The tunnel curved downward, steep and narrow, the walls gradually shifting from stone to something smoother. Polished.
Elian ran his hand across the surface as he moved. It was warm. Not like sun-touched rock — but like something living.
Threads pulsed beneath it. Dim. Muffled.
Wrong.
He followed the signal his Threadsense had caught earlier — a flickering signature, faint as breath. It pulled him like a thread tugged through a needle's eye.
Eventually, the corridor opened into a wide, slanted chamber.
It wasn't natural.
It wasn't built, either.
It had been… grown.
Roots of black filament clung to the walls like veins. Faint glyphs blinked between them — fractured and looping endlessly, some repeating half-sentences, others corrupted into static symbols. At the far end of the room sat a sunken dais, half-consumed by thread-rot.
And at its center, something pulsed.
A sigil.
Not glowing — but absorbing light.
Elian approached, heart steady. Mind sharp.
The Threadsense buzzed violently now — not in warning, but anticipation.
This place wasn't abandoned.
It had simply been forgotten.
[Thread Signature Detected: Lurker's Archive]
[Access Type: Unstable Node – Read-Only Mode Engaged]
[Caution: Memory Fracture Risk Present]
Read-only. Good. That meant no interaction traps. No forced agreements. Just information.
He stepped onto the dais.
The sigil flared.
And the chamber shifted.
Not physically — perceptually. The threads bent around him like lenses turning in place, tuning reality. For a second, he felt himself split. Like his mind had been copied, unfolded, and spread across time.
Then it clicked back into place.
And he saw it.
Dozens of fragmented logs. Texts. Images. Recordings etched in light and decayed thread. He reached out, touching one.
It responded.
[Data Fragment #022]
"Seedborne anomalies exhibit divergent resonance signatures. Some evolve outside intended thread paths. Most are culled. A few… adapt."
"Lucid-class traits present unacceptable drift rates. Recommend purge."
Elian read it twice. Slowly.
So it was true.
His trait — [Lucid] — wasn't a gift. It was a mutation. Something the system didn't trust. Something it had tried to erase.
He moved to the next fragment.
[Data Fragment #041]
"Threadbreak incidents tied to early-stage Seedborne with unstable anchors. Theory: some entities learn to sever threads before the system roots fully bind them."
"If confirmed, this breaks foundational design."
Threadbreaker.
They feared it.
Not because it was powerful. But because it was wrong.
Elian looked up. Around.
Some of the roots in the room weren't natural. They'd once been people. He could see the bone shapes beneath — trapped mid-thread connection. Failed integrations.
Failed rebellions.
He wasn't the first to stand here.
But he'd be the one to walk away.
Then — movement.
A ripple passed through the air.
Something stirred at the far edge of the archive. Not a creature. Not a person.
A presence.
Watching.
Still.
He didn't wait.
He withdrew from the archive interface, stepping off the dais.
The sigil dimmed. The room settled.
But something had changed.
In him.
He didn't just understand now.
He remembered.
What the system had hidden.
And how to make it bleed.
[System Trait Update: Lucid – Progress: 12% → 14%]
[New Passive Unlocked: Pattern Recall – You retain partial memory of unstable thread formations.]
He left the archive in silence.
The walls behind him pulsed once.
Then stilled.
Like they knew something had escaped.
And it wasn't just him.