"The forest does not kill you. It forgets you. That is worse."
Folk saying from the Outer Weaves
Elric did not know how long he had slept.
There was no sun in the Whispering Forest. Only a pale, silvery haze that shifted like breath through the branches — never day, never night. Time had lost meaning.
He awoke curled around the book like it was a dying ember. His body ached, but worse was the dull pressure inside his skull — as if thoughts themselves had to fight to form.
A name floated in his mind. His name.
"Elric," he whispered.
The forest didn't react. But the trees twitched.
The book had changed again overnight.
Its stitched cover creaked as he opened it, revealing more text that hadn't been there before. Written in crisp, bleeding ink:
Survival Protocol for Stitchborne:
– Do not speak aloud more than once per waking.
– Do not name what you fear.
– Do not listen too closely.
– Do not bleed.
Beneath that, a single line pulsed faintly:
"Stitch threads are not made to endure. But sometimes… they do."
Elric ran his thumb across the page. It felt like flesh. Warm. Throbbing.
He breathed shallowly. He would not cry.
His stomach turned against him by the second day — or third, or tenth.
The forest gave no fruit, no clear water. Only glistening vines that dripped with something not quite sap, and insects stitched shut along their spines. He didn't dare eat.
The book offered no help.
Only this:
"Essentia hunger is worse than flesh-hunger. Do not starve your soul."
He didn't know what that meant yet. But it felt like a warning for later.
His body craved food. But his mind?
His mind craved silence.
They came at sleep's edge.
At first, only silhouettes in the trees. Shadows with no legs. Faces with mouths sewn shut. But then they stepped forward. Grew bolder.
He saw his old professor — skin flayed into thread.
He saw his sister — holding a needle like a dagger.
They didn't speak.
They twitched when he blinked.
Elric began to lose track of real and not-real. Even his thoughts stopped feeling like his own.
One night, he caught himself mumbling, and realized:
He was whispering with the trees.
On what may have been the fifth day, Elric awoke to the sensation of pulling — not on his limbs, but on his center. Like someone was yanking at his chest from afar.
He sat upright, gasping.
The thread — his thread — had returned. Hovering above his sternum like mist. Thinner than hair. But… moving.
Dancing.
As if something distant was calling it.
The book flipped open without touch.
"Some threads respond to echoes. Listen."
Elric knelt in the dirt. He closed his eyes.
He listened.
Beneath the rustle of leaves, the breathing bark, the memory-voices—
He heard it.
A sound that did not belong here.
A voice.
Not tree. Not hallucination.
Human.
Distant.
Singing, softly — a lullaby he did not know.
Inspired by the voice, Elric reached inward again.
He tried to control the thread.
It snapped.
Again. He reached. Calmer this time. Imagining it like thread through a needle.
The strand responded.
It shimmered. Shifted. And for a moment—
—formed a line that connected to the bark of a nearby tree.
He felt something then: emotion not his own. Hunger. Regret. Shame. Pain.
Then it vanished.
The bark cracked open and wept black thread.
He fell backward.
The book whispered:
"You stitched into sorrow. Next time, choose the weave."
By now, Elric barely spoke aloud.
His lips mouthed thoughts, but no sound came. The forest fed on words.
The voice — whoever it was — appeared every third sleep-cycle. Singing. Distant.
Never closer. But clearer.
He whispered to himself once:
"You're real. Aren't you?"
His thread trembled when the voice came. It wanted to go to it.
But Elric was not strong enough yet.
The trees hissed louder whenever it came.
The hallucinations worsened.
Now the trees wept thread constantly. They hung like entrails from branches. They began to write on the dirt when he slept:
UNWOVEN.
DO NOT THREAD HIM.
YOU ARE FOREIGN FIBER.
He screamed once — a guttural, broken sound.
And the forest shook in reply.
Elric knew then: it was testing him. Not for power. But for identity.
Could he still believe he was real?
Could he still remember who he had been?
The book gave him no comfort.
Only guidance.
"Watch your thread. Its behavior is your reflection. When it changes, so have you."
That day, Elric noticed something strange.
His thread — though still thin — no longer shimmered pale.
It pulsed with faint color. Not light. But tone.
A dull, determined grey.
The color of resistance.
Now he sits, cross-legged beneath a tree that no longer whispers. His thread floats in front of him, gently moving. Watching. Waiting.
The forest presses in, but no longer feels so endless.
The voice will come again, he's sure.
And when it does—
He will answer.
Even if only by breathing.
"I don't belong here," he says quietly. "But I'm still here."
End of Chapter 2: The Thread That Hungers