"Now… speak."
The whisper didn't dissolve into the crowd—it went straight inside Leo and sat there. As if someone had placed a finger at the back of his throat, at the place where words pause before becoming words. A threadlike light was seeping out through the box's hair-thin gap and sinking directly into the mark on his wrist, and the mark's heat was no longer a burn—now it was an order.
Leo clenched his teeth. He bit his tongue—hard, hard enough that pain could keep him *present*. There was no taste, only the shock of injury—and with it that same emptiness, that his body, too, was slowly losing its meaning.
In the crowd people were running, some frozen in place, some shaking shimmering fibers off their shoulders. Threadfall was everywhere—hair-fine strands, moonlit-bright, rippling in the air. Somewhere a lantern flame flicked blue for an instant; somewhere a man stopped mid-cry as he called his own name, as if the second half of the word had been erased. Hashfall's thin blanket still smothered sound—half-conversations, unfinished screams, and footsteps that sounded like they were coming through thick cloth.
Maera yanked Leo toward her. "Eyes down," she said under her breath. "And keep your mouth shut."
"I—" Leo didn't want to speak, and still his lips moved. Something inside him was pushing the word out. He started to cover his own mouth with his fist.
Kerin was gripping the box tightly, but his hands were shaking. The box wasn't completely "lessened" anymore. The Quiet-Hem and the Name-Circle were melting under the Threadfall. The lid's seam was still lifted by a hair's breadth—and through that gap, threadlike light was leaking out. The knocking inside the box wasn't just rhythm now; it was insistence.
*Tap… tap-tap…*
Yara kept her tiny flame cupped in her palm, counting her breaths and holding a Name-Circle around it. She came close to Leo—without touching him—and spoke very softly. "Leo… look at me."
Leo found her eyes. They were red, and the reason for her tears was still a blur to him, yet one thing in her gaze was sharp and clean: *Here. Now. Stay.*
"Now… speak," the whisper came again, and this time it carried up the ash in Leo's throat—the ash of that true name—thickening as it rose. Leo felt letters forming, demanding a road out through his mouth.
Maera reached for Kerin. "Give me the box."
Kerin shook his head at once. "It… won't let go." The moment the words left him, he startled, as if it wasn't his choice but the metal's truth. His fingers were stuck to the edges, as if someone had sewn them there.
Maera ground her teeth. She pulled out her needle and stitched three sharp stitches in the air above the box—lessening, precise, as though she were setting a new hem along the lid's seam. The light shrank for a beat, then spread again—like the box refused to obey the needle's command.
"It's overwriting from above," Maera whispered. "Threadfall is feeding it."
Yara said quickly, "Don't let Leo speak. If the true name comes out—"
She didn't finish. She didn't have to. Everyone knew: if the name came out, the threads would seize it—the Dominion, that third thread, and maybe the Sky-Wound itself.
Leo's breathing quickened. His mouth was covered, but inside him words kept assembling on their own. He tried to stop himself by repeating *Leo Ravel* in his mind—hold the rope—yet the rope was slipping, because the order wasn't grabbing *Leo*. It was grabbing the ash he wasn't allowed to say.
Maera scanned the dock—the crowd, the falling threads, and far off at the bend in the road: shapes that weren't moving like a crowd. Too disciplined. Around them the same trained "hush" hung in the air—pressure on sound. Thread-Inspectors.
"They're coming," Maera said. "And this…" Her gaze flicked to the box, "…this is calling them like a lighthouse."
Yara made her candle-flame even smaller, as though she were preserving identity, not light. "Blend into the crowd," she said. "Don't say names. Don't call to anyone."
"In the crowd?" Kerin blurted. "The threads—"
"In a crowd even threads get lost," Maera cut in. "And Inspectors, too."
She grabbed Leo's arm and shoved him into the press of bodies. Leo's feet obeyed, because his mind had no room left. Shoulders, hands, damp cloth, and glittering strands everywhere. Someone slammed into him; Leo wanted to say sorry—but his throat cinched again. Even "sorry" felt like a word he might not be able to keep.
The light inside the box flared for an instant. At the same instant the mark on Leo's wrist glowed—and ahead of him a thin, straight line rose into the air. That wrong line. It ran through the crowd in a single direction, as if the world hadn't given him a path but an instruction: *That way.*
Leo didn't want to look that way, but the direction had already been *written* inside him. He took a step toward it—without meaning to.
Maera immediately tightened her grip on his waist. "Where are you going?"
Leo tried to answer, but no word came out. Only a breath—and with that breath something strange happened: the voices of a few people nearby vanished completely for a moment. As if the air had stitched itself shut. A small Hashfall bubble formed around Leo—for one second.
People stopped. Some touched their throats. Someone tried to scream and no sound came. Fear surged—and when fear surges, people run the wrong way.
Maera shook Leo hard. "Did you do that?"
Leo's face went pale. He wanted to say—no, it happened to me—but after "no" the rest of the word died again. And as it died, a new price branded itself inside him: something simple—Master Anselm's face in the Chart-Hall—blurred in his mind, as if someone had splashed water across it. He remembered there had been a man, frightened, with a key—yet the face was now… indistinct.
Leo trembled as he thought: *I'm losing the face of my own fear.*
Yara stared at him, sharp. "You made a bubble," she said. "Without wanting to. The threads are reacting inside you."
Kerin was behind them with the box, sweat on his brow. "I… I can see lines," he whispered. "Between those people—the Inspectors—around them the threads are straight, like they've ironed the air."
Maera seized on it. "Then we stay away from them," she said. Then she looked at Leo, a hard decision in her eyes. "And you… you have to be stopped from speaking. At any cost."
At "any cost," Leo shivered from the inside out. Because costs weren't words anymore; they were cuts—memories, voice, sentences, feelings—slipping out of him and going somewhere else.
From inside the box the whisper came again—this time not only an order, but a lure:
"One letter… just one letter…"
Ash leapt in Leo's throat. He could feel a single letter—the first—as if he stood behind a closed door with his finger on the latch. One push.
Suddenly Yara brought her candle-flame not to Leo's mouth, but close to his wrist—very close, without touching—and she spoke a pattern of breath—no words, only breath. The air steadied a little, as if some thread inside Leo had been calmed for a heartbeat.
In that heartbeat Leo exhaled in relief—and the relief frightened him, because he understood: Yara could help him… but even her help had to stay inside rules. And if rules broke, the prices would rise.
Maera pointed toward a narrow lane inside the crowd—between dock warehouses, behind timber and coils of rope. "There," she said. "Under the pier."
They didn't run—running tugs threads—they slid forward with quick, careful steps. With every step, threads kept falling. A strand snagged in a child's hair; the child tried to laugh, but the laugh came out in halves. His mother shook him free, and with that shake her own name seemed to stick in her throat. She tried to call her son, and only "Eh—" came out.
Leo saw it and something inside him cracked. He wanted to help—but help unravels threads, too. And every unraveling demands a price. He kept his hands to himself as if restraining an animal inside his ribs.
Inside the lane the air held less Threadfall—the planks above stopped some of the fibers. Under the pier the water was black, and between the boards moonlight fell in a thin stripe. Here Hashfall was weaker; the edges of words were coming back.
"Here," Maera said. "Back to the wall."
Kerin didn't set the box down; he rested it on his knees like he was holding a child in his lap who might bite. The seam was now more than a hair's breadth open—still small, but growing. The light didn't pour out steadily; it pulsed with the knocking.
*Tap… tap-tap…*
Leo looked at his wrist. The mark's heat was spreading up his arm. And around that new, fine stitch-scar, his skin felt as if it were being pulled—like a new thread had been joined from the inside, wanting to become "his."
Yara whispered, "A third stitch has settled on you."
"I know," Maera said. There was anger in her voice—fear inside the anger. "And even staying far away in open air, it's still pulling you."
Kerin stared at the box. "Should I… close it?"
Maera considered for a beat. "If you try, it'll cut you," she said. "And if it cuts you, you'll pay its price—and we won't even know what you lost."
"I can try—Name-Circle—" Yara began.
"No oath," Maera snapped. "Oaths are poison to it. And when you splash poison, things thrash."
Leo lowered his head. It felt like they weren't speaking about him, but about an illness living inside him. Maybe that was the truth.
From inside the box the whisper came again, this time toward Kerin:
"Let go… of me…"
Kerin jerked, tightening his fingers. "I—" He meant to say, *I won't let go*, and the sentence stuck in his throat. His eyes widened. "It's… taking my words too—"
Yara immediately shrank her flame and counted breath for him. "Hold your name," she told Kerin. "Repeat Kerin Vell inside yourself."
Kerin clenched his teeth. "Kerin… Vell…"
For a moment the box went quiet, as if it had sensed a new barrier. Then the knocking returned—and with it a new tactic: from the opened seam a thin thread rose into the air—not a Threadfall fiber, but an inner strand—and it turned its "head" toward Leo's wrist, as if it already knew the way.
Yara held her breath. "It's linking him."
Maera lifted her needle and laid a hem-stitch in the air in front of the strand—not to catch it, but to bend it. The thread bent—just slightly—and drifted toward a nearby wooden pillar.
On the pillar a thin black line appeared—like a burned stitch—and the pillar seemed to *breathe* for an instant, the way the warehouse beam had.
Disgust twisted Maera's face. "It leaves marks," she said. "And marks become paths."
Leo trembled. "So wherever we go—"
"Yes," Maera answered. "We're leaving doors behind us."
Yara said softly, "And Inspectors can read doors."
Leo's breath sped up. If he did nothing, they'd be caught. If he did something—opened—he'd lose more of himself. Both routes were cages.
The voice inside the box came again—and this time it sat exactly behind Leo's throat:
"One letter… and I'll make you whole."
*Whole.*
The word rang through Leo like pain. Because so much inside him was unfinished—his parents' faces, his true name, parts of his language, his tastes, the edges of his memories.
He drove his nails into his palm. *No,* he told himself—and in the same instant fear flared, because even "no" might start to behave like an oath. He dropped the words and only breathed—like Yara had taught him.
But the order was a thread. And the thread goes deeper than breath.
Above, toward the dock, sound suddenly tore—Hashfall thickened again. And with it someone called out—a name—clean, trained, unmistakable:
"Leo Ravel!"
The lead Inspector's voice.
Maera snapped her head up. "They've got you," she whispered. "Name-anchor."
Yara's face went hard. She bit her finger—just a little—and let one drop of blood fall beneath the candle. Then she spread that drop into the air and shaped a small candle-sigil in front of Leo, along the path of his breath—as if sealing a stamp on the threshold of his voice.
"If anything comes out of your mouth," Yara said quietly, "it'll hit my seal. Maybe… it'll break. Or maybe… it'll return."
"And the price?" Maera asked, even softer.
Yara swallowed. "I don't know."
A flicker of grim respect passed through Maera's eyes. Then she said, "Fine. We move on this."
Kerin clutched the box and whispered, "How close are they—"
In answer, footsteps sounded above on the pier planks—muffled but clear—disciplined. Not a crowd. And the faint rattle of a notch-rod, as if someone were reading the air.
The mark on Leo's wrist flared. The box opened a fraction more—not a hair now, a line.
Threadlike light spilled out, and within that light a very thin, very clean straight line floated—*that* wrong line—this time not running through the air, but aimed toward Leo's throat.
"Now," the whisper said, "speak."
Leo's mouth began to open on its own.
Yara's seal flared.
Maera's needle rose into the air—yet she didn't stitch, as if she feared that the moment she did, the line would cut deeper.
And above, between the planks, a face leaned down from the shadow. Not the lead Inspector. Someone else—whose eyes caught moonlight without shining. No voice came from him, but his presence straightened the air, as if before arriving he'd already decided who would live tonight.
That stranger spoke, very lightly—so lightly only the threads could hear—
"Open."
And with that "open," the knocking inside the box stopped.
As if whatever was inside had held its breath
and was now waiting for something new.