Darkness was never silent.
It pulsed.
A rhythmic thrum, like an invisible heartbeat just beneath the skin of reality, reverberated around Kyren as he drifted. Not through space, but through something denser—thought, memory, ink.
His breath caught in his throat, not from suffocation, but from the weight of something vast pressing inward. Every heartbeat unraveled a thread of who he was. His name. His history. The fragile line between present and future.
He fell.
Not downward, but inward.
Until—
A quill scratched across parchment.
The sound echoed around him, sharp and precise. Then again. And again. Faster.
Kyren's eyes snapped open.
He stood in an impossibly wide hall, its ceiling lost in shadow. Paper-thin walls stretched out in every direction, etched with ink that bled and writhed as if alive. The ground beneath his feet was not stone, but pages—layered, crinkled, soaked in words written in languages he could not read.
A black sun hung overhead, unmoving.
The air stank of parchment and old blood.
He recognized nothing.
Yet he knew—this place was written by him. Or rather, written into him.
"The Scriptorium," whispered a voice he couldn't place, echoing from behind one of the paper walls.
He turned.
Nothing.
Another voice murmured behind him. "Every path begins with ink."
Then another, colder. "And ends with ash."
Kyren clenched his fists. The ritual—it wasn't finished. He wasn't free. This was still part of it.
But something gnawed at his spine, a crawling sensation of being watched. Not by eyes, but by intent.
Then came the footsteps.
Scrape. Drag. Scrape.
A figure limped from around a corner—tall, hunched, robed in tattered black parchment, skin like cracked wax. Its face was covered in shifting runes that slithered with every breath.
"You are not ready," it rasped, voice wet and broken. "But still you stepped forward."
"I'm not here for approval," Kyren replied, though his voice was hoarse. "Where am I?"
"In your own script. In your own fracture. The ink wrote you in both directions… and now you must read."
It raised a hand.
With a blink, the hall changed.
The paper beneath Kyren's feet ignited, burning silently, revealing an obsidian floor etched with three doorways, each rimmed in glowing symbols. Each pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
He staggered, suddenly dizzy.
"You must choose," the figure whispered. "Read your future self. Choose who you might become."
Behind each door, something stirred.
And Kyren realized the truth—
He was being made to confront what the ink might make of him.
The first doorway bled smoke.
Its surface was blackened iron, etched with spiraling threads that writhed as if burned into place by something ancient and furious. As Kyren stepped closer, the markings pulsed—deep, rhythmic, like something buried beneath them was breathing.
He hesitated.
The robed figure behind him whispered: "This is the path of power born in desperation. Of dominance sharpened by pain."
Kyren didn't look back.
He reached out and pushed the door open.
The air shifted.
Heat rolled out, dry and bitter like scorched bones. The hall vanished. In its place stood a ruined battlefield—crimson skies above, ash falling like snow. Fires burned in the distance. Craters littered the land like open wounds.
And at the center of it all…
Himself.
Or something wearing his face.
This version of Kyren stood atop a mountain of corpses, eyes glowing like ember-lit coals. His skin was marked by thick cords of Thread Marks, black as pitch, pulsing like veins fed by fury. Armor clung to him—ink-forged and barbed, etched with names written in pain. In one hand, he held a spine-wrapped blade that dripped with molten shadow.
He looked down at the real Kyren.
Not with recognition.
But with disdain.
"You're soft," the war-wrought Kyren growled. "You still care. Still hesitate. That makes you weak."
Kyren stared back, breath shallow. "What… is this?"
"This is what you become when you stop running and start tearing down the world that broke you. This is you without mercy. Without restraint."
He stepped forward, each footstep cracking the scorched earth.
Kyren tensed. "I won't become that."
"You already are," the other said. "The rift marked you. The Loom sees you. And the moment you watched that man die in Fall's End, you stopped being innocent."
Something inside Kyren twisted at that.
The war-broken version of him raised the blade and pointed it downward. "Take it. Embrace it. Be done with doubt."
Kyren shook his head.
"I'll find a different way."
"You think there's still time to choose?"
Suddenly, the ground split. Black roots surged from beneath, clawing at Kyren's legs, dragging him toward the blade.
He resisted, teeth clenched, veins burning.
"No," he whispered.
And with effort like tearing flesh, he pulled away.
The scene shattered.
The battlefield crumbled like ash in the wind, the burning sky curling inward as the door slammed shut behind him. The obsidian floor returned. The hall. The ink-soaked paper walls.
Kyren collapsed to his knees, gasping.
The robed figure loomed behind him.
"You rejected power," it murmured. "But the ink remembers your willingness to look."
Kyren wiped the sweat from his brow. "Then it remembers the refusal too."
The figure did not reply.
The second door pulsed.
Cold and blue, outlined in frost.
Awaiting his choice.
The second door exhaled a breath of frost.
It stood serene and pale, carved from bone-white stone that shimmered like untouched ice. No symbols. No warnings. Just stillness, and a single phrase engraved above the arch:
"Feel nothing, and you will never break."
Kyren stepped forward, slower this time.
His fingers brushed the surface—it was cold enough to burn. The door slid open without resistance, and he was pulled inside like breath into a grave.
Silence.
No wind. No voices. No color.
The world became a blank expanse. Endless gray. Not even a horizon. And in its center stood Kyren.
Another version.
This Kyren wore no expression. His face was smooth, calm—almost artificial in its serenity. His eyes were faded silver, lifeless yet piercing. His hands were stained with ink, but there was no sign of struggle, no emotion.
He held a book. Its cover was flesh.
The lifeless Kyren looked up.
"I severed the threads," he said. "Emotion, memory, the weight of it all. I cut them one by one until only clarity remained."
Kyren frowned. "And what did that give you?"
"Control." A page turned. "No hesitation. No guilt. Every choice, pure. Efficient. I am the version of you who no longer fears the pain of others—or your own."
The real Kyren stepped closer. "Then what's left of you?"
The false Kyren blinked. "Freedom."
The world flickered.
And suddenly, Kyren saw it all: choices made without empathy, allies abandoned because they were liabilities, lives ended not out of hate, but calculation. He saw this version of himself rise through bloodless logic—cold, untouched, untouchable.
No joy. No sorrow.
Just motion.
"I am the Thread with no knots," the emotionless Kyren said. "I do not fray."
Kyren felt a pull again. The blank world pressed in like water. A weightless void asking only one thing—let go.
Let go of pain.
Of grief.
Of guilt.
Become something simpler.
Quieter.
But in that silence, Kyren heard it—like a heartbeat muffled under snow.
His own voice.
Distant, gasping, struggling to remember.
His mother's hands. That man in Fall's End. The weight of the coin. The girl's warning in the ink.
They mattered.
They had to.
Kyren clenched his fists. "I don't want peace if it costs meaning."
The world shattered again.
This time, not in violence, but with the brittle sound of breaking glass.
The lifeless Kyren crumbled, paper-thin and empty. The gray retreated like mist.
And Kyren stood once more before the robed figure.
"You rejected detachment," it murmured. "But the ink remembers your hunger for clarity."
Kyren's heart pounded.
"I didn't come here to lose myself."
"No," the figure said. "You came to find the version of you that can survive."
The third door stirred.
Old wood, wrapped in chains.
And from behind it, something whispered his name.