The light column erupted like a living thing, pale and writhing, threads of raw Loom-energy twisting upward in a vortex that sucked screams and cobblestones into its maw.
Zayn hit the ground hard, shoulder slamming into wet stone, the cuff on his wrist burning cold as his Thread thrashed against the sudden flood. Three people vanished into the beam mid-scream—two Wardens and a bystander clutching a market basket—their bodies dissolving into streaks of light that fed the pillar's glow.
The air howled.
Around the rupture, the street buckled. Bricks popped free like rotten teeth. A horse cart flipped, crushing its driver under splintered wood and iron. Blood sprayed, mixing with rain in dark rivulets.
Zayn rolled to his knees, ears ringing, tasting copper. Renn lay sprawled nearby, clutching his side where a flying shard had gashed him open.
"Move!" Zayn snarled, yanking him up.
The pillar pulsed, vomiting debris: a Warden's Null-band clattered across the cobbles, still humming faintly; a severed hand, fingers curled in agony, skidded to a stop at Zayn's boot.
Screams tore through the chaos. People fled, trampling each other—elbows cracking ribs, boots grinding faces into mud. One woman fell, her leg twisting under a man's weight; no one stopped. She dragged herself forward, nails splintering on stone, until a falling signboard crushed her skull with a wet crunch.
Zayn shoved Renn toward an alley. "Go!"
Renn staggered, blood sheeting down his side. "What the fuck—"
"Null rupture!" Zayn snapped. "Thread Well gone critical!"
He'd seen hints of it in Elric's memories: overloaded Weirs exploding when Frayed Threads fed back into the Loom unchecked. But this was no accident. The pillar's core swirled with deliberate malice, hungry strands lashing out like whips.
One struck a fleeing child. The boy—maybe ten—convulsed mid-stride, skin blistering white as his Thread unraveled visibly, peeling from his body in glowing filaments. He collapsed, writhing, mouth foaming pink. His mother scooped him up, sobbing, only for the light to surge again—ripping the boy's Thread fully free. It snapped back into the pillar like elastic, leaving him a limp husk, eyes vacant, chest barely rising.
The mother wailed, cradling dead weight. A lash caught her next. She arched, vomiting threads of light from her mouth before crumpling beside her son, body smoking.
Zayn didn't look away. He catalogued: child gone in seconds, mother slower—adult Threads resist harder. His own Domain recoiled, the cuff scorching his skin.
"Brutal efficiency," he thought, cold amid the carnage. "Not random. Targeted. Whatever broke those cuffs in the acolyte... this is its hunger."
The pillar widened, swallowing a storefront. Glass shattered; screams cut short as three inside vanished—bodies inverting into light, bones crunching inward like crushed cans. A man's arm protruded briefly from the edge, fingers clawing air before imploding.
Wardens fired crossbows—bolts tipped with Null-darts—but the pillar devoured them, growing brighter. One Warden got too close; a lash wrapped his leg, yanking him in. He screamed as his flesh stripped layer by layer, Thread-first, skin sloughing off in wet sheets to reveal muscle, then bone, then light claiming the skeleton whole. His Null-band shattered mid-pull, useless shards raining down.
Renn retched, clutching the alley wall. "We can't—"
Zayn grabbed his collar, dragging him deeper into shadow. "Watch."
From the pillar's base, shapes emerged: not people, but husks. The acolyte from earlier crawled out first, cuffs dangling from raw wrists, eyes pure white voids. Behind him, the three swallowed victims—Wardens and bystander—reformed, bodies reassembling in reverse agony: limbs knitting backward, flesh bubbling up over exposed bone, Threads forcibly rewoven into puppet strings.
The acolyte lurched to his feet, mouth gaping in silent scream. He turned—not toward the Temple, but scanning the street. His voids locked on Zayn.
Again.
"Empty," the husk mouthed, voice a windless rasp carrying over the roar.
It shambled forward, dragging a leg that ended in exposed femur. The other husks followed, moving as one, Threads trailing like leashes back to the pillar.
Zayn's Domain surged against the cuff, tasting kinship in their absence—not his clean erasure, but a violated void, Loom-flesh flayed and puppeted.
"Clinic experiments," he thought. "They didn't kill Threads. They hollowed them. Weapons now."
A husk lunged at a survivor—a shopkeep cowering behind an upturned cart. The acolyte's hand clamped the man's throat. No squeeze. Just contact.
The shopkeep convulsed. His Thread yanked free like a gutted fish, light pouring from his eyes, nose, mouth. He aged decades in seconds: hair whitening, skin sagging, teeth crumbling to dust. The husk drank it, body fattening grotesquely, flesh bloating as stolen Thread fueled it.
The shopkeep collapsed, a desiccated corpse—skin parchment, eyes sunken pits, genitals shriveled to nothing, a husk of a husk.
Zayn pulled Renn back as more husks poured from the pillar—dozens now, crawling, shambling, reforming from the devoured. The street became a slaughter: people torn open not by claws, but unraveling. One woman disemboweled herself involuntarily, intestines spilling as her Thread-self eviscerated her flesh-self. A man clawed his own face off, fingernails digging sockets empty, screaming until his jaw unhinged.
Blood slicked everything. Limbs twitched. The air reeked of ozone, shit, cooked meat.
Zayn's cuff overheated, Thread leaking past it. He tested: reached for a dying man's memory, erased it cleanly. The man died blank-eyed, no final thought.
"Good," Zayn thought. "Mine still works. Theirs... hungers wider."
The acolyte locked on him again, shambling faster. Others turned, voids questing.
Renn whimpered. "They're coming—"
Zayn shoved him into a doorway. "Hide."
He stepped out, Domain coiling.
The acolyte charged. Zayn met its gaze-voids, pushing absence—not erasure, but overload. He flooded its hollow with his own void, two negatives colliding.
The husk seized, body cracking like dry clay. Threads snapped internally, light hemorrhaging from cracks. It vomited glowing filament—half-digested souls—before exploding outward: ribs bursting chest, skull fracturing, limbs pulverizing into light-dust.
The pillar shrieked, a psychic wail buckling nearby walls. Bricks rained, crushing two husks mid-lurch.
More surged.
Zayn retreated, Domain straining. "Too many. Need the source."
He bolted for the pillar's edge, dodging lashes that stripped flesh from bone on nearby unfortunates—one man's face peeled to grinning skull mid-scream.
At the rupture's lip, heat warped air. Below: a chasm, glowing with ruptured Thread Well, walls pulsing like veins.
Deeper: figures. Temple robes. Not fleeing—chanting.
One turned upward.
The mountain Seer from the balcony. Eyes locked on Zayn.
"You," the Seer mouthed.
Recognition hit like ice.
Leth? No. Older features. Familiar scar? No—Marek's jawline, but wrong world.
The Seer smiled, teeth bared.
He raised hands, weaving pillar-threads tighter.
A lash whipped at Zayn—
He dodged, but it grazed his arm. Skin blistered white instantly, Thread burning. Pain lanced skull-deep.
He fell back, clutching seared flesh. The pillar widened, swallowing more street, more screams, more unraveling bodies.
Husks closed in, voids hungry.
Zayn's vision blurred.
From the chasm depths, the Seer's voice boomed—not words, but command: "Bring me the Empty One."
Every husk turned as one.
Their voids ignited white.
Zayn's cuff shattered.
Raw Domain flooded free—and the pillar pulsed in sync, dragging him toward the edge as hundreds of hollow eyes fixed on him alone.