The note. The flower. The flicker in the flames. The system’s vague warning. None of it fit. None of it just happened.
Not in this world.
Khal sat cross-legged by the stream, cradling the fox in his lap. Its tail twitched every now and then, a gentle metronome to his scattered thoughts.
“Okay,” he muttered. “I’m probably overthinking this. But also—last time I ignored a weird warning, I got attacked by a lizard pretending to be a rock.”
The fox huffed as if to say, Correct, you idiot.
He looked at his system.
User Note: "Investigate the odd poem and flower incident."
Status: OPEN
Suggestion: Consult locals. Track anomaly behavior. Begin suspect log.
…Or do absolutely nothing and continue being adorable. You decide.
Khal blinked.
“You’re being sarcastic again.”
I never stopped. You just weren’t listening.
Step one of any investigation: ask someone smarter than you.
Enter: Mistress Vana, the caravan's healer and resident "person who always seems like she knows too much."
Khal waited until she was organizing herbs, then approached slowly, like a child who’d broken a window and also didn’t understand what windows were.
“Hey, uh, Mistress Vana?”
She didn’t look up. “No, I will not give you a sleeping draught just to avoid morning chores.”
Khal cleared his throat. “That was one time.”
“And you drooled on your own shoes. One impressive time.”
He winced, then held up a sketch he made of the flower and note.
“Ever seen this before?”
That got her attention.
She took the sketch. Her eyes flicked from the paper to his face.
“Where did you find it?”
“By the rocks near the west trail. Just… sitting there.”
She narrowed her gaze. “That flower doesn’t grow here. It’s dreamshade. It only blooms where the veil between worlds is thin.”
“…Oh. Cool. So it’s haunted?”
“No, dear. It’s cursed. Much more fashionable.”
Khal sat down.
“Great. So I’ve officially been cursed by a poetic florist.”
Vana laughed softly, but her voice darkened. “This is no prank. Someone is testing your perception. Dreamshade doesn’t bloom without intent.”
Step two: start logging the weird.
Khal began keeping a notebook—crudely stitched parchment filled with things like:
“Found poem #2. Written in candle wax. No signs of heat nearby.”
“Woke up hearing a voice whispering my name. Checked: not fox. Fox confirmed by tail slap.”
“System tried to auto-redirect me during a simple fetch quest. Flagged: potential interference?”
He even tried to “interrogate” a mushroom that had grown in the shape of a smile.
The fox peed on it.
“Yeah, that’s probably a dead end,” Khal admitted.
Later, Khal tracked rumors through the caravan. A peddler mentioned a masked figure watching the camp from the ridge. A hunter found cryptic etchings near a destroyed supply post—symbols like the ones that glowed when Khal touched the first poem.
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He shared this with Lira that night, and her smile faded for the first time in days.
“I’ve seen these,” she whispered. “Years ago, during the last Border Surge. When corrupted system shards leaked through the wild zones.”
“Are you saying someone’s—what, hacking my life?”
She looked at him.
“I’m saying someone’s watching you. And they’re not leaving breadcrumbs. They’re tying a noose.”
That night, the wind howled through the trees. Khal sat alone near the campfire, staring at the flickering light.
System Passive Trigger Activated
Trait [Heart of Becoming] resonance spike detected.
New System Insight Unlocked:
[Minor Analysis Threading – Lvl. 1]
Description: Begin to detect subtle external patterns influencing your System. Mildly increase perception and resistance to tampering.
Warning: Resistance may draw attention from unseen entities.
Khal’s hands trembled as he accepted it.
“I don’t want to draw attention,” he muttered.
Too late.
You’ve already stepped onto the web.
Elsewhere.
Mirek Hollowthorn watched the screen of projected threads.
“Ah,” he whispered. “You chose to look.”
His fingers moved.
A thread snapped. Another was pulled taut.
And beneath Khal’s feet, somewhere deep, the first layer of illusion flickered—just enough for the prey to wonder.
Not to panic. Not yet.
But to question.
Exactly where Mirek wanted him.
The newly unlocked [Minor Analysis Threading] ability gave Khal a subtle migraine—and the distinct sensation of his consciousness wearing a monocle it didn’t know how to use.
He had expected… something flashier. Perhaps glowing runes or a booming voice saying “System Penetration Detected!”
Instead, the world just felt slightly wrong. Like a doorframe had shifted half a centimeter, but only your toes noticed.
He activated the trait cautiously.
Threading Activated.
Environmental Parsing: Enabled
Sensitivity Level: Beginner. Expect misreads and cognitive fog.
Side Effects May Include: Nausea, existential dread, and spontaneous philosophical overthinking.
“…Thanks for that,” Khal muttered, clutching his head.
The Investigation (cont.):
Armed with only beginner intuition and a fox that judged him constantly, Khal tried revisiting earlier scenes where the anomalies had appeared. The strange flower location. The torch-lit path where he’d seen flickering shadows the night before.
He knelt by a ridge and activated [Threading].
Immediately, ghost-like impressions flickered in his vision.
Faint outlines. Red threads in the corner of his eye—visible only when he didn’t look directly at them.
“Okay, this is definitely cursed,” he muttered.
User Thought Detected:
*[Yes. You are being watched.]
…Also, your fly is down.
He checked. It wasn’t.
“Rude.”
The threads slowly drew his gaze uphill.
A tree stump. Cleanly cut. Carved markings beneath the moss—letters. Or something like them. He brushed the growth aside and traced the symbols, feeling a subtle hum.
Foreign System Script Detected.
Translation Impossible.
Meaning Approximation: “Catalyst of Choice”
Khal’s mind stumbled over the phrase.
“Is this… a threat? A warning?”
He didn’t know. But what chilled him wasn’t the words.
It was the second message, carved so faintly beneath the first that only [Threading] revealed it:
“We’ve met before.”
Khal reeled back. “Nope. Nope times infinity.”
Back at Camp:
He brought the findings to Lira and Mistress Vana. Both sat in silence, listening as he described the carvings, the thread-vision, the system’s weird commentary, and of course, the unhelpful sass.
When he finished, Lira folded her arms. “This isn’t simple corruption. This is someone mapping your behavioral pathways.”
“Behavioral what-now?”
Vana translated: “You’re being studied. Your choices. Your reactions. Even your indecision.”
“Oh. Cool. Emotional dissection. I always wanted that.”
The fox climbed into his lap and licked his hand—perhaps the only comforting moment in the last two days.
That night, Khal dreamed.
In it, he was walking down a long corridor made entirely of parchment. Each wall scribbled with versions of himself. Laughing. Crying. Failing.
He turned around to find the corridor endless.
And far in the distance—he saw a man made of threads.
Wearing a hollow mask.
And whispering his name like a lullaby.
He woke with a gasp, drenched in sweat, the fox pawing at his chest in mild panic.
System Alert: Memory Refracted.
Your subconscious has intersected a lower-dimensional Echo.
[Passive Trait Update – “Lucid Instinct” unlocked.]
You may now recall subtle patterns and warnings from dream-state overlays.
Later that day, Khal finally addressed the caravan leader—Captain Vorrick—a grizzled man who ate nails for breakfast and probably washed them down with firewater.
“You’re saying someone’s stalking you with… dreams?” Vorrick asked, unimpressed.
“And poetry,” Khal added.
That got a raised eyebrow.
“…You're either cursed,” Vorrick said, “or tangled in a thread game way above your pay grade.”
“Why not both?” Khal sighed.
Final Discovery (for this chapter):
Khal returned alone to the place where he found the dreamshade rose.
This time, he dug beneath the soil.
In the roots, he found it.
A shard.
Glass-like. Black and humming. Embedded with shifting runes that gave off a slight burn when touched.
System Reaction: Unknown Object Detected.
Warning: High-Risk Interference Core. Handle with extreme caution.
Would you like to absorb it?
(This may be a terrible idea.)
Khal stared at the prompt.
For a long time, he said nothing.
Then quietly, he whispered: “I don’t want to be weak anymore.”
And tapped: [Yes].
The screen glitched.
The fox growled.
The shard pulsed once.
Then vanished.
System Integration: Pending…
And far, far away, Mirek Hollowthorn smiled once again.
“Hooked.”