The flames had already gutted the eastern quarter by dawn.
From the high ridge where Mira stood, the acrid scent of charred paper and scorched stone lingered thick in the air. Embers still glowed in the bones of the old archive towers, casting red orange veins through the mist that curled around the broken town.
Mira didn't blink. She simply watched the smoke rise into a sky that refused to rain.
Beside her, Lucan adjusted his cloak against the wind. "This was a message."
She nodded. "They want to control the narrative before it breaks open. Burn the records. Bury the evidence."
"They're afraid."
Mira turned to face him. "They should be."
Below, townspeople moved through the ashes like sleepwalkers. Children held hands tighter. Elders shook their heads at the damage but said nothing. No one screamed. No one raged. But Mira saw it in their silence. In the way they glanced at each other.
The spell of forgetting had started to crack.
"They remember pieces," she murmured. "They just don't know what to do with them."
Lucan handed her a folded scrap of parchment. "Then maybe it's time to remind them."
It was a flier. Hand written. Marked with her symbol, the looping thread beneath the moon.
She opened it.
Truth is not rebellion. Memory is not madness. Come to the Hollowstone at dusk.
"They'll come," he said.
She wasn't so sure. But if even one person showed up, it would be enough.
A new thread. A real one.
Mira looked once more at the ruins, then tucked the flier into her satchel. "Let's give them a reason." The Hollowstone wasn't a place people went.
It wasn't cursed, exactly, but it had the weight of old magic, the kind that made you keep your voice low and your back straight. It sat on the northern edge of Isurun, tucked between the skeletal roots of dead oaks, ringed by moss covered stones that hummed faintly underfoot.
By dusk, the shadows had lengthened, and so had the nerves twisting through Mira's stomach.
She stood in the center of the circle, cloak pulled tight around her, heart loud in her ears. Lucan waited at the perimeter, silent as stone, his presence grounding her.
The first to arrive was a girl with ash streaked cheeks and a ribbon tied around her wrist, violet and gold. Mira recognized her as the apprentice from the tailor's stall. Her eyes were wide, cautious, but not afraid.
She didn't speak. She just nodded and stepped into the circle.
Others followed.
Two, then five. Then more.
By the time the last flickers of sunset disappeared behind the treeline, nearly twenty people stood beneath the Hollowstone's shadow.
Farmers. Tradesmen. Old women clutching worn charms. A boy no older than ten with a rune carved clumsily into his walking stick.
None of them spoke first.
So Mira did.
"You've seen the fires," she began. Her voice trembled but did not falter. "You know what they're trying to destroy."
A murmur rippled through the crowd.
"They told us we were safer not remembering. That the town needed order. That magic was dangerous."
She held up the scroll from the Rivergate.
"But what they feared wasn't magic, it was memory. They feared what would happen if we remembered the world before they rewrote it."
An older woman stepped forward. Her scarf was burnt at the edges. "And what do we do now?"
"We pull the threads," Mira said. "We unravel the lie. Together."
Lucan raised a lantern, the light catching the symbol now carved into the stone behind Mira, her sigil, fresh and glowing with golden thread.
"Anyone who wants to remember," Mira said, voice rising, "will meet here again. Tomorrow. And the next day. And the next."
The silence that followed didn't feel empty.
It felt ready.
By nightfall, the Hollowstone had become more than a meeting place. It was a pulse.
Mira returned to the tailor's shop with Lucan, their footsteps soft and swift in the cooling dark. The quiet in the streets no longer felt oppressive, it felt charged. As if the town itself was listening again, after years of silence.
Inside, Serel had lit three candles and placed them in a triangle on the floor.
"You've stirred the nest," she said without looking up. "Now they'll swarm."
Mira dropped her satchel by the hearth. "Let them."
Serel arched a brow. "You're brave."
"No," Mira said. "I'm done being quiet."
Lucan sat near the window, watching the narrow road. "There were watchers near the bridge. Cloaked. They weren't Stitchers."
Mira paused. "Council?"
Serel gave a grim nod. "Not just any councilmen. The Inner Three. If they're here… this isn't about containment anymore. They're preparing to erase you."
Mira didn't flinch. "They can try."
Serel reached behind a panel in the wall and drew out a narrow case wrapped in cloth. When she unrolled it, a shimmer of silver spilled across the table, threadwoven blades, thin as reeds and etched with tiny runes.
"These were your mother's," she said softly. "And hers before her. The Threadcallers never went into battle without them."
Mira picked up the smallest blade. The moment her fingers closed around it, the hilt warmed. The threads beneath her skin lit up, gold, violet, and something newer. A third hue. Pale blue.
Lucan noticed. "That's new."
Mira blinked. "It wasn't there before."
Serel's face darkened. "You're evolving. Or the Loom is."
She looked between them. "Either way, you'll have to act soon. If they're bringing the Inner Three… it's only a matter of time before they strike here."
Lucan stood. "Then we don't wait."
Mira looked at the glow crawling beneath her skin magic and memory and the bloodline she could no longer deny.
"No," she said. "We bring the story to them."
They moved at first light.
Mira, Lucan, and Serel left the tailor's shop under the cover of fog, heading toward the center of Isurun. Mira wore the cloak her mother once stitched with protection runes,still faintly glowing at the seams, and beneath it, the threadwoven blade rested against her ribs like a second heartbeat.
The Council's hall sat in the highest quarter, a towering structure of slate and iron, severe, angular, and ancient. The people had once gathered there to offer tribute and confession, but now its doors remained shut more often than not, the great bell above it silent for over a decade.
As they approached the gates, Mira saw them.
The Stitchers.
Half a dozen lined the steps, faces hidden behind thread masks. Their uniforms were crisp. The marks of control magic hummed like wasp wings in the early light.
One stepped forward.
"No entry. Council is in private session."
Lucan moved beside Mira. "Then they'll have to come out."
The Stitcher's hand moved to his blade.
But Mira stepped forward, lifting her palm, and let the threads beneath her skin burn.
Golden light burst from her fingertips, not as a weapon but as a signal.
The spell shimmered into the air, rising in a spiral above the hall like a banner unfurling in war. It pulsed three times.
Once for memory.
Once for magic.
And once for truth.
The Stitchers froze.
Behind the doors, Mira heard shouting. Footsteps. The groan of locks turning.
The Council was no longer ignoring her.
They were reacting.
And as the doors creaked open, a figure stepped through, a man in deep violet robes, embroidered with silver. His face was smooth, his voice colder than any stone.
"You have committed a high breach," he said to Mira. "Tampering with protected knowledge. Awakening forbidden legacies. You will stand down."
"I will stand up," Mira replied. "Because I remember what you made us forget."
The crowd had begun to gather at the square's edge. Farmers. Students. Healers. Children.
The man didn't glance at them. "You cannot undo the stitching of centuries."
"No," Mira said. "But I can cut the thread."
And with that, she reached into her cloak and drew the blade, not in aggression, but in declaration. It glowed, and the ground beneath her shimmered with the same color.
The memory map from the Loom. The roots of the town. The history they buried.
The symbol blazed beneath her boots, spreading out like wildfire.
Gasps echoed from the crowd.
The councilman stepped back. " "What have you done?"
"I've reminded them," Mira said softly. "Now it's your turn."
The bell above the Council hall, long silent, began to ring.
Once.
Twice.
Then three times.
By the time the echo faded, the crowd had stepped forward.
And for the first time in a hundred years, the people of Isurun did not look at the Council with reverence.
They looked with remembering.