The shrine was made of threadlight bones.
Not real bones — crafted ones, woven from dead threadroots and burnt stone. It rose from the heart of a collapsed relay zone, where the system's surveillance had gone dark long ago.
Elian didn't find it.
It found him.
He stepped into the clearing and saw the pattern in the dust: spirals, mirrored glyphs, and a single line scrawled across the altar stone in ash:
You are the thread that frays the hand that pulls.
And then the priest stepped out from the ruin.
He was tall, thin, wrapped in living thread robes — glowing slightly, stitched with whispering script. His face was hidden beneath a lattice of broken code masks. Dozens of them. Each cracked in a different place.
He didn't speak at first.
He knelt.
"Seedborne. Author-marked. Deathless-bent."
Elian didn't respond.
The priest lifted his head. "You carry the fracture that bled the silence."
"Do you know what you are?"
Elian said nothing. Let the silence answer for him.
"They believe you are a danger."
"They're wrong."
"You're the correction."
[New Entity Detected: Thread Priest – Status: Sanctionless]
[Affiliation: Pale Ring Cult (Minor)]
[Danger Level: Moderate – Unknown mental state]
Elian finally spoke. "If you think I'm here to save you, you're going to die disappointed."
The priest laughed — softly, painfully.
"You've already saved me."
"The others will come. The false gods. The ones who believe the system is still sacred."
"But you… you are the First Revision."
He held out a shard.
A splinter of glass. Flickering with rune light. Screaming silently.
"They call it a Key. I call it proof."
"Take it, or leave it."
Elian reached forward, threads tense.
The shard didn't resist him.
It accepted him.
[Item Acquired: Broken Key of the Pale Ring]
[Effect: Allows entry into a forgotten zone: "The Ring's Eye"]
[Author Seed Resonance: Increased]
[Caution: Using this item will invite the gaze of a forgotten law.]
Elian stared at the priest. "Why me?"
The man smiled beneath his masks.
"Because the system can't write what it doesn't understand."
"And you, Elian…"
"You are illegible."