No one walked normally in Valeight. They glided. They twitched. They swaggered with an overabundance of elbow. It was a city where every step felt like a performance — and every performer was convinced the curtains were already up.
Ilyan adjusted his coat. It didn't help.
"You look like you're trying to impress a very suspicious librarian," Ashwen said, striding beside him with the confident disinterest of someone who had already judged the city's entire population and found them unworthy of her sarcasm.
Monsieur Loup, a half-step behind, tilted his head and cackled. "Très bien! We are all actors, non? But you, mon garçon, you are not playing your part!" He flourished his hat in a way that somehow insulted three bystanders.
"Do you have a part?" Ilyan asked, eyeing the jester. "Or are you just following us for the tragic irony?"
"Oh, mon petit question mark, I am foreshadowing!" Loup threw glitter. It caught no light. It simply refused to exist on anyone else's terms.
Before Ilyan could retort, a sharp voice called from the edge of the plaza: "You're standing in my soliloquy."
A girl stood there, arms crossed, leaning against a column painted with arguing fish. She wore a velvet choker, an aggressively oversized shirt that hung off one shoulder, and had eyeliner sharp enough to wound concepts.
Ashwen blinked. "Who the hell—"
"I'm Sylvane. Spelled with three y's but only one matters," the girl said with a dramatic sigh. "But you can call me... tragic. Everyone else does."
"No one called you that," muttered a boy who had somehow emerged from thin air behind her.
He was delicate, willowy, with a faint, glimmering cloak that shimmered between visibility and indifference. He carried a cane he clearly didn't need, which he twirled out of boredom rather than style. His presence felt like an apology for something beautiful he hadn't broken yet.
"Lune," he said simply.
"Ilyan," Ilyan replied, eyes narrowing.
Ashwen leaned in. "Are they with us now?"
"I don't remember voting on this."
Monsieur Loup spun dramatically between them. "Ah, but life, she is not a democracy! She is a drunken theatre troupe performing a tragedy with no script!"
Sylvane rolled her eyes. "Ugh. You're so eccentric. It's exhausting."
"You followed us," Ilyan reminded her.
"Because my fate is obviously tied to yours. I sensed it the moment I saw your coat. So... tragic."
Ashwen turned to Lune. "Are you tragic, too?"
Lune gave a small, quiet smile. "I'm... adjacent."
"Enough," Groat snapped from Ilyan's satchel. "You've assembled your... entourage. Disastrous as it is. Shall we continue before fate files a grievance with our punctuality clause?"
Ashwen stared at the bag. "Still not over you being a coin."
"Lawyer," Groat hissed. "Also, you'll need supplies before the next lead. The shop you're looking for is up five stairs, down three memories, and left through a door that looks like regret."
They followed the path past a brass band arguing in iambic pentameter and a fruit stall where the apples hummed sea shanties. When they reached the shop, it was exactly as Groat described — the door looked like it regretted becoming a door.
Inside, the air smelled of copper, ink, and broken promises. Shelves held relics wrapped in parchment and priced in existential taxes. A woman stood behind the counter, wearing an eyepatch made of moving glass.
"You've brought trouble," she said immediately.
"We always do," Ashwen replied flatly.
The woman nodded toward a small, humming cube on the shelf. "That one tried to rewrite its own warranty."
Groat popped out of the satchel. "We need to identify and potentially activate an unstable relic of uncertain class. Also, one of these people may be a hazard to reality, but we haven't decided which yet."
"Can't be me," Sylvane said, brushing imaginary dust off her shoulder. "I'm too misunderstood to be dangerous."
"I vote her," Lune whispered.
The shopkeeper groaned. "Fine. Let's take a look."
Ilyan placed the relic on the counter. It pulsed once — then sang a short, miserable tune in E minor.
"Oh," she said, stepping back. "That's a Threadcore. You don't activate it. It activates you."
Groat buzzed in warning. "Do not touch—"
Too late. The relic spun.
In an instant, the room dissolved. They were nowhere. They were elsewhere. They were between.
Reality thinned like overused parchment, and voices — some in rhyme, others in bureaucratic dialect — whispered over their skin.
Then they were back.
Everyone stood exactly where they were. Only Ilyan had fallen — not down, but inward.
Ashwen helped him up. "What the hell was that?"
The shopkeeper was pale. "It's chosen him. The Threadcore binds itself to someone who's been rewritten. It'll take time... but now, everything you do is stitched into the Loom."
Groat was quiet for once.
Sylvane stepped closer, her expression — for the first time — genuinely intrigued. "That's... kinda hot."
Lune simply sighed. "And tragic."
Ilyan stood, breathing slow. He looked around at the collection of idiots, performers, and anomalies that now somehow defined his life.
Then he smiled.
"So. What's next?"