Chapter Four: Frayed Edges

Yren's pulse pounded as more of the dark threads twisted down from the tear, searching, grasping. The villagers who had collapsed remained still, their breaths shallow, their bodies rigid like dolls half-stitched into some unfinished tapestry.

Mareth rose from Lenna's side, his golden-threaded robes shifting with the wind. "We need to get them inside. Away from those things."

But even as he spoke, the threads slithered lower, curling through the air like the fingers of an unseen hand. One brushed the butcher's cheek, and his body gave a violent shudder. A faint, pulsing glow spread across his skin—the same eerie light that had flickered through Lenna.

Yren's grip tightened around his knife. The blade had severed one thread before. He could do it again.

Without hesitation, he lunged forward and slashed. The dark strand recoiled with another silent, shuddering scream, snapping into nothing. The glow faded from the butcher's skin, and his chest rose with a deeper breath.

Mareth's gaze flickered between the knife and the unraveling sky. "That blade. It reacts to them."

"I don't know why," Yren admitted, but there was no time for answers. More threads spiraled downward, their movements growing more frantic, more desperate.

Other villagers scrambled to help, dragging the unconscious away from the open square, but the threads pursued, slithering faster, multiplying. The knife in Yren's hand felt too small, too simple to stand against whatever force was trying to breach Seams.

And then the sky shifted.

The tear pulsed, stretching wider, and for a single heartbeat, Yren saw through it.

Not into the void. Not into darkness.

But into another world.

A world of twisting shapes and towering structures, where light and shadow wove together in patterns his mind could barely comprehend.

And in that world, something looked back at him.

A figure, wrapped in shifting threads, its form barely human. It stood just beyond the veil, unseen by the others.

But Yren felt its gaze. Cold. Knowing.

The whisper returned, curling through his bones.

"The weave is breaking. And you—"

The figure tilted its head.

"—are a loose thread."

The tear shuddered. The vision vanished.

And all around him, the fabric of Seams began to unravel.