Some memories do not belong to the mind. They belong to the wound.
Kairon did not sleep.
He sat cross-legged on the edge of his bed, shirtless, trembling, whispering to the red thread in his palm like it was a prayer.
Or a leash.
Or both.
"She gave me a piece of it," he muttered.
"A piece of her that should not exist."
The thread didn't move.
But it throbbed.
Like a heartbeat.
Like something alive.
Eren Lys Valtair felt it first.
Not the magic.
Not the thread.
But the silence.
Kairon hadn't come to morning drills.
Hadn't argued with the Swordmaster.
Hadn't left his chambers.
That wasn't just odd.
That was dangerous.
So Eren went.
He knocked.
No answer.
He kicked the door open.
"Kairon"
The room was in shambles.
Books torn open. Ink staining the walls like veins.
And Kairon—on the floor, shirtless, carving a symbol into his chest.
𓂀
"She showed me the beginning," Kairon whispered, blood running down his ribs.
"She's not what we thought. She's not who she thinks."
"There were others in that room, Eren. I heard them laughing."
Eren froze.
Then crossed the room and grabbed him by the collar.
"You followed her, didn't you?"
"I had to," Kairon hissed. "You didn't see her smile. It wasn't hers. It was borrowed from something older. Something that remembers what we forgot."
"What did she show you?"
Kairon's eyes filled with silver.
"The thread."
"It remembers us."
Sol Mavren watched it all.
From the corridor, quill in hand.
He wrote quickly.
Subject: Kairon V.S.
Exposure Level: Full
Symptoms: Sleeplessness, Symbol Inscription, Speech Looping
Estimated Timeline Collapse: Accelerated.
He turned to his other notes.
All of them orbiting one name:
Elariax Velintrae.
Sol didn't fear her.
He feared how easily she was undoing them.
Back in the chamber, Kairon looked down at the thread again.
It was no longer thread.
It was hair.
Long. Silver. Singing faintly.
"It's hers," he whispered.
"And it's hungry."
Across the Academy, in the highest spire, Elariax stared out the window.
The moonlight bent around her.
She felt the pull.
The thread.
And smiled.
Not cruelly.
Not softly.
But with the precision of a woman who had planned this long before she died.
"Now," she murmured,
"let's see who survives remembering me."