Chapter Three: The First Unraveling

The first to fall was Lenna, the weaver's daughter. One moment, she stood clutching her mother's arm, eyes fixed on the sky; the next, she crumpled, gasping as if the air had been stolen from her lungs.

Then the butcher. Then the old scholar who spent his days mapping Seams' ever-changing lands.

One by one, villagers collapsed, clutching their heads, their bodies trembling like loose threads caught in an unseen current.

Yren took a step back, his breath sharp. He wasn't the only one still standing—some, like him, remained unaffected, their eyes darting between the fallen and the growing tear in the sky.

Mareth knelt beside Lenna, pressing two fingers to her throat. A moment later, he exhaled in relief. "She's alive." His gaze lifted, sharp with urgency. "But something is pulling at them. Something we cannot see."

Yren clenched his fists. He had felt it, too—the hum in the air, the whisper curling through his thoughts.

"It begins."

A second pulse rippled from the tear, a low vibration that rattled the stones beneath his feet. This time, something did emerge.

Threads.

Thin, dark strands unraveled from the void, twisting and writhing like living things. They slithered downward, reaching for the fallen villagers. The moment one thread touched Lenna's arm, her body jerked. A faint glow spread from the point of contact, not the warm shimmer of Seams' magic, but something colder.

Yren moved without thinking. He ripped a blade from the leather strap at his hip—a simple carving knife, hardly a weapon—but as the thread curled toward him, instinct screamed.

He slashed.

The thread shrieked. Not with sound, but with a feeling—an agonizing ripple in the air, as if the very fabric of reality recoiled. The thread snapped, dissolving into nothing, and the glow on Lenna's skin faded.

Mareth's eyes widened. "You can cut them?"

Yren stared at the knife in his hand, the edge still shimmering faintly from the contact. He didn't know why it had worked. He only knew that it had.

More threads slithered downward, reaching, searching.

And Yren knew one thing for certain.

This wasn't just a tear in the sky.

Something was trying to stitch its way into Seams.