The road wound lazy through the orchard, bricks sunk and shifting with the seasons, their colours faded to something not quite grey, not quite gold.

Cherry trees lined the path, their blossoms falling in a slow, steady rain that never touched the ground.

The breeze smelled like fresh silk and rain yet to fall.
It should have felt safe. It should have felt like a place that remembered you.

Far beyond the last tree, beyond the humble cottages with their sagging thatch and crooked windows, the mountain stabbed into the sky — so tall it punched a hole in the clouds and twisted them into a crown of boiling storms.

The thread shimmered faintly in the dust at your feet. Waiting. A promise, or a warning — you couldn’t tell.

You took a step. The world shivered.

You ignored the thread. Just for a moment. Just to see.

The bricks tilted under your feet, loose and uneven, but the road still held.

Off to the side, a fence leaned into the orchard’s shadows — woven from old, splintering branches, grey with the memory of a tree no one remembered planting.

You ran your fingers along the top rail. The wood flaked at your touch — dry and crumbling, as if it had been left too long in the sun, or too long forgotten.

On one of the leaning posts, a moth clung. Its wings were huge — far too large for a creature so still — and patterned not in colours, but in deep cracks, like dried riverbeds.
It didn’t move when the breeze touched it. It didn’t move when you leaned closer.

It only watched. If moths could watch.

You stepped back.

The thread shimmered again, slightly brighter this time. Still waiting. Still patient. But maybe not forever.

You turned away again. Simply drifting, pulled by some curiosity you didn’t understand.

You passed another sagging fence, another broken gate, your boots scuffing the dust from the broken road.

That’s when you felt it — not a sound, not a shadow, but a weight.

You turned, and there it was. Sitting calmly in the middle of the road, as if it had always been there.

A cat. Small, impossible. Its fur dark at the roots, fading to ghost-pale at the tips — shimmering faintly in the muted light.

Its eyes caught you — wide, sky-blue, and deep as fallen stars. Tiny flecks of silver drifted inside them, falling and rising without end.

It said nothing. Only tilted its head at you, slow and deliberate, as if asking a question you didn’t understand yet.

When you stepped toward it, it blinked once. When you turned to look down another path — it was there again, a few steps ahead, sitting in the dust, waiting.

You hadn’t seen it move. You didn’t need to.

It was simply where it needed to be.

Just like the thread. Just like the waiting storm above the mountain.

Somewhere inside you, a voice you barely remembered whispered:

“Stay too long in the wrong places, and even the forgotten things will remember you.”

You set your jaw. You stepped forward, moving to sidestep the cat.

It didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Only watched.

You kept your eyes on it — cautious, suspicious — and slid around, keeping a wide arc.

Your boots kicked up dust from the broken road. The blossoms overhead stirred, but the wind had died.

You turned to look back —

Nothing.

No cat. No thread. No watcher.

Just empty road and sagging fences, the orchard drooping heavy with forgotten years.

Relief brushed you — shallow, foolish.

You turned back around —

— and there it was.

Sitting in the road directly ahead. Exactly where you meant to step. Exactly where you didn’t want it to be.

The cat blinked slowly. No sound. No growl. No hiss.

Just that quiet, impossible stare — like it knew something you hadn’t figured out yet.

The ground under your feet felt wrong. Loose, hollow. As if the bricks were no longer resting on earth, but on something older. Something deeper.

The thread pulsed once behind you — not with anger, not with demand — but with a warning.

The wind returned, but it wasn’t the soft breeze of silk and rain anymore.

It carried a different scent now — something dry, cracked, and old.

And somewhere beneath your feet, too deep to name, the world breathed out a sigh you didn’t want to understand.

You tightened your grip on yourself. Shoved down the unease. Locked your jaw against the fear blooming under your ribs.

You moved. Not cautious anymore — not hesitant. Determined.

The cat stayed seated in the dust, head tilted, watching you make the choice.

The thread behind you flickered — blue fading into violet, violet sinking into red, a silent unravelling of the road you had not chosen.

You stepped wide, stomping past it, refusing to look back at the waiting thread. Refusing to look at the place you were meant to walk.

You set your foot down hard —

And the ground gave way.

Not crumbling. Not collapsing.

Breathing.

The earth itself shuddered, and a sound like a heartbeat deep in stone boomed once under your feet.

The blossoms overhead froze in the air — caught mid-fall, motionless, trembling.

The sky flickered — not light, not dark — just wrong, a shiver through the clouds that made your stomach clench.

Another step — and again, the ground rippled, like something vast and ancient had stirred far below.

The cat rose silently to its feet. It didn’t run. It didn’t flee.

It just watched.

And in the distance, past the orchard, past the sagging cottages and the crooked fences, the first drumbeat rolled across the sky.

Slow. Heavy. Final.

Not thunder. Not weather.

A calling.

A reminder: You were not alone in this world. And now — it knew you were here.

---

The ground beneath you pulsed once more, a slow, awful swell, like the world had a heartbeat you weren’t meant to hear.

The blossoms overhead — those gentle, perfect petals — hung frozen for a breath longer.

Then, one by one, they blackened where they floated, crisping at the edges, collapsing into brittle ash that fell sideways instead of down.

The road sighed beneath your boots. The bricks softened — not melting, not breaking — but sagging, as if losing the memory of what “solid” meant.

Above it all, the sky twisted tighter — reds leaking into purples, bruises spreading across the clouds that crowned the distant mountain.

The thread behind you dimmed — a little less vibrant, a little less real.

And in the dead hush, before the next drumbeat rolled through the hollow sky, you heard it:

A faint crick-crack — like something unseen shifting its weight. Something old. Something awake now.

Snowsoul still stood in the road, but its posture had changed. Lower. Tighter. The fur along its spine lifting, the way a tree lifts its bark before it splits.

Threads of faint silver-light dripped from its paws, pooling quietly into the dust, where the road drank them without a sound.

It didn’t look at you.

It looked past you.

At something you couldn’t yet see.

Or maybe something you refused to see.

The ground trembled under your boots, quicker now — a faster shiver, like something trapped too long beginning to thrash.

The sky above the mountain blackened, clouds boiling low.

The drums came again — louder, panicked. A stampede of thunder, no rhythm but rage.

You turned toward the sagging cottages — instinct, not thought.

And then —

BANG.

A door burst open, wood splintering, the noise slamming into the hollow orchard like a scream in the darkness.

From the broken threshold, a figure stumbled out — wild-eyed, breathless, clutching a rusted tool like a weapon.

A young woman, clothes rough and stained for working the land. Hair braided tight down her back. Boots caked in the black mud of a forgotten season.

She spun toward you — fear blazing in her. Not of you. Of what followed.

Her voice tore out, ragged:

“Why did you have to arrive now? Why? Do you even know what you’ve started?”

Her breath came ragged, shoulders trembling.

The orchard trembled again. Petals crumbled midair into ash. The air thickened into a bruised gold.

She stared at you, eyes burning — not with hatred, but the shattered hope of someone who almost survived forgetting.

Then, bitter and low:

“It doesn’t matter. They’re awake now.”

Her next words broke sharper, almost a dare:

“Maybe you can still fix this.”

She didn’t move to follow.

She didn’t offer her hand.

The unspoken truth hung in the air between you: she wasn’t planning on coming with you.

Far beyond the fields, something roared.

Not a sound meant for men.

It cracked the air, rattling the sagging fences, shivering the few blossoms still clinging to dead branches.

Snowsoul pressed tighter against your leg, leaving fading streaks of silver.

The woman flinched.

A second roar answered the first, rougher, dragging itself out of the broken sky.

And then — a third. A fourth. Another. Another.

Not together. A rolling tide.

The drums stumbled, as if even they could feel the shape of what was coming.

Shapes lurched free from the broken tar — not beasts, not men, but things that might once have been both.

Their bodies were shaped of bark and earth, limbs twisted like roots, faces blurred beneath thick black sap.

They dragged themselves forward, movements slow and broken, branches cracking against the air as if reaching for something already lost.

They were not dead.

Only drowning — too burdened by memory to let go, too broken to still protect.

The woman rasped, her voice harsh with fear:

“We have to go.”

No path. No plan.

Only the certainty of prey being noticed.

The thread flickered ahead.

The world lurched toward you.

The drums faltered again, breaking apart under the rising howls.

The woman grabbed your arm.

Snowsoul — who had only ever watched — stepped forward.

Its fur blazed — silver unraveling into the dark — its small body shrinking under the weight of what approached.

And it spoke:

“Run, Threadwalker. Run, or be forgotten.”

The light in its fur guttered like a dying flame.

It didn’t wait to see if you obeyed.

It bounded into the ash-choked road, a faint line of silver in the growing dark.

You ran.

The woman at your side, her breath tearing in her throat.

Snowsoul loped ahead, scattering dying silver threadlight and ash with every stride, each movement costing a little more of itself.

Behind you, the roars closed in.

And the rot moved with them.

Not as a flood — a crawling collapse:

Cottages twisted inward, blackened, their roofs sagging like broken spines.

The once-living guardians staggered after, tar-soaked and half-remembered, branches clawing blindly at the air.

The very sky cracked, leaking colours that bled wrong across the dying world.

The path sagged under your boots.

Except —

The thread.

Still ahead. Still faint. Still true.

Everywhere else — chaos.

Where the thread touched — order.

Snowsoul skidded to a halt at a split in the road —

Its paws struck the broken stones, and threads of silver spilled from its fur — not light, not sap, but something finer. Something living.

The black-to-white shimmer of its coat unravelled in places, thin lines flowing into the dust, stitching themselves desperately into the cracked path.

Each step left more behind — a slow offering, a quiet unraveling.

The thread ahead pulsed weakly — strained, fragile.

You understood then:

Snowsoul wasn’t just guiding you.

It was binding the way.

Weaving what little it had left into the dying world — so you could still find it.

And what it lost now, it would not get back.

One path to the right sagged into tar and bone, slick with the wreckage of what once lived.

The other — broken, frayed — clung stubbornly to the silver thread.

No time.

No thought.

Only choice.

You veered left — toward the thread.

The woman stumbled — falling hard to one knee.

Without thinking, you seized her hand, hauling her up, pulling her with you before the rot could claim her too.

Snowsoul darted ahead, scattering dying silver threadlight and ash with every stride, each movement costing a little more of itself.

Behind you — the once-guardians dragged through the collapse, their tar-choked limbs sagging under the memory of what they could no longer protect.

You didn’t look back.

You didn’t need to.

The thread flared sharp under your boots.

And for a moment —

Just a moment —

The world held.

You had chosen.

Memory over forgetting.

Thread over ruin.

And you ran —
to the thread,
grabbing your companion —
your unwilling partner in witnessing —
pulling her with you into whatever waited beyond.

---

❂ The thread winds this way.
Follow where it frays, tangles, or tightens.
Each part holds the next—and the next part is just below.