"The silver thread"

CHAPTER 16: THE SILVER THREAD

By dawn, the lilacs had bloomed again—petals dark as tar. Clara stood at the edge of Hollow's End, feeling the silver thread pulsing beneath her skin, a phantom heartbeat in her chest. The air shimmered with an eerie resonance—the same droning hum from her childhood, the one her parents had dismissed as tinnitus. Liam had called it the Hollow's hymn.

Now, it thrummed in her bones.

"Look," Liam said, voice tight. He gestured toward the well. Thick, dark fluid seeped from between the stones, bleeding into the earth. Clara knelt, brushing her fingers through the viscous liquid. It was feverishly warm.

"It's spreading," she whispered.

Aisling stepped from the tree line, her crimson cloak in tatters, her eyes void-like hollows. "The rot is in the water now. The soil. The air." She motioned to the well. "This town is bleeding."

Clara's reflection flickered across the surface—not her own, but the first Harlow heir's. A girl wreathed in a crown of thorns, her eyes smoldering like dying embers.

"She's here," Clara murmured. "The one bound to the mill."

Aisling's laugh was raw, brittle. "You think a ghost can save you? The curse isn't a spirit—it's a disease. It adapts. Evolves." She reached for the dagger resting on the church altar, its blade now etched with the silver thread from Clara's chest. "And this is the only cure."

Liam moved between them, his shadow stretching long in the waning night. "You're not touching her."

Aisling's gaze flicked to the base of his throat, where a single black thorn pulsed just beneath his skin. "The Thorned King whispers, doesn't he?"

Liam's fingers twitched, but his voice was steady. "He's not me."

Aisling tilted her head. "Not yet." She lifted her hand, brushing her fingertips against the thorn. "The rot takes what it wants. First the weak. Then the strong." Her attention snapped to Clara. "Then the ones who wear crowns."

The first Harlow heir materialized at dusk, a spectral figure in the ruins of the church. She stood where the altar had once been, hands clasped around a skeletal crown.

"You are the lie," she said, her voice layered with echoes. "The curse chose you because you are like it—broken, hungry, alive."

Clara took a step forward, the silver thread glowing beneath her skin. "Tell me how to end this."

The ghost's smile cut jagged across her face, revealing teeth like needle-thin thorns. "You don't." She extended the crown. "You become it."

Clara hesitated. Her mother's voice whispered in her mind: Promises are cages. Break them.

She reached for the crown.

The mill's foundation stone had changed. It was no longer a skull but a heaving, obsidian mass fused with the earth. Aisling stood beside it, gripping the dagger, her knuckles white.

"Carve the truth," she said, her voice a brittle hiss. "Again."

Clara knelt, pressing the dagger's tip against the stone. The moment the blade bit in, black veins erupted from the wound, snaking up her arm. The ghost of the first Harlow heir stood behind her, laughing softly.

"YES," the Thorned King's voice thundered through Liam. He stood at the clearing's edge, eyes consumed by ink. "BECOME THE LIE."

The foundation stone shrieked. The ground split open, revealing a vast cavern below—a nest of black roots laced with glimmering silver threads.

Clara's vision wavered. Through the haze, she saw her mother—young, desperate—kneeling before the curse, weaving the first silver thread into its core.

"To protect her," she whispered.

The first Harlow heir leaned close, her voice a breath of shadow. "Your mother was a fool. The curse cannot be bound. It can only be fed."

Clara's grip tightened. She drove the dagger deeper. The roots convulsed, lashing toward the sky. The ghost crumbled into ash, her last words a parting hiss:

"You'll wear the crown. You'll wear it forever."

Clara awoke in the ruined church, the dagger embedded in her palm. Liam knelt beside her, his breathing slow, his eyes black as pitch.

"You did it," he murmured, his voice not entirely his own. "You became the lie."

At the doorway, Aisling stood motionless, her cloak fused with creeping tendrils of rot. "The curse is gone," she said, though her voice carried no triumph. "But you're not."

Clara pressed a trembling hand to her chest. The silver thread had spread, weaving itself into a crown of thorns beneath her skin. Outside, the wind carried a familiar, mocking laugh.