Kael awoke with a start. The first light of dawn seeped through the cracks of the hut, casting long, shifting shadows across the floor. But he felt no relief, only the lingering ache of exhaustion. His body was a tapestry of pain—muscles sore, skin scorched, and the faint burn where the violet thread had touched him last night still prickled beneath his skin.
He sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes as if trying to rub away the weight of sleep—though sleep had eluded him for most of the night. His breath was shallow, measured, as if each inhale was a fragile thing he dared not disturb.
The thread's pulse had faded, but its hunger still lingered, curling around his wrist like tendrils of smoke—restless, demanding. He stared at it, knowing it would move again soon, guiding him toward some new fragment of lost time.
He rose, limbs stiff but purposeful, and followed the faint trail of the thread as it slithered through the morning light, silent and relentless. It led not into the woods, as he might have expected, but toward the heart of the village—toward the well.
The well looked unchanged—moss-covered stones, a wooden bucket, rope coiled carelessly by its side. But Kael's eyes lingered. Beneath the water's dark surface, he sensed it—an echo of regret, a discarded thread, a mistake yet to be made.
He approached, clutching the ceremonial knife he'd used before. The scar from yesterday's binding throbbed in reply, whispering of the toll taken.
He whispered in the old tongue—a language not meant for mortal voices, learned from a dying Pathkeeper long past. The words tore from his throat, rough and strained, yet they shimmered in the air like faint sparks.
The water rippled.
Reflections twisted and danced, distorting his face into shadows. For a moment, he saw not himself but a young boy—hair slick with well water, eyes wide with fear, lips parted in a scream that never rang out.
Then a tiny thread surfaced—silver, writhing as if it didn't belong, a vein of lost potential, an opportunity that slipped away. A mistake prevented, a life saved—or lost—by subtle choice.
Kael reached out. His fingers closed around the fragile strand, and pain shot through his arm like lightning. His vision blurred, white-hot, fractured. Flashes of what could have been—what might never be—ripped through him.
In one image, the boy drowned. In another, he stayed safe—at the cost of another's life. A third showed Kael himself blamed, hunted, broken.
He gasped, falling to his knees. His hand clutched the thread as if to hold onto a lifeline, trembling with the effort.
"I bind you," he whispered, voice hoarse but steady. "To hollow, to will, to me."
The thread stiffened, then dissolved into smoke, sinking into his palm like a dying breath. The scar on his hand widened, pulsing with each heartbeat—the price etched into his flesh.
His breath ragged, body trembling, Kael stared at the empty space where the thread had been. The ripple of change spread outward, subtle but undeniable.
The boy would not drown today. Not if Kael had any say in it.
He staggered back, collapsing against the well's edge. Each binding, each sacrifice, left a mark—pain etched into flesh, into memory. But the power—the control—grew.
He clenched his fist, feeling the faint warmth of the violet thread's residual pulse beneath his skin. It was a heavy thing—more than just a gift. It was a chain.
And every thread he wove pulled him closer to a truth he dared not speak aloud.
He was no longer merely a failure. He was the Hollowbinder.
And the world, with all its broken promises and fractured fates, was coming apart at the seams.