The Thread That Snaps
The silver-masked figure did not flinch. Their raised hand glimmered with ethereal light, as if the Verse itself had been called to attention. The air trembled around Ezren, vibrating with unseen pressure that tightened across his chest like an invisible noose.
"So be it," the figure said.
There was no ceremony. No warning.
The world collapsed.
Ezren dropped to one knee as gravity itself seemed to twist. The very stone beneath him groaned, and the symbols etched into the chamber's walls pulsed red-hot. It was like being thrown into a page mid-rewrite the lines of his reality were being pulled apart.
"Ezren!" the ash-haired woman shouted, stepping forward, but Calder moved faster.
The Bureau agent raised a hand and cast a seal in the air a lattice of violet threads that shimmered and then hardened like glass. It wrapped around the woman, cocooning her in silence. She fought back, threads of white and gold unraveling from her fingertips, but the Bureau's hold was absolute.
Ezren stared at her as the light swallowed her image. Then came the pain.
It wasn't physical. Not at first.
It was the ache of memory being pulled, twisted, overwritten. His mind convulsed, and the notebook in his coat ignited in a glow of silver and crimson.
He screamed.
"Anchor him," someone said.
"Too unstable. If he pulls another thread, the weave collapses."
"Then unwrite him."
No. No
Ezren's thoughts cracked like dry parchment. Flashes of places he hadn't seen in years darted before him: the orphanage gates, a dead bird on the cobblestones, a nameless boy in a red scarf
Then silence.
And a voice.
"Ezren. Wake up."
He opened his eyes.
He was bound.
Silver thread wound around his wrists, ankles, and neck. He lay flat on a cold, stone table inside what looked like an enormous circular chamber, its walls inscribed with layers upon layers of Versecraft. The ceiling was a dome of mirrors, and in every reflection, he was different: older, younger, broken, smiling, bleeding.
In one reflection, he was missing entirely.
Calder stood to the side, arms folded. "You fought the Verse. You should not have survived."
Ezren tried to speak, but the thread around his throat tightened. He coughed, gasping.
"This is containment," Calder said, almost casually. "Every Rewrite bleeds into the Verse, changes the pattern. It's dangerous. That's why we exist. To keep people like you from becoming the fracture."
The silver-masked figure stepped closer. Ezren saw now that their robes were not fabric, but stitched pages of old books, fluttering with each breath they took.
"The Verse chose you," the masked figure said, voice echoing. "But choice is not freedom."
They reached toward Ezren's head. "We will unweave you. Reformat the thread. Strip away the noise."
A hum filled the air.
The mirrors above began to shatter.
From somewhere unseen, something answered.
The notebook in Ezren's coat erupted in light.
It burned through the fabric, soared into the air, and burst open. Pages fluttered like wings, each one scrawled with symbols that pulsed like heartbeats.
The Bureau agents gasped. Calder stepped back.
Ezren felt the thread around his throat loosen for a second.
And in that second, he pulled.
He didn't know how.
He didn't see the thread.
He simply wanted.
The symbols on the page writhed, shimmered, and then bled into the world.
The Verse buckled.
Reality stuttered.
A second Ezren blinked into existence, standing beside the table, eyes wide in shock.
The real Ezren or perhaps the first Ezren screamed as the copy began to fragment.
The masked figure cursed. "He's created an Echo! Shut it down!"
Calder lunged forward, casting binding threads, but the Echo collapsed into blinding light and in that moment, the threads around the real Ezren snapped.
He moved before he could think.
Rolled off the table.
Grabbed the notebook from the air.
And ran.
The Bureau's halls twisted unnaturally, like the Verse was trying to erase his path. Stairs turned into walls. Doors led to nowhere. Paintings blinked.
Ezren ran anyway.
Every heartbeat echoed like a drumbeat. His legs burned. His lungs screamed.
He turned a corner and found Calder waiting.
"You can't outrun the weave," Calder said, raising his hand.
Ezren flipped the notebook open.
Words were already writing themselves.
"The page becomes the passage."
The words burned.
The wall behind Ezren rippled.
He dove through.
He fell.
Through smoke.
Through time.
Through himself.
He landed hard on wet stone.
He was in a street. Dustwell. Night.
People screamed.
There was fire.
And a boy himself, maybe thirteen, standing in the middle of it, staring in terror as a man approached him.
The man was tall. Wrapped in a faded green coat. His eyes held storms.
Ezren's heart stopped.
The man from the memory.
From the warning.
The man knelt in front of the younger Ezren and said words that echoed through the fire and years.
"You will die. You must stop it. You will fail. But you *must try.*"
Ezren reached out.
But the scene cracked, shuddered, and shattered like glass.
He was back in the Archive courtyard.
The ash-haired woman knelt beside him, her hand on his forehead.
"You slipped into an unstable Rewrite," she said. "You're lucky you pulled free."
Ezren sat up, coughing, gripping the notebook tightly.
"They have my Echo," he said.
She nodded grimly.
"Then we move faster. Before they learn how to use it."
And far away, beneath the silver dome of the Bureau chamber, Calder watched a flickering image of the Echo held in stasis. It whispered Ezren's name again and again.
The masked figure turned to Calder.
"Prepare the Scribes. We have found our catalyst."