Episode 6: Bound by Blood, Torn by Thread
1091 Words
Episode 6: Bound by Blood, Torn by Thread
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The moon was high over Elridge when Eris laid Lira on the sanctuary floor.
Lucan hovered near the door, his expression torn between relief and dread. Lira’s chest rose and fell with faint effort. Her skin was no longer glowing, but her veins pulsed silver, tainted.
“She’s not fully back,” Eris said softly, brushing damp hair from Lira’s forehead. “She’s between states. A half-reclaimed thread.”
Lucan stepped closer. “Can she hear us?”
Eris nodded. “Somewhere deep in the Vein, she can. But her thread is tangled—cut and spliced with Seether corruption.”
Lucan’s jaw clenched. “Then I’ll stay with her until it’s undone.”
“No.” Eris looked up at him. “We need to act fast. Pulling her out took everything the Vein could give. Now it’s vulnerable. The Seethers will strike soon.”
Lucan looked down at his sister. “If I leave her—”
“She’ll slip again,” Eris finished. “Unless someone binds her thread to something real. Something... living.”
Lucan blinked. “You mean anchor her.”
Eris hesitated. “Yes. And I’ll do it.”
His eyes widened. “No. You already burned half your core pulling her out.”
“I’m the only one strong enough. I’ll take on her thread—her guilt, her fear, her grief. I’ll bind it to my own.”
Lucan reached for her wrist. “That could kill you.”
“It could,” she said softly. “Or it could bring her back for good.”
They stood in silence. Only Lira’s ragged breath broke it.
Finally, Lucan whispered, “If this works, and she comes back... I’ll owe you everything.”
Eris met his gaze. “You already do.”
---
Later that night, Eris stood alone in the Vein Chamber beneath the sanctuary. Silver energy pulsed like heartbeat in the roots of the walls. She knelt, drawing a second circle beside Lira’s still form.
“Emotion,” she whispered, “is not weakness. It is bond. Blood. Birth.”
She pressed her palm to her chest and reached inward.
A storm of feelings surged. Her fear, her longing, her deep ache for something beyond duty. She took it all and poured it into the thread between her and Lira.
A web of light formed—fragile, flickering.
“Take this, Lira,” she murmured. “Let me carry the weight, just for a while.”
The thread attached.
Lira gasped.
Her eyes fluttered open.
But they were not hers.
---
Lucan jolted upright as Eris screamed.
He bolted down the stone steps into the chamber, only to find her body flung across the floor.
Lira stood now—fully awake, fully glowing. But her body crackled with black lightning, and her voice echoed like several beings speaking at once.
“You should not have opened her,” the voice hissed.
Lucan stepped between Eris and Lira. “Let her go.”
The thing inside Lira laughed. “You don’t command the threadless.”
He growled. “But I can tear you out.”
Lira’s body jerked.
And for a moment—just a moment—her own voice broke through. “Lucan... help me.”
Then her eyes turned solid black.
---
Eris sat up, coughing, clutching her chest.
“She’s... not fully possessed,” she gasped. “They’re using her like a broadcast tower—spreading the corruption through her old threads.”
Lucan snarled. “She’s going to be a beacon.”
“Not if we sever the signal.”
“How?”
Eris looked up. “We don’t go after her. We go after the one sending the signal.”
Lucan narrowed his eyes. “The Seether Prime.”
---
The name itself was a shadow in the Vein.
Few had ever seen it.
No one had survived meeting it.
The oldest empaths called it The Echoless One—a being that existed outside the emotional spectrum. No feelings. No tether. No humanity.
But according to the scroll Eris retrieved from her father’s library, the Prime wasn’t born from nothing. It was once like them.
An empath.
A lover.
A threadbearer.
One who felt so deeply they broke—and chose silence over sorrow.
“He used to be called Caelen,” Eris said softly, tracing the name on a page. “He fell in love with a human who died. He tried to resurrect her by binding her soul to the Vein.”
Lucan frowned. “What happened?”
“The Vein rejected the bond. Said love must be lived, not fabricated. Caelen went mad. He decided if the Vein couldn’t bring back love—it should be unmade.”
Lucan exhaled. “So he began severing threads.”
“Until he became what he is now—a god of emotional emptiness.”
---
To find him, they needed someone who had once heard his voice.
Someone broken.
Someone... like Lucan.
Eris brought Lucan to the old memory well.
“If you want to bait him,” she said, “you’ll need to open the part of you that you’ve kept shut since you killed the alpha.”
Lucan stared into the shimmering pool. “If I do that, I might lose control.”
Eris stepped close. “Then I’ll catch you.”
---
He stepped into the well.
The water turned black.
A vision struck like lightning.
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[Flashback Vision]
Lucan, younger, kneeling in a field of bodies.
His claws drenched in blood.
His sister screaming.
Packmates fleeing.
The alpha’s body at his feet.
And then—black threads curling around him. A voice, whispering:
> “Feel nothing, and you’ll never hurt again.”
Lucan, sobbing, replied:
> “I don’t want to feel at all.”
The threads slithered into him.
The curse began.
---
Lucan screamed and collapsed into Eris’s arms.
His eyes flickered with light—his Vein had been reconnected.
But he had also reawakened the one who cursed him.
---
Far away, in the deepest layer of the Vein, the Echoless One stirred.
Its eyes opened for the first time in centuries.
And it smiled.
---
Meanwhile, Lira stood in an alley, alone.
The voice inside her grew louder.
But so did something else.
A thread. Gentle. Soft.
A memory of her brother, laughing.
Of Eris holding her hand.
She reached toward her own chest.
And began to fight.
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