Threadless
To understand how this universe ends, one must first return to the beginning of all creation. Before anything existed, there was only an endless Void—limitless, silent, and eternal. Drifting within it was the Primordial Mind, a fragment of ancient thought left over from a universe long forgotten.
From that emptiness, the Primordial Mind grew until a vibration—the first strike of matter—echoed across the Void. The resonance shattered the Mind into countless fragments of awareness, forming a collective known as the Eldritch Horrors. Among them, three retained the core of their original knowledge: Eternity, Existence, and Entropy.
Eternity sought to ignite the power of creation, consuming itself to become the threads from which the Loom of Creation was woven. Through that sacrifice, the first Pattern emerged, weaving the foundations of reality. Thus, the Void transformed into the Eternal Nexus, a boundless realm where infinite worlds would one day converge.
Existence became the overseer of time and space, splintering into innumerable selves that stitched together the framework of reality. Ever curious, Existence watched over all things, seeking the forbidden instant—the moment where existence itself comes to an end.
Entropy withdrew from its siblings, standing alone at the edge of all creation. There, it gazed upon the resurgent echoes of the primeval Void—the restless Eldritch Horrors. Waiting and watching, Entropy guarded the boundaries of the Loom, behind which a trapped mind twisted and clawed. Each fraying thread, each whisper through the darkness, brought it closer to the chance of unraveling the Loom they so despise.
The hammer fell in rhythmic percussion against steel, a heartbeat that echoed through the cavernous factory floor. Elias Cain wiped sweat from his brow with a forearm already blackened with soot and grime, the motion automatic after three years of night shifts in the shipyards of Blackcliff. Around him, the night crew worked with practiced efficiency—two hundred men and women forging the bones of vessels that would carry House Vragi’s trade across distant seas.
He was invisible here. That was the point.
The factory stretched into shadow above him, iron girders disappearing into darkness where even the oil lamps couldn’t reach. The air tasted of metal and smoke, thick enough to coat the lungs. Elias had grown used to it, the way he’d grown used to being unremarkable. Twenty years old and already a ghost in his own life.
“Cain! Section seven needs another load of rivets!”
Elias nodded to the foreman—a man whose name he’d learned and forgotten a dozen times—and hefted the heavy box. His shoulders protested, muscles burning from hours of labor, but he said nothing. The threadless didn’t complain. They were fortunate to have work at all.
He made his way across the factory floor, navigating between work stations where Threadweavers shaped reality with casual gestures. A woman with copper hair held her palm over a joint, her gift heating metal to perfect malleability without flame. A man traced patterns in the air, and bolts aligned themselves with impossible precision. Another worker, barely visible in the shadows, seemed to strengthen the very structure of wood, making it more resilient than nature intended.
Magic. The gift of communion with the Loom of Creation, the cosmic tapestry that undergirded all reality. Some could conjure walls of flame. Others controlled weather, healed wounds, or saw the future in fragments. Most Threadweavers were weak—parlor tricks and minor conveniences. But even the weakest gift elevated a person above those like Elias, who had nothing.
He’d been tested as a child. Twice. Three times, actually, because his mother—dead now five years—had refused to accept the results. Each time, the Church examiner had delivered the same verdict with varying degrees of sympathy:no connection to the Loom detected.
No gift. No potential. No future beyond labor and obscurity.
Elias set down the rivets and turned to head back when a hand caught his shoulder, spinning him roughly around.
“Cain.” Malen’s voice carried the particular edge of someone looking for a fight. “We need to talk.”
Elias recognized the supervisor—mid-thirties, thinning hair, a permanent sneer that suggested life had disappointed him long ago. Malen possessed a gift for metalwork manipulation, one that gave him supervisory status and an inflated sense of importance.
“About what?” Elias kept his voice neutral, his posture unthreatening. Confrontation was dangerous for the threadless. The gifted could always claim provocation, could always justify violence as necessary discipline.
“About you taking my hours.” Malen stepped closer, close enough that Elias could smell the cheap whiskey on his breath. “I need those night shifts, and somehow the threadless rat keeps getting assigned what should be mine.”
“I didn’t ask for them,” Elias said carefully. “The foreman assigns—”
“Don’t give me that.” Malen’s hand shot out, grabbing Elias by the collar. “You think I don’t know? You’ve been working extra shifts, making yourself indispensable, sucking up to anyone with authority.”
That was absurd. Elias barely spoke to anyone. But arguing would only escalate things. “If you want to talk to the foreman—”
“I don’t want to talk to anyone.” Malen released Elias’s collar, but his expression darkened. “I want you gone. Quit, transfer, I don’t care. Just get out of my way.”
Around them, work had slowed. Other laborers were watching now, some with concern, most with the detached interest of people witnessing street theater. No one would intervene. The gifted handled their own business, and the threadless knew better than to attract attention.
“I’m not quitting,” Elias said quietly. “I need this job.”
“Then I’ll make you quit.”
Malen’s hand extended toward a metal rod cooling on a nearby workbench. His eyes unfocused slightly—the look of a Threadweaver reaching for the Loom—and the rod began to glow, heat radiating from it in visible waves. When Malen picked it up, the metal was orange-red, hot enough to brand flesh, to cripple, to maim.
“You know what I think?” Malen advanced, the heated rod held like a weapon. “I think the threadless need to remember their place. I think you need a reminder that some of us are worth more than others.”
Fear spiked through Elias, cold and sharp. This wasn’t posturing anymore. Malen meant to hurt him, and no one would stop it. A workplace accident. A threadless worker who got too close to hot metal. These things happened.
The rod swung toward his face.
And something in Eliassnapped.
Not physically. Not even consciously. But something fundamental shifted, like a door closing, like a thread being cut. The sensation was visceral—he could almostseeit, a connection between Malen and something vast and invisible, suddenly severing.
The rod stopped glowing. Heat bled away in an instant, the metal cooling to harmless steel. Malen stumbled, his eyes widening in confusion and sudden fear.
“What—” Malen looked at his hand, at the rod, at Elias. “What did you—”
He swung anyway, but without his gift, he was just a man with a metal bar. Elias, fueled by adrenaline and three years of suppressed anger, was faster.
He caught Malen’s wrist, twisted, and drove his other fist into the supervisor’s solar plexus. Malen doubled over, wheezing. Elias didn’t stop. He shoved Malen backward, sending him crashing into a workbench, then followed with another strike—an elbow to the jaw that sent blood spattering across the factory floor.
Malen went down hard, groaning, clutching his face. The rod clattered away, forgotten.
The factory had gone silent. Two hundred workers stared at the impossible: a threadless had just beaten a Threadweaver in a fight.
Elias looked down at his hands—scraped knuckles, trembling slightly—and felt the world tilting around him. What had he done? Not the fight; that was simple assault, explicable. But the other thing. Thesevering.
“Someone get the guards!” A voice called from the crowd. “And fetch a priest!”
Elias ran.
