Theo didn't make it three steps into the village before they noticed him.
The mourning crowd stiffened. Conversations died mid-sentence. Mothers pulled children closer. A few men reached for weapons — simple things like wood axes and rusted blades — but weapons all the same.
He didn't blame them.
In a world teetering on the edge, strangers meant danger.
Theo raised both hands, palms open, showing he was unarmed. The movement felt strange — defensive, vulnerable — but necessary.
"I don't mean harm," he said, voice steady.
Most of them didn't answer. They just stared, waiting for someone else to make the first move.
That someone was her.
The silver-haired woman stepped away from the pyre, the bell still tolling behind her like a dying heartbeat. Up close, she was younger than he'd expected — maybe his age, maybe younger — but there was something ageless in the way she moved. Like a blade kept sharp for so long it had forgotten what it was like to be dull.
Her eyes, pale as frost, never left his face.
"You don't belong here," she said.
It wasn't an accusation. Just a simple truth.
Theo nodded once. "I know."
The woman studied him for a long moment, as if weighing him against some invisible scale. Then, without looking away, she addressed the crowd behind her.
"Go home. There's nothing more to see."
There was hesitation — a ripple of distrust — but the villagers obeyed. One by one, they peeled away from the square, muttering prayers under their breath, stealing wary glances at Theo as they went.
Soon it was just the two of them.
Theo let out a slow breath.
"Thank you," he said.
The woman tilted her head slightly, curious. "Don't thank me yet."
For a moment, they just stood there, the silence thick between them.
Finally, she spoke again. "Name?"
"Theo Marlowe."
"Theo," she repeated, tasting the word like it might reveal something. "I'm Nova. Nova Rae."
Nova. Starborn. Fitting.
Theo tucked the thought away and asked, "You're a Thread Seer, aren't you?"
Her mouth quirked — not quite a smile, but close. "You see more than most."
"I see enough," Theo said quietly.
Nova's eyes narrowed slightly, her gaze sharpening. "Then you know what you're standing in the middle of?"
Theo glanced at the pyre. Smelled the smoke. Felt the trembling, broken threads underneath the earth.
"A severed bond," he said. "A thread that snapped."
Nova nodded. "Not just any thread. The village elder. Keeper of the last Archive Stone in this region."
Theo's heart sank.
An Archive Stone — a relic of humanity's first attempts to bind knowledge to fate itself. If it was lost...
"The knowledge?" he asked.
"Gone," Nova said, voice tight. "Without the keeper to anchor it, the Stone shattered. The village doesn't even realize what they lost. They think they're just mourning an old man."
Theo rubbed a hand across his face, suddenly exhausted.
It had already started. History unraveling. Truths forgotten. Little deaths, adding up until there was nothing left but silence.
Nova watched him, reading more from his silence than most could read from a speech.
"You're not just a wanderer," she said.
"No," Theo admitted.
"And you're not just here by accident."
"No."
Her hand drifted to a small blade at her hip — not threatening, just cautious.
"Who sent you?" she asked.
Theo hesitated.
How do you explain the end of the world to someone who hasn't lived it yet?How do you tell them you're a ghost wearing flesh, a man trying to stitch together a future already doomed?
"I'm here," he said carefully, "to stop something worse."
Nova studied him for a long moment.
And then, to his surprise, she sheathed the blade and turned away.
"If that's true," she said over her shoulder, "you're already too late."
Theo stiffened.
Nova walked a few paces, her figure cutting a sharp silhouette against the mist.
"But maybe," she added, "you're not too late for everything."
She stopped at the edge of the square, glancing back at him.
"If you're serious about fixing things," Nova said, "meet me at the Hollow Tree before nightfall. If you're lying..." Her eyes glinted with something dangerous. "Don't bother."
Then she was gone, slipping into the mist like she had never been there at all.
Theo stood alone, the bells still echoing in the empty air.
The first thread had snapped.But there were still others to save.
He clenched his fists. Turned toward the fading trail Nova had left.
There would be no second chances after this.
And he wouldn't waste the first one.