The Girl Who Never Was

The wind at the border of Caldrith Spire tasted of iron and ink.

It rolled over hills scorched by forgotten sieges, whistled through old monuments where names once stood, and howled like a caged memory through the mouths of those who could no longer remember who they were.

The rebels had gathered beneath a withered tree, its branches bare, bark white as bone. The ground around it was strangely untouched—neither ash nor growth. Just silence.

Rien knelt before it, pressing her palm to the soil.

It pulsed beneath her hand.

A warning.

A summons.

A reflection.

"She's waiting for us," Elyra said behind her, quiet but sure.

"Not the Seamwright?" Vel asked, crouching with his blade drawn.

Elyra shook her head. "He sent her ahead. To stop us."

Kaelen stepped forward. "Who?"

Elyra turned to Rien.

"You."

Threadmirror

The field beyond the ridge was still.

Too still.

No birds. No wind. No rustling of thread or leaf. Even the sky had dimmed, as if hesitant to bear witness.

And at the far edge of the plain stood a figure.

Alone.

Rien recognized her before she fully stepped into view.

Same height. Same hair. Same fire-thread at the wrist. Even the walk—measured, resolute, slightly tilted at the left hip from a healed childhood injury.

But her eyes were wrong.

Too calm.

Too perfect.

"You look like me," Rien said as she approached.

The other her tilted her head. "I am you."

"No, you're not. You're what the Seamwright wrote when I refused to break."

"I'm what you could have been—if you'd obeyed. If you'd agreed to forget."

The others stood back, weapons lowered but ready.

Even they felt it.

This wasn't a fight of steel.

It was a fight of story.

The Rewritten Flame

The copy—Threadmirror, as the Seamwright had named her—moved like water. Fluid. Unshaken.

And she spoke with a softness that made Rien's skin crawl.

"You're unstable," she said. "Messy. You've given the world grief when it craved order. And now you lead them into war for the sake of a flame that always devoured."

"No," Rien said, stepping closer. "I remind them of what the Loom stole."

Threadmirror smiled. "They were happier, you know. Before. When their names were light and their memories quiet."

"No one was happy," Rien snapped. "They were just silent. And silence isn't peace."

Something flickered in the other's expression.

A tiny crack.

For just a second, she looked uncertain.

And Rien saw it.

"You're not perfect," Rien whispered. "You were written to be me, but without the pain. Without the loss. But without those… you're hollow."

"I remember the fire," Threadmirror hissed.

"No," Rien said. "You read it."

Unbinding

They circled one another, not with blades, but with words—threads that laced and tangled in the air between them.

Rien reached into her cloak and pulled forth the Vault-thread. It flared in her hand, raw and golden.

"Do you want to know what truth feels like?" she asked.

Threadmirror hesitated.

That was enough.

Rien flung the thread forward—not at her copy, but at the space between them.

It struck the ground.

And memory bloomed.

A scene burst into life—real, vivid, impossible to fake.

Rien as a child, held by Elyra.

The first time her mother taught her to bind a flame-thread.

The laughter.

The warmth.

The choice.

Threadmirror's eyes widened.

She took a step back.

"I… I don't remember this…"

"Because you never lived it."

The memory-thread burned brighter, spilling more fragments into the air.

A brother's hand.

A friend's death.

A promise whispered in a cave.

All of it earned.

All of it real.

And Threadmirror—made of edits, shaped by intention but not memory—began to fracture.

The Unmaking of an Echo

She fell to her knees.

Hands trembling.

Eyes glassy.

"I… was supposed to be stronger than you."

Rien stepped closer, eyes soft with something almost like pity.

"But you were never me."

She knelt and took the copy's hand.

The thread between them hissed—not in pain, but in recognition.

And Threadmirror… smiled.

Just once.

Then faded.

Not in death.

But in release.

Like a character in a book never meant to finish her story.

Toward the Spire

Silence held the rebels for a long moment.

Then Kaelen stepped forward.

"That was her final warning, wasn't it?"

"No," Rien said, rising slowly. "That was his final warning."

She turned to the horizon.

The silhouette of Caldrith Spire loomed in the distance—tall, dark, and humming with false threads that stretched into the sky like puppet strings.

"Now it's our turn."

And the fire followed.