The Moonfall was silent.
Corin had never seen it before—this place of legends and whispers—but he recognized the feeling it evoked. An ancient theater, crumbling at the edges, where the last performance had ended long ago, and only ghosts remained to watch the stage.
He stood at the edge of the ruined district. The cobblestones beneath his feet were slick with dew, though the air had a dry, faintly acrid bite, like the smell of fire long forgotten. Overhead, the twisted spires of old factories jutted out from the fog, like broken teeth in a half-forgotten jaw.
"You've been given a chance," Crowl's voice echoed in Corin's mind. "A Threadborn has been sighted here. We need to know its patterns before it strikes again."
Corin gripped the hilt of his dagger, fingers cold against the worn leather. They had taken him out here for a reason.
Vermielle appeared at his side, her shadowy figure barely moving against the mist. "Not everyone who wears Threads is an ally, boy," she said softly. "The Threadborn are dangerous. They've cut ties to the Loom. They don't bend. They don't break. They burn."
Corin nodded, trying to quell the sudden unease in his chest. The Threadborn were an enigma—figures that had once been trained by the Loomguard but had gone rogue, severing their connection to the structured weave of threads. Without guidance, they became wild, unpredictable, and often deadly.
"It won't be easy," Vermielle added, her tone colder now. "It's already cut a few ties of its own. The last thing we need is for it to grow more powerful than it already is."
The air around them shifted. Threads danced in the mist, curling and twisting around lampposts, threading into the walls of buildings. It wasn't like in the training yard, where Corin had learned to sense the vibrations of the threads. This felt... different. Unstable.
Corin's heart rate quickened.
"We're not alone," he whispered, more to himself than to Vermielle.
"Not anymore," she replied, her voice barely audible above the wind.
Suddenly, a scream cut through the fog—a high-pitched, gut-wrenching sound that seemed to split the night. Corin's instincts flared. He drew his dagger, its cold steel glinting under the dull light, and moved toward the sound.
Vermielle followed closely, her figure blending with the shadows like an extension of the night itself. She seemed unbothered by the scream, though Corin could see the tension in her posture. She was waiting for something.
They turned the corner, and the scene unfolded before them.
A figure—a man, or what had once been a man—was pinned to the wall of an abandoned building, the thread-like tendrils of the Threadborn wrapping around his chest, binding him. His skin had turned an unnatural shade of gray, and his eyes were wide open, unblinking, glazed over with the unnatural calm of someone who had long since lost their will.
The man was screaming—his mouth wide, his throat raw—but no sound came. His throat, too, was bound by the same dark threads.
Corin's stomach twisted. This was the work of a Threadborn.
Vermielle stepped forward, her hand raised. The threads recoiled slightly, like they recognized her presence. She muttered something under her breath—a soft, almost imperceptible chant—and the threads snapped back with a vicious hiss.
The man fell to the ground, lifeless, but there was no blood. No wound.
Just the threads, now falling apart like old paper.
Corin stared at the body. "What did it do to him?"
"The Threadborn don't just sever the Loom," Vermielle said quietly. "They corrupt it. They warp the Threads, turning them into something parasitic. The victim becomes a puppet—no longer part of the Loom's weave, but forced to follow the will of whatever twisted mind controls it."
Corin swallowed hard. "How do we stop them?"
Vermielle gave him a sidelong glance. "That's what we need to figure out. And fast."
Just then, another scream echoed through the mist. This one was different. Not a cry of pain, but one of fury.
The Threadborn was close.
The city was vast, but this district—Moonfall—had always been a place of lost things. The forgotten. The forsaken.
Corin's grip tightened on his dagger. His senses flared, and the threads swirled more violently around him. They felt like fingers, trying to pull him deeper into the city's tangled heart. Like the city itself wanted him to succumb to its grasp.
"Stay alert," Vermielle whispered. "The Threadborn will use the city's threads against you. Don't let them control the flow."
Corin nodded, but his mind raced. The stories of rogue Threadborn had always seemed like rumors. Unlikely legends told by older Loomguard members to scare the rookies. But now—standing in the middle of Moonfall, with the scent of decay thick in the air, the oppressive hum of broken threads in the atmosphere—he understood.
The Threadborn were real. And they were hunting.
A shadow flickered across the fog—a blur, fast, too fast.
Corin's instincts screamed at him to move, but before he could react, a sharp pain sliced through his chest. The threads were already there—piercing his skin. Wrapping around his torso, squeezing tight.
He gasped for air. The threads felt like fire, like ice, like nothing he had ever felt before. His Memory Thread flared in response, thrashing against the foreign ones that had wrapped around him.
He struggled against them, but it felt as if the threads had woven themselves into his very bones. As if they were a part of him now, stealing his strength.
Then, the Threadborn emerged from the fog.
It was a figure cloaked in shadows, but underneath, Corin could make out the shape of a man—or something that had once been a man. Its face was obscured by a mask of twisted silver threads, fused into the flesh, leaving only two glowing eyes visible—eyes that burned with a strange, unnatural light.
It grinned.
And then it spoke, its voice distorted by the threads. "You're too weak to be my thread. But you'll make an excellent puppet for my collection."
Corin's vision blurred. He could feel the threads pulling at him, threatening to drag him down into a pit of madness, into a world where there was no escape.
But Memory—it thrummed in his veins.
His heart thundered in his chest. His Thread was still there. Still strong. Still his.
The figure lunged at him, and Corin did the only thing he could think to do.
He reached inside himself, pulling the golden threads that had been seeping through his skin, focusing them.
For the first time, he didn't just manipulate the threads. He rewove them.
He pushed them into the Threadborn's form, wrapping around its body, binding its limbs, constricting the flow of energy.
The Threadborn froze, its eyes widening in surprise. Corin pushed harder, squeezing his eyes shut as the threads he controlled tore through the figure's cloak, unraveling it.
It screamed—not in pain, but in fury.
The figure exploded into a burst of silver threads, scattering like confetti in the wind, and when the dust cleared, Corin stood alone in the ruined street, panting heavily.
The threads were gone.
But the battle wasn't over.