The sky no longer held stars.
It held lines.
Shifting. Sliding. Curling around each other like threads on a loom whose weaver had gone mad or blind—or both.
Aiden sat cross-legged at the edge of a cliff, eyes closed. The Rootlight Arch was behind him now, but its weight still lingered in his bones.
He wasn't meditating.
He was listening.
Because somewhere in the vastness of the weave, something had changed.
And it wasn't just inside him anymore.
It was in the world.
---
> [Sync: 33%]
Status: Veil Breach – Confirmed
> External Thread Contact Detected
An Echo has arrived
Class: Unknown
Origin: External
Title: The Stranger
---
He felt it before he saw it.
The ground shifted in a way the body couldn't feel—but the memory could.
Like the air forgot what wind felt like.
And then a figure stepped from a fold in the path that hadn't been there before.
Not through a portal.
Through context.
He simply became relevant to the space.
The System stuttered.
And then updated itself.
---
> [New Entity Registered: ???]
Tag: Outsider
Sync Trace: Not Applicable
Recognition: 0%
---
The figure wore no gear.
No armor.
Just threadbare robes and a necklace of broken tokens—one from a thread Aiden had once destroyed.
He didn't walk with power.
He walked like someone who had forgotten what power was.
The man looked at Aiden and tilted his head.
"Which version are you?" he asked.
Aiden rose to his feet.
"I'm the one who stayed."
The man smiled. "Then you're not who I came for."
---
> [Threat Level: ???]
Combat: Not Advised
Dialogue Thread Unlocked
---
Torran arrived moments later, weapon half-drawn, and froze.
"Who is that?"
Aiden's hand hovered near his own blade. "I don't know."
The man looked between them both.
"Don't worry," he said. "I'm not here to kill either of you."
He paused.
"Yet."
---
System Message – Delayed
> [Incoming Designation: The Stranger]
Status: Active
Role: Variable Disruptor
Fate Anchor: None
Thread doesn't know what to do with him.
---
Aiden didn't trust the stillness that followed.
But deep inside him, his Sync stirred—
Because something about the Stranger felt familiar.
Like a memory he hadn't earned yet.
Like a version of himself that had taken a different story entirely.