a malice that hadn't been seen within these walls for a decade.

**SCENE B**

“Liora, you’re doing that thing again,” Thorne said, his voice dropping an octave, losing the playful lilt of his earlier sarcasm. He stepped around the ritual circle, avoiding the chalk-lines with a grace that contradicted his slouching posture. “You’ve gone stone-cold. Talk to me. Is this about the merchant? I told you, those greedy types have souls like wet parchment—they’re bound to tear.”

Liora finally shifted her gaze, looking not at Thorne’s face, but at the chaotic mess of threads that surrounded him. They were a nightmare of unanchored energy, sparking and snapping like a brushfire. Most binders would have been driven mad by such proximity to an unbound soul, but Thorne seemed to thrive in the static. 

“It isn't the merchant,” Liora said, her voice sounding thin to her own ears. She tucked a loose hair behind her ear, her fingers trembling just enough for her to notice. “There is something in the weave. Something wrong. It’s... red, Thorne. Not the red of passion or even the red of anger. It’s the red of an open wound.”

Thorne’s expression shifted. He couldn't see the depth of the weave with Liora’s clarity—he felt the world in vibrations and sudden, jarring impacts—but he knew her tells. He saw the way she was tracing the air, her fingers moving in patterns meant to ward off entanglement.

“Red,” he repeated, the word flat. “Like the Great Unbinding?”

Liora flinched as if he’d slapped her. “Do not bring that up. This is different. This is concentrated. It’s predatory.”

“Maybe it’s just a snag in the West Quarter reaching out,” Thorne suggested, though he reached for the hilt of the curved blade at his hip—a physical anchor for a man who lived in a whirlwind. “If it’s as bad as you say, the High Weavers were right to send both of us. You provide the precision, I provide the... well, the mess.”

“You provide the chaos that will likely get us both unbound,” Liora retorted, her dry humor returning as a defense mechanism. “And I’ve told you, don't call it a 'snag.' It’s a structural failure in the metaphysical architecture of the city.”

“Same thing, different words,” Thorne grinned, though the grin didn't reach his amber eyes. “Look, if the threads are whispering betrayal, maybe we should stop standing in the middle of a wide-open hall and go figure out whose throat is being cut—literally or soul-wise.”

Liora looked back at the western egress where the red thread had first appeared. It had faded into the background noise of the Conclave, but the resonance stayed with her, a greasy feeling in the back of her mind. “It moved toward me, Thorne. It wasn't interested in the city. it was interested in *me*.”

“You always were a magnet for trouble, Voss. Comes with being the best. Now, grab your kit. Let’s go see what’s waiting in the gutters.”

**SCENE C**

Liora spent the next hour in a meticulous, almost trance-like state of preparation. She didn't speak as she gathered her tools: the bone needles, the canisters of indigo dye, and the jars of lanolin. Each item was placed into her satchel with a precision that bordered on the obsessive. Thorne watched from a distance, leaning against the cold stone wall, whistling a tune that was perpetually out of key. 

Every time she checked a buckle or tested the edge of a needle, she was checking her own internal tension. Her mind kept drifting back to Rennar. The tug she had felt—it was so brief, so ghostly. Was he involved in the red thread? Or was it just a coincidence, two ghosts haunting her at once? She didn't believe in randomness. Randomness was just a thread you hadn't traced back to its source yet.

As they finally exited the Conclave, the sun was beginning to dip below the jagged skyline of the city. The transition from the cool, indigo-scented air of the hall to the humid, smog-choked streets of the lower districts was jarring. Liora felt the weight of the city’s Weaver-complex—a massive, sprawling entity of millions of lives, all overlapping in a way that made her head throb. 

They walked in silence for a time, Thorne’s loping stride forcing Liora to move faster than she liked. She kept her eyes forward, her fingers snapping an invisible thread between her thumb and forefinger whenever a passerby got too close. The city felt different tonight. The shadows in the alleyways seemed thicker, and the normal hum of the Binding—that constant, low-frequency vibration of existence—felt strained.

“Twenty-four hours,” Liora muttered to herself, a clipped command to keep her focus. 

“What’s that?” Thorne asked, glancing at her.

“The timeline for a snag of this magnitude to stabilize or snap,” she said, her voice lacing with her signature fatalism. “If we don't find the source by tomorrow evening, the friction from that red thread will start pulling on the neighboring connections. It’ll be a cascade failure. The West Quarter won't just have a 'snag'; it’ll have a void.”

Thorne stopped at the corner of a narrow street that led down into the Merchant’s District. The air here smelled of rotting fish and cheap tallow. “Then we’d better start walking. But Liora? If you feel that red thing again... you tell me. Don't try to bind it on your own.”

Liora didn't answer. She couldn't promise that. Her hands were already moving, tracing the frantic, bleeding lines of the city’s outskirts, her eyes searching for the specific, sickly shimmer of the anomaly. The anomalous red thread quivered, uncoiling not toward the supplicant, but straight for her own knotted heart.