TO BE HELD IN THREAD

Kaito woke up to the memory of silence—not due to fear or deprivation, but from touch.

Mika had rested against his shoulder beneath the Gathering Spiral, her air shallow and slow, arms wound tightly around herself.

Her fingers still wrapped around the crease of his coat as if she would drift away again. The past few days had coaxed her out. Not body-wise. Not even soul-wise.

But something in her had been named.

And when that happens in the Fork, you don't leave the same.

Above them, the memoryfire whispered in soft flares, casting ghostlight through the sweeping canopy.

Constellations pulsed in odd patterns. Some had formed in the night. Not rooted in myth. Not bound to system lore.

They were patterns that had been formed by choice.

By acceptance.

They shone with the ferocity of something half-forgotten but strongly recalled, threads of story not written by Architects but by those who had dared to remain.