The training yard was nothing like Corin expected.
He'd imagined ancient halls of carved stone, maybe a secret monastery with floating tapestries, or some sanctified ruin lit by glowing glyphs. Instead, he stood in the basement of a brewery, ankle-deep in old barley mash, while the walls wept moisture and the ceiling groaned with every passing cart above.
Still, there were Threads here.
He could feel them.
They hummed through the floor, vibrated faintly in the copper pipes, curled around lantern flames that didn't flicker no matter how hard the wind whined through the cracks.
"Eyes forward, rookie."
Corin looked up just in time to see a wooden staff come flying at his face. He ducked—barely—and stumbled into a soggy pile of crates.
Laughter echoed across the room.
"You'll need quicker reflexes than that," said Elias Dorne, tall, golden-haired, and smug as a prince. He twirled the staff one-handed, the motion fluid and elegant.
He was everything Corin wasn't: confident, strong, dressed in a custom-threaded coat with his family crest stitched in gold thread at the collar.
"He's only been Bound a day," Wynne, the mute girl with thread-tattoos on her palms, signed quickly beside them. "Give him time."
Elias snorted. "Time gets you killed out there. Threads don't wait politely."
Corin climbed back to his feet, teeth clenched.
There were five of them in this cohort:
Corin Vale — newest, quietest, with a raw Memory Thread.
Elias Dorne — noble-born, Thread of Pulse, third-generation Loomguard.
Wynne — mute, deadly, Thread of Sound, speaks only through signs.
Harwin Bricks — former gang brawler, Thread of Substance, built like a furnace.
Lira — sharp-eyed, soft-voiced girl from the Needle Monks, Thread of Emotion.
Each had been assigned a trainer. Corin's... was missing.
Until now.
A door slammed open on the far side of the yard. The air shifted.
In walked a figure dressed in gray, coat frayed, boots scuffed, beard unshaven. He looked more like a retired dockhand than a Threadweaver. A thin blade rested on his shoulder—not elegant, not ornate. Just iron. Worn. Scarred.
"Which one of you is the Observer?"
Corin raised his hand, unsure.
The man stalked toward him, boots squelching in the mash.
"Name's Aren Crowl. You're mine now." He looked Corin up and down. "Lucky me."
"Nice to meet you?" Corin offered.
Crowl snorted. "We'll see if you still say that after today."
He turned and pointed at a set of crude dummies made from wrapped rope and chicken bones.
"Lesson one: Threads mean nothing if you die with them unused. Show me your strike."
Corin blinked. "Strike?"
"Hit the dummy. With your thread. Or your hand. Or your damn coat. Doesn't matter."
Corin hesitated. He looked down at his fingers, focused. Threads... threads…
And there they were. Faint golden lines flickering just beneath his skin. He reached for one.
Memory.
He thought of the day the orphanage burned. Of Nella pulling him through the ash. Of the fear. The smoke. The sound of children screaming—
He shoved it forward.
A pulse of gold lashed out from his palm and struck the dummy.
Nothing happened.
Except...
The dummy shivered. Then slumped.
Crowl raised an eyebrow.
Elias scoffed. "What was that? Did he hug it with nostalgia?"
But Corin didn't respond. He was watching the dummy. Its rope fibers... they'd changed. A few strands had grayed, some frayed completely. The bones cracked—not broken by force, but by age.
Crowl walked over, knelt, and inspected the remains.
"You touched it with past potential. Interesting."
"I don't know how I did that," Corin admitted.
"Good," Crowl said. "Means you're teachable."
He turned and clapped his hands once. "Alright, brats! Today's lesson: Thread Expression."
Wynne perked up. Harwin groaned.
"Every Threadweaver learns to express their affinity in different forms," Crowl continued. "Some shoot fire. Others whisper thoughts. The stronger your connection, the more control you have. But expression without discipline? Gets you dead."
He gestured to a diagram chalked on the wall.
"Three Forms of Expression: Pulse, Shape, and Bind."
Pulse was raw output. Blasts. Flashes. Surges.
Shape was crafting. Thread-constructs, barriers, illusions.
Bind was anchoring—embedding threads into objects, people, or places.
Elias stepped forward and flicked his fingers. A series of sharp, vibrating crescents flew from his palm and shattered a nearby dummy.
"Pulse," he said smugly.
Wynne closed her eyes, clapped her hands silently, and summoned a flickering shield of sound between two posts.
"Shape," Crowl said with a nod.
Harwin reached down, touched the ground, and made a small stone ripple into a crude spear.
"Bind," he grunted.
Corin swallowed. "I... don't know how to do any of that."
"Then you'll start where I did," Crowl said. He tossed a stone at Corin's chest. "With a rock."
Corin caught it.
"Your goal: make it remember what it was. Or forget what it is."
Corin blinked. "What?"
Crowl smiled—first time since they met.
"You'll figure it out."
The next two hours were brutal.
Corin sat in the mash, rock in one hand, lens in the other, trying desperately to see something—anything—he could manipulate.
At first, nothing.
Then...
He remembered a moment from days ago. Nella's voice whispering:
"Memory is not the past. It is the needle."
He closed his eyes, thought of the stone as it had been—buried in a wall, part of something whole.
He reached into that idea. That moment.
And something shifted.
When he opened his eyes, the stone was warm.
And cracked.
Not from pressure. From wear.
Time had passed through it in a flash.
Crowl crouched beside him, expression unreadable.
"You aged it," he said. "Not bad for a first try."
"Will it break?"
"Eventually. Everything does."
Corin looked down at his hands again.
Threads danced there now, faint but present. Gold. Gray. Violet.
He didn't know what came next.
But for the first time, he wasn't just reacting. He was weaving.
That night, Corin lay on his cot in the upper floor of the tavern-turned-hall. The silk-bound book rested beside him, closed but pulsing faintly, like it breathed.
He stared at the ceiling, listening to the wind outside and the soft buzz of sleeping threads in the walls.
The others were nearby.
Elias snored.
Harwin mumbled threats in his sleep.
Wynne played a soft rhythm against the wall—soundless to most, but Corin had learned to hear the tremors.
He was part of something now.
Something older than he could yet understand.
And somewhere out there, beyond Graymire's haze, others were weaving threads of their own—Threadborn, Splicers, things far worse than he could imagine.
But tomorrow would bring more lessons.
And Corin Vale intended to survive every one.