It had been three days since the Thread Ceremony exploded into radiant code and chaos.
The Thread Altar lay silent now, its lines dim, the spell-glyphs scorched into stone. No one would touch it. Even Father Denrick had retreated into silence, locking the chapel doors and refusing to answer questions.
Ari hadn't been seen since.
They called it Threadshock.
Whispered that he'd broken something.
Or that something had broken into him.
They weren't wrong.
He hid in the stone-hollow beneath the chapel, an old drainage crypt no one used anymore, sitting cross-legged between broken runes and black moss. The world above trembled with fear and gossip.
But below?
He was busy.
Ability Active: SYSTEM ECHO (LVL 1)
Range: Line of sight
Function: Reads magical phenomena and replicates spell in temporary form.
Limitation: Echo cannot exceed original caster's output level.
Note: Echo is unstable. Reflections degrade.
Ari extended his hand, fingers twitching.
Before him: a flickering image of Lorin's fire glyph—the basic one he'd seen cast a dozen times at the village well. Harmless light, barely more than a flame the size of a candle.
He focused on it.
But he didn't cast. He read.
His vision fractured, split by an invisible lens. The world bled with code, as if painted in syntax: spelllines woven through space, the glyph's structure trembling like a weak waveform.
SIGNUM STRUCTURE DETECTED
SIG: [COMBUST.MINOR.FLUX]
TRANSLATION: Simple Flame Loop
CONTEXT: Heat Signature // Energy Pool 0.3 AU
He whispered—not a word, but a command, drawn from something deeper than memory. A reflex.
"Reflect."
The air twisted. A mirror of the spell shimmered into life, overlaid in faint blue. Less flame, more ghostlight.
It hovered.
Then burned.
Then sputtered—gone in under five seconds.
But it had worked.
Ari had cast a spell.
Without a Thread. Without a Lineage. Just… by echoing.
And somewhere inside him, a cold thrill whispered:
If I can copy this… I can copy anything.
He tried more.
Lorin's water thread—weaker, but useful.
Mira's windburst—unstable, but powerful.
Even Denrick's old prayer-rune, which functioned more as protection than offense.
Each time, the system read the spell.
Each time, Ari replicated it.
Faintly. Imperfectly.
But it worked.
SYSTEM ECHO EXP +8
LEVEL-UP CONDITION: 1/3 High-Complexity Echos Required
Warning: Observer Class Trace Intercept Detected...
He paused.
That last line again.
Always that line.
The Trace
He'd seen it during the Ceremony. And it was still there—barely visible, like a cracked thread in his peripheral vision. Not a spell. Not a person. But… a presence.
It didn't move.
It didn't cast.
It just watched.
When he activated Echo, it pulsed slightly.
As if recording.
ANALYSIS: UNKNOWN THREAD TYPE
DESIGNATION: STALKCLASS [REDACTED]
Access Level: Above Root
Active Since: [BEFORE YOU ARRIVED]
Ari swallowed.
That made no sense.
Nothing in Arkanetica should be above Root Access. Not unless… unless there was something deeper than the system itself.
Something that lived outside the sandbox.
"You were already here," Ari whispered.
"Before I was."
He stood abruptly, nearly knocking over a rusted candle-holder. The flame spell had faded, but he could still feel its structure in his mind. A living echo.
He had to move.
He had to test something bigger.
Echoing a Dream
That night, under the whispering trees behind the chapel, Ari did something reckless.
He stood before the Sigwall, the ancient memory-barrier that marked the village's boundary. It was supposedly leftover code from the First Script War—a half-alive ward that once protected entire regions.
No one could activate it anymore. It was broken, inert.
But Ari could see its bones.
The spell-structure still existed, buried and sealed. Massive.
He focused.
His vision blurred.
THREAD SIGNATURE: SIGWALL 7X-PATTERN
Power Class: Barrier | Complexity: HIGH
ECHO STATUS: ACCESSIBLE [RISK: HIGH]
CAST? Y/N
He hesitated.
Then whispered, "Y."
The ground screamed.
Light surged. Glyphs exploded across the trees. The air shimmered like glass struck by a hammer.
And the Sigwall rebooted—if only for two seconds.
Then it shattered.
So did Ari—slamming backward into a rock, blood in his mouth.
The echo broke.
The spell was too big.
The strain too much.
System Echo Instability: 88%
LEVEL UP CONDITION MET.
SYSTEM ECHO [LVL 2] UNLOCKED.
New Trait Gained: ECHO MEMORY // Can store up to 1 spell structure passively.
But he wasn't alone.
Behind him—just beyond the broken glyphs—stood something.
Not a man.
Not a mage.
A shadow with eyes.
Or not eyes—glyphs in the shape of eyes, spinning and recursive.
IDENTITY: OBSERVER THREAD [STALKCLASS]
Authority: DENIED.
The figure stared.
Not hostile. Not friendly.
Just… present.
Watching.
Learning.
Then it flickered, like corrupted code, and disappeared.
Ari fell to his knees, breathing hard.
He had power now. Not enough. Not stable.
But the system was no longer pretending he didn't exist.
And neither were the things behind it.