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Chapter 3: The Dirty Circuit
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Liora pushed herself up from the cold stone floor of the Weaving Chamber, her left palm throbbing with the fresh indigo-and-blood brand, as the Great Loom's dissonant groan vibrated through her bones and into Thorne's restrained form.
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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.
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The air in the chamber was thick with the scent of ozone and wet wool, a cloying humidity that clung to her skin like a second, unwanted layer of fabric. Her vision stuttered: monochrome leached the torchlight's gold, frayback static jagged the edges. The edges of the world were unravelling. To her left, the massive gears of the Loom ground against one another with a shriek that sounded like a dying god’s lament.
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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.
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"Bind or break," she whispered, the words a dry rasp against her teeth.
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"Bind or break," she whispered, the words a dry husk in her throat. "Bind or break."
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She didn't look at the indigo stain yet. She didn't need to. The brand pulsed in time with the erratic thud of a heart that wasn't hers. Through the Dirty Circuit—that jagged, forbidden bridge of blood she had thrown across the abyss—she felt Thorne. He was a cold weight in the back of her mind, a predatory presence wrapped in lead and bitterness. His throat was bruised where her desperate grip had lingered during the binding, and she could feel the phantom ache of it on her own neck.
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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.
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"Move, Voss," a voice hissed from the shadows.
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She found it, and her breath hitched.
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Liora turned her head slowly. Junior Binders huddled near the egress arches, their faces pale masks of terror. They stared at her hand, at the mark of the damned that refused to be hidden. Beyond them, the Archival Guards formed a rigid perimeter, their silver-tipped spears leveled at the man in the chair. But their eyes—wide and darting—remained locked on Liora. To them, she was no longer a prodigy of the Conclave. She was a containment breach.
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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.
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High above, in the Observation Gallery, Elder Maros stood like a monolith of ivory and shadow. His bone-white cane was gripped so tightly his knuckles resembled polished stones. He looked down at the wreckage of the ritual—the shattered silver needle, the blood-slicked dais—and his expression didn’t hold the expected horror. It held the sharp, whetted edge of an opportunist.
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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.
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"Liora Voss," Maros’s voice boomed, amplified by the chamber's acoustics. "The Conclave demands a reckoning. You have bypassed the sanctified dampeners. You have spilled blood upon the Loom’s feet. Explain this... knot."
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*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.*
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Liora forced her fingers to stop their phantom braiding. She stood straight, though her knees felt like frayed silk. She looked up at the polarized faces of the Conclave: the conservatives already reaching for their severance shears, and the radicals leaning forward with a hunger that matched Maros’s.
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"Be quiet," she hissed, though there was no one near enough to hear.
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"This is not a knot, Elder," Liora said, her voice regaining its clipped, ritual authority. "It is a revelation. The Great Weave is rotting—the silver needle didn't break by accident, it was rejected by the decay at the center. I haven't committed heresy. I have found a bypass. A Dirty Circuit."
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*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?*
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She stepped toward the lead-lined restraint chair where Thorne Quill sat. He looked like a ghost stained in her own blood. His chest was vibrating, a low-frequency resonance that matched the Loom’s groan. As she approached, the sensory bleed spiked.
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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.
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She felt his cynicism—a sharp, metallic taste in the back of her throat. She felt the way his mind pushed back against the intrusion, a wolf snapping at a hand through the bars of a cage. But beneath the snarl, there was a sudden, intrusive warmth. It was her own intent, leaking into him, heating his cold, guarded blood.
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"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."
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"You’re shaking, Weaver," Thorne growled. The sound was low, a jagged vibration that Liora felt in her own marrow. "Is the little puppet realizing she’s tied her own strings to a landslide?"
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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.
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"Quiet, battery," Liora snapped, her fingers twitching. She reached out, not to touch him—she never touched casually—but to hover her branded hand over his heart. "Watch the weave, or it’ll unravel us both."
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"The indigo is spreading, Liora."
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"Demonstrate," Maros commanded from above. "Prove the stability of this... connection. Or we sever the boy and exile you before the hour is out."
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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.
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Liora swallowed. The monochrome static flared, turning the Elder's white robes into a flickering grey blur. Panic surfaced, a cold tide. *Bind-bind-bind,* she thought, the obsessive rhythm taking over. *Keep the tension. Don’t let the thread go slack.*
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"I am stabilizing it, Elder," she said, her voice clipped, a ritual command to herself as much as an answer to him.
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She closed her eyes, plunging into the internal architecture of the Binding. In the darkness of her mind’s eye, she didn't see a soul; she saw a Thirteenth Strand. It was a terrifying, oily thing that shouldn't exist, weaving through Thorne’s essence with a logic that defied the Loom’s binary geometry. It was wild. It was Unbinding.
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"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."
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She grabbed hold of it.
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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.
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Thorne arched in the chair, a choked sound escaping his bruised throat. Liora’s head snapped back. The pain was exquisite—a searing line of fire that ran from her palm, up her arm, and directly into the core of her being. She wasn't just observing him; she was drowning in him. She felt his predatory hunger, his history of broken things, and the strange, terrifying realization that he wasn't just a prisoner. He was a catalyst.
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"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."
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The Loom reacted. The "dead-tone" dissonance shifted into a scream. The lower gears, massive wheels of brass and stone, began to rotate in reverse, sparked by Thorne’s resonance.
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"It’s not power," Liora spat, her fingers knotting an invisible loop. "It’s a parasite."
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"The threads," Liora gasped, her vision failing entirely now, replaced by a world of vibrating strings. "They aren't just crossing... they’re merging. Elder, do you see? He doesn't just hold the power. He *refines* it."
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*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.*
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"It's unstable!" a voice shouted from the gallery. "The resonance is tearing the floor apart! Sever them!"
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"Quiet!" Liora shouted, the word echoing off the lead-lined walls.
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"No!" Maros’s cane slammed against the marble railing with a crack like a gunshot. "Look at the Indigo Stain! It’s not spreading. It’s pulsing. It’s maintaining the circuit without a single dampener. It’s a closed loop of raw intent."
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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."
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Liora felt her mind begin to fray. Images of her parents' failure—the image of their souls bursting into white light as the Loom rejected them—flashed behind her eyelids. She began to braid her own hair with her right hand, a frantic, rhythmic motion to keep herself anchored to the physical world. *Bind-bind-bind it now. Don't let the silver snap. Bind-bind-bind.*
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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.
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"Liora!" Thorne’s voice reached her, not through the air, but through the blood. "Stop pulling! You're tightening the noose!"
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"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.
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"I have to... fix it," she whispered, her words twisting into weaving metaphors. "The red thread whispers betrayal, Thorne. I have to lock the warp."
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"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."
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"You can't lock me, you fool! Feed it slack!"
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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.
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She felt his will slam into hers—not a blow, but a release. He forced a surge of his own chaotic energy into the brand. It was like a sudden influx of air into a vacuum. The Loom’s scream died down into a heavy, expectant hum. The monochrome static subsided, leaving Liora gasping, her forehead resting inches from Thorne’s, her hand still hovering over his chest.
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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.
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The chamber fell into a deafening silence, save for the heavy, synchronous breathing of the two bound souls.
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"Give me your hand," she commanded Thorne.
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Maros leaned over the railing, his eyes reflecting the indigo glow of Liora’s hand. He looked at the other Binders, his voice now a calculated silken thread. "A sanctioned discovery. As I suspected. The girl has not committed heresy; she has performed an evolution. The Great Weave is rotting, yes... and here we have the graft that might save it."
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"I’m a bit tied up at the moment," he replied, gesturing with a tilt of his head to the heavy lead shackles.
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The polarized whispers shifted. The terror in the room didn't vanish, but it transformed into something else: curiosity. Greed. A weapon had been forged, and every faction in the Conclave wanted to be the one to hold the hilt.
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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.
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Liora backed away from Thorne, her movements stiff. She snapped her thumb and forefinger together—an impatient, tactile habit to clear the phantom sensation of his skin—and smoothed her hair. Her fatalism returned, a cold cloak she wrapped around herself to hide the lingering tremor in her soul.
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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.
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"It's a dirty fix, Elder," Liora said, looking up at Maros with eyes that had seen the grey void at the edge of the world. "But it's the only one you have left."
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"Bind... bind... bind it now," she chanted, her voice a frantic litany.
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She looked back at Thorne. He was watching her with a predatory intensity that made her skin crawl. He wasn't just a battery anymore. He had felt her fear. He had seen the memories of her parents' death in the sensory bleed. He knew she was a master of threads who was deathly afraid of being unraveled.
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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.
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The Archival Guards moved in to reset the lead-lined restraints, but they moved with a new kind of caution. They didn't just fear Liora’s stain anymore; they feared the man who could make the Great Loom scream.
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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.
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As the chamber's indigo glow pulsed, Thorne's eyes lock on Liora's through the frayback static, his voice a low growl: "You wove me in, weaver—but I'm the thread that cuts."
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*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.*
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*I won't let it break,* she threw back at him. *I won't let anything else break.*
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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.
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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."
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He turned and began to walk away, his cane tapping a triumphant rhythm. "Keep her under guard. And ensure the battery remains... charged."
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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.
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She reached up to wipe sweat from her brow, but then she felt it—a sudden, sharp pull at the base of her skull.
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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.
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*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.*
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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.
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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.
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She could only see him.
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His eyes were two pits of darkness in a gray universe, and his voice was the only sound left in the world.
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"Bind tighter, Weaver," Thorne whispered in the silence of her mind, "or we both unravel."
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