Chapter 6: The Threads Beneath Us

Dee Megus didn't like interruptions.

He could tolerate cosmic hiccups, rolling thread accidents, and even Hiro's once-per-season pudding-based collapses of local reality. But true interruptions—the kind that tugged the thread under his feet when no one was touching the weave—those he took very seriously.

And one of them had just happened.

Again.

For the third time this week.

While he was in the middle of weaving a very important hat.

The Hat Incident

It was a brilliant morning.

Dee was high on a cliff, shaping golden thread into a ceremonial sun-hat for a group of birds who had declared themselves philosophers. (He respected the hustle.)

But mid-stitch, he felt a pull.

Not a ripple.

Not a tremor.

A pull—as if something underneath the world had tried to unravel a stitch he hadn't made yet.

He looked up, eyes narrowed.

A piece of the sky twitched.

Just slightly.

Too subtle for mortals. Too quiet for Hiro. But Dee noticed.

He always noticed.

Consultation with the Ground

He called the dirt.

Literally.

In the clearing beneath the cliff, Dee drew a spiral with the heel of his sandal and whispered ancient root-words into it.

The earth groaned, yawned, and then rumbled in the lazy voice of something who really wanted to go back to sleep.

"Threadmaster…"

"Yes, yes, sorry to wake you, Mud."

"Again…?"

"There was a tug."

"Another?"

"Yes."

The earth shifted uncomfortably.

"It's under the Loomshells. Deep. Wiggly. Old."

"Wiggly?" Dee asked. "That's a technical term now?"

"I'm asleep, not dead," the earth muttered. "Go check the Threads Beneath."

Then it promptly rolled over and stopped responding.

The Threads Beneath

The Loomshells were a series of underground vaults, some natural, some shaped by Dee long ago when he first discovered how to stitch mana into reality. They weren't just where the world rested—they were where the world remembered how to stay woven.

Dee hadn't been down there in ages.

Most of the wards were self-maintaining. Most of the seals were locked behind logic loops and thread-knots only he could untangle.

And yet...

One of them had been touched.

He descended alone.

Thread by thread, spiral by spiral, deeper and deeper, until the air tasted like static and the mana hummed in seven languages at once.

A Missing Stitch

In the third Loomshell—between the vault of Direction and the chamber of Color—he found it.

A missing stitch.

It shouldn't have been possible.

He knelt.

Ran his fingers over the air.

A gap.

A void shaped exactly like a thread that had never been created.

Dee went still.

"No one but me can unweave here," he whispered. "Unless…"

He didn't say it.

Didn't want to say it.

He rewove the gap. Carefully.

Left a humming net of nonsense-rhymes to seal it better this time.

But even as he worked, he felt the faintest echo.

Laughter.

Not cruel.

Not loud.

But ancient.

Familiar.

Unwelcome.

Surface Problems

Meanwhile, Hiro and Vampher were having an argument about soup.

Again.

"It's not just soup," Hiro insisted, stirring a bubbling pot. "It's essence! I combined root vegetables with healing thread and one of those glowing mushrooms from chapter two!"

"You named that mushroom Kevin," Vampher said. "Kevin tried to bite me."

"He's calmed down!"

The pot hissed.

Vampher took two slow steps back.

"Dee!" he called. "Your walking fire hazard is cooking again!"

Dee emerged from the ground twenty feet away, face grim, robes disheveled.

"Oh good," Vampher muttered. "He has the apocalypse face."

Hiro squinted. "I thought that was just his 'I've been thinking too hard again' face."

"No," said Dee. "This is my 'someone touched a forbidden thread in the underbelly of the universe' face."

Pause.

"...Oh," Hiro said. "That's worse."

The Talk

They gathered near a lazy river, under a tree that liked to gossip with birds. (It would later tell the story to a group of bees who turned it into a tragic ballad.)

Dee drew a diagram in the dirt.

"This," he said, "is the base lattice of Laphyzel. The Threads Beneath Us."

Hiro leaned in. "Looks like a waffle."

"It is not a waffle."

"Can it be?"

"No."

Vampher frowned. "What's the hole?"

"That's the problem. A thread was never born. Something removed the idea of it."

Hiro blinked. "That's... not possible, right?"

"No," Dee agreed. "Not unless it's something older than threadweaving."

A silence followed.

Vampher broke it.

"The Severed Loom?"

"I don't think so," Dee said slowly. "It felt… smaller. Not in power. In intent. Like a whisper. A test."

Another pause.

"Should we panic?" Hiro asked.

"No," Dee said. "We should investigate."

"Then panic?"

"Later."

Unraveling Clues

That night, Dee sat by his loom and whispered to the stars.

He rewove the event backward — let the thread of the gap tell him a story.

But something kept pushing back.

Not rejecting him.

Just… teasing.

Whenever he reached the memory, it turned into something silly.

A dancing cup.

A limerick.

A duck.

At first Dee thought it was corruption.

But then it laughed again.

And he knew:

Someone was watching.

Someone who could weave without disturbing the front layer of reality. Someone clever.

Someone older than he expected.

The Others Know Nothing

He didn't tell Hiro.

Didn't tell Vampher.

They had enough on their minds. Hiro was trying to invent "mana syrup," and Vampher was busy fighting a poem that had accidentally become sentient.

Dee watched them from the edge of the firelight.

They were happy.

He didn't want to ruin that.

Not yet.

Far Away, in the Deep Between

The Observer leaned back.

He hadn't touched the vault directly—only nudged the thread that would've made a thread. An idea-not-yet.

It was enough.

Now he knew the weave was listening again.

Now Dee knew something was watching.

Perfect.

He pulled a teacup from the future, drank it, and vanished into the cracks of possibility.

Last Lines

Dee weaved a single word into the air above the fire as the others slept:

"Why?"

The threads refused to answer.

But they shimmered.

And one thread twisted slightly.

Playfully.

Dee exhaled.

He would wait.

But he would be ready.

Next time, when the threads pulled back—

He would pull harder.