Chapter 7 - The Weaver's visit

By the time Eirian turned three, the whole village knew her and treated her as part of their family; it wasn’t strange for them the way she was quiet most of the time or how she liked to play with the sigils and runes she encountered.

“Just thoughtful,” the villagers said. “Smart one, that girl.”

They didn’t know that inside the small, wiry frame of a child who still tripped over her own feet lived the memories of a world far older than their village paths and crooked garden fences. They didn’t see the weight in her gaze or feel the way her mana flared and faded, breathing with her like a second set of lungs.

But children—other children—could feel it, even if they didn’t know how to name it.

The twins, Tomas’ sisters, were the only ones who didn’t shy away.

They were barely two, both sharp-eyed and feral in that toddler way—hair tousled, cheeks perpetually sticky with berry juice, and feet caked in garden dust. They didn’t speak much yet, either, but that didn’t stop them from shrieking with laughter as they dashed between the tall mint stalks and tangled vines.

Eirian sat on a flat stone near the edge of Sera’s herb bed, watching them through half-lidded eyes. Her hands were tucked in her lap, a bundle of twine looped around her fingers like an abandoned cat’s cradle. The stone beneath her hummed faintly, pulsing with old earth mana.

The twins darted past again. One of them—Mira or Luma, she still mixed them up—tumbled headfirst into a patch of soft moss, yelped, and burst into loud, angry tears.

Eirian blinked.

She inhaled once. Let the mana in her chest rise with the breath, and she exhaled slowly.

The thread of emotion tangled around the twin’s aura slackened—only slightly, but enough.

Mira—or Luma—sniffled, blinked up at her sister, and let herself be pulled up again. The crying stopped as quickly as it had begun.

Eirian didn’t smile, but she let her body relax.

This was what she had learned: that mana here didn’t need commands shouted at it. It wanted to be harmonized with. It liked rhythm. Intention, and she was learning to listen.

She turned her face up toward the sky. Spring had come early this year. The breeze carried the scent of river clay and cracked seed husks. Above her, bees danced between blossoms, and the wind chimes above the porch clicked lazily against one another.

She could feel it all now. The threads of life, thin and glimmering, weaving through everything around her.

The mint stalks held sharp, impatient threads. The old rosemary bush—planted decades ago near the garden wall—buzzed with a steadier pulse, ancient and amused. Even the chickens had distinct rhythms—scattered and simple but content.

And the twins?

Their threads fluttered like wings. Pure instinct and motion. She envied them a little.

The fox button, now worn smooth from three years of constant handling, hung around her neck on a red string. She touched it absently, her thumb tracing the carved eyes.

Tomas still visited sometimes. Always in the evening, when Sera was preparing tea or stitching shut one of Orlen’s endless scrapes. He didn’t speak to her much, but he often asked her to take care of his sisters.

She rose carefully from the stone and brushed off her tunic. Her balance had improved. The clumsiness of early toddlerhood was fading, replaced by surer footing and quicker reflexes.

Mana, too, came easier now. It still resisted her old techniques—sigils, chants, and lines of power drawn in bone dust—but it answered to something else: attention.

Sometimes, she could even coax it to move with her heartbeat.

The twins shrieked again, this time chasing a dragonfly toward the porch. Eirian started after them but paused.

The wind had changed.

Just slightly.

It no longer danced playfully through the grass. Now it circled, uncertain, as though sniffing something just beyond the edge of the hill.

Eirian turned toward the village road.

There—on the far edge of her mana perception—was a pressure she didn’t recognize.

It felt old, but she knew that the presence didn’t belong here in this village; otherwise, she would have met it before.

Something brushed against the very edge of her soul, like the moment just before a knot unravels.

She stepped back and inhaled sharply through her nose; She couldn’t panic just because something unfamiliar crossed into the village.

The threads around her didn’t react, but the bees grew quiet. Even the chickens near the fence stopped their scratching.

The twins didn’t notice.

But Eirian did.

A traveler was coming.

And whatever thread they carried through the world, it was heavy with meaning.

***

Market day arrived with the hush of wind and the clang of pots. Stalls bloomed like patchwork under canvas shade, laid out along the stone path between the river bend and the granary hill.

Sera’s table stood near the middle, nestled between the fishmonger’s tarp and the elderly woodturner’s crates of carved bowls. Her bundles of dried herbs, small bottled tinctures, and thread-woven charms hung in neat rows from a wooden rod. Bees lingered near the queen’s balm.

Eirian stood close by, her small hands tucked behind her back as she watched the crowd. She didn’t wander on market days. Not because Sera told her to stay near—but because there were too many threads moving at once. Too many people pulling attention in different directions, stirring the mana like spoons in an overheated pot.

Today, something was different.

She felt it before she saw him, the same presence that she had felt coming near the village. It was here again; she could feel it clearer now.

The crowd parted without realizing they did. No one made way for him intentionally—but somehow, no one blocked his path either. The air grew taut where he stepped, like invisible strings pulled slightly tighter to accommodate his presence.

The Weaver wore a travel cloak patterned in deep greens and tarnished bronze. Woven silver thread traced delicate runes along the hem and cuffs—functional. His face was mostly hidden under the hood, save for a chin weathered by wind and time.

He bore no staff. No sword. No visible relic.

And yet the mana around him behaved like it had been told to behave.

Eirian’s breath caught in her throat.

Sera didn’t falter when he approached her stall, though her voice dropped half a register when she greeted him.

“Traveler. You need medicine?”

The Weaver’s voice was soft but clear. “Only rest and rhythm, healer. But perhaps something for clarity, if you trade it.”

Sera’s fingers brushed along a bundle of frostleaf. “We have infusions for that.”

The Weaver leaned closer to inspect her wares. His eyes, pale grey and nearly colorless, lingered too long on the charms woven with copper thread. He ran a gloved finger over one—a spiral-bound river stone wrapped in lavender string—and tilted his head, listening to something Eirian couldn’t hear.

Then—

His gaze shifted.

To her.

Sharp. Focused. Still.

Like he was looking through her, as if his plan had been to come close to her since the beginning.

The sensation that followed was immediate.

Something in the air plucked. A subtle yank—like the loose end of a thread had been drawn between them, stretched taut for inspection. It felt invasive in some way.

Her mana bristled. The button around her neck warmed slightly.

She met his eyes and didn’t blink. He was dangerous; she was sure of it.

The moment passed in a breath.

Then the Weaver turned back to Sera and continued their polite trade talk, never once acknowledging the scrutiny he’d just placed on her.

Eirian exhaled slowly and stepped behind the stall to the shadow of a hanging sheet. Her pulse thudded in her throat.

That man had seen something.

And he hadn’t liked what he found.

***

The day passed with the usual lull of noise. Coins clinked. Chickens escaped. Toddlers cried and then stopped again.

But the Weaver didn’t leave.

He spoke with the village elder. Traded a carved trinket for lodging in the granary hall. Then lingered in the square long after most had packed their wares.

Eirian watched him from the high window in Sera’s loft as he traced a slow circle through the grass near the old well, his fingers making tiny motions. Small glyphs flickered briefly in the air before dissolving into nothing. No one noticed what he was doing, and no one questioned him for some reason. She wanted to understand why no one seemed to notice him—as if forgetting him was part of his magic.

By evening, when the sky turned violet and dinner steamed on the hearth, he still hadn’t gone.

***

That night, long after the twins had gone home and Orlen had retreated to his workshop, a knock came at the cottage door.

Eirian stirred from her seat on the stairs.

She didn’t move, only tilted her head.

Sera answered the door.

It was he.

The Weaver stepped inside like he’d been invited. He carried a satchel slung across one shoulder, but otherwise nothing.

“I won’t stay long,” he said. “But I must speak to you alone.”

Sera gestured to the hearth and shut the door behind him. “Is it about her?”

“Of course it is.”

Eirian crept quietly down two steps, crouching behind the bannister’s beam. She focused—not on the words, but on the thread between them. A silverthread was connecting both of them, and she noticed that the more he walked, the same thread extended to her body, but she didn’t know what it was; it wasn’t simple Mana—that was the only thing she was certain of.

“She’s not cursed,” the Weaver said. “That much is true, without blight or rot, not even possession—though I felt something coiled inside her.”

Sera’s breath hitched. “A dormant entity?”

She wasn’t questioning him, and Eirian wanted to know why.

“No, something older.” A pause. “Something that remembers its own death.”

Eirian clutched the stair railing tightly.

The demon soul.

“I won’t ask where she came from,” the Weaver continued, “but know this—temple-trained seers would not look kindly on what clings to her. Not because it’s evil. But because it’s unknown.”

Sera was quiet for a long moment.

“She’s kind,” she said softly. “Maybe a little too quiet, but still a good soul, I’m sure of it.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“I believe you.” The Weaver stood. “Which is why I’ll say this clearly. Don’t let the temples find her. Don’t register her at a sanctum. Don’t send her to the city unless she can hide it.”

“And if she shows magic?”

“She already has. Subtle, but there.” His eyes flicked toward the window. “Her aura bends without being forced. That is… not natural. Train her, and she could control it.”

Eirian pressed her back to the wall, breathing carefully. Her ears rang.

“I’ll leave a scroll,” the Weaver said. “Basic techniques. Safe practices. Something she can study without drawing attention. Beyond that… it’s up to you.”

Sera walked him to the door, wordless.

The moment the latch clicked behind him, the silverthread dissolved into the air, as if it had accomplished its work. Sera got against the wall, like she had lost stability; something in her eyes changed, and she looked everywhere searching for something.

“That…”

She approached the door and noticed how the sigils that Eirian had drawn were broken; even her own charms made of plants were on the floor. The protections were gone without her noticing.

The door opened again, and Orlen was there.

“Hey, I went to my workshop, but the moment I got there, I forgot why I went there in the first place.” He appeared confused for some reason. “Strange, really strange.”

The moment he finished speaking, Sera almost got on the floor but was caught by Orlen before that.

“Are you all right?” he asked her with worry in his voice.

“He was a Weaver,” she said.

“What? What do you mean?”

“If you don’t remember, it’s because he didn’t want you to,” she whispered, eyes still on the door.

“Woman, what are you talking about? A Weaver was here?”

“Yes, I didn’t realize at the time, but the moment he stepped out of the house, everything became clear.”

“Do you want me to alert the village chief?”

“That… I’m not sure about it; that could bring us trouble. You know that no one in the village is capable of going against someone like him; we can only be grateful that he didn’t want to cause trouble to the village.”

Suddenly, Sera looked to the stairs and looked at her.

Eirian darted back upstairs and slipped beneath the blanket.

She closed her eyes. She didn’t understand most of what had happened this day and didn’t know if she wanted to.

***

The Weaver was gone by the time the sun rose.

Not just gone from the house or the market, but gone in the way only a certain kind of mage could disappear—without trace, scent, or echo. As though the world itself had gently folded around him and closed the door behind.

Sera stood by the hearth, staring at the scroll he'd left behind. She hadn’t touched it since he handed it to her, hadn’t so much as unrolled it. The delicate manascript—sealed with red thread and a wax stamp etched with a twisting geometric glyph—rested on the high shelf above her potions rack, half-shadowed by hanging herbs.

She hadn’t told Eirian what was in it. Hadn’t told her anything, really.

And Eirian, sensing the weight in the air, hadn’t asked.

Not yet.

That night, long after the Weaver had vanished down the slope road, Orlen returned from his search with shoulders hunched and eyebrows drawn. The moment he stepped into the cottage, he read the air and knew.

“I didn’t find a single clue about him. Did you know what he was from the beginning?” he asked quietly as he set his pack down.

Sera’s fingers clenched the edge of the counter.

“Of course not,” she answered. “He didn’t say his name or what he was.”

Orlen’s eyes darted to the scroll.

“You didn't open it?”

“No, not yet. It’s not meant for me.”

He exhaled sharply. “Weavers don’t leave tokens lightly. You think it’s safe to keep in the house?”

“I think,” Sera said slowly, “if he wanted to hurt us, he wouldn’t have walked up our road in broad daylight and handed me a gift.”

Orlen said nothing for a long time. The fire crackled between them, throwing shadows across the beams. Then he turned toward the door again.

“I’ll speak to the chief in the morning,” he muttered. “Someone that powerful walking past our wards unnoticed? That’s not just magecraft. That’s something older.”

“Don’t go stirring dust that’s already settled,” Sera warned.

But Orlen was already lacing his boots. The decision was made for him.

The next morning, he left with three other villagers to comb the road into the hills once again. This time he was with the hunters of the village, experts in following traces left behind.

But they found no tracks, no scent, not even a broken blade of grass to suggest someone had been there at all.

The Weaver had left behind only silence.

And a scroll.

***

Sera was in the garden when Eirian moved.

She hadn’t planned it. But the house had grown quiet, and the shadows had grown long, and the scroll above the herbs had begun humming, like a call.

She pushed a stool against the potion shelf and climbed carefully. Her arms were longer now, steadier, but she still moved with the focus of someone who remembered how much could be lost to a single misstep.

Her fingers closed around the scroll. It buzzed beneath her skin—gently, she could sense it as an invitation.

She stepped down, slid onto the woven mat near the hearth, and held it in her lap.

Then, slowly, she unwrapped the wax seal and unfurled the scroll.

No ink marked the parchment.

At least—not at first.

But then, with a breath, lines began to shimmer. They didn’t glow. They didn’t pulse. They just appeared, as if soaked up from the air itself. Letters formed from fibers and intention, a weave more than a script.

She should not have been able to read it.

The script was old. Older than the runes her mother had taught her, but she could read it.

The scroll did not ask if she was ready.

It simply opened.

Lines unfolded in her mind like threads slipping from a loom: patterns of mana alignment, threads of attunement beyond material anchors, and symbols designed to teach it where to flow.

Even without any training, she could understand them, the way a river understood its own bed. Her breath slowed, her heart quieted, and the world... shifted.

She saw the weave beneath the floorboards, the gentle bend of energy inside the beams, and the faint pulse of copper threads Sera had hidden behind the cupboard. The wind outside breathed through the eaves, and she felt the whisper of it brush against her cheek.

It was a conversation; it screamed at her about life.

And the moment she answered—not with words, but with recognition—the scroll began to dissolve.

One line at a time, the glyphs unraveled.

The parchment frayed at the corners, curling inward like dry leaves.

Eirian didn’t panic. She watched it disappear with the quiet reverence of someone watching an elder return to the earth.

When the last thread faded into the air, nothing remained in her lap.

Not dust. Not ash. Not even a scent.

Just the memory of something ancient and vast and waiting.

She sat still for a long time, palms resting on her knees, eyes unfocused.

Outside, Sera’s voice drifted through the open window as she spoke softly to the twins, who had wandered down from Tomas’ homestead for sweets and stories. Laughter followed—light, untouched by the weight of magic.

But inside the house, something had shifted.

Eirian pressed her hand to the mat.

She could feel it now. The way the world was changing all the time, too much information if someone wasn’t trained, but the scroll had helped her. The floor remembered footsteps. The walls remembered words. The entire house was a vessel.

That night, she lay awake long after Sera had banked the fire and drawn the charm curtains closed.

The moon painted silver across the rafters.

And in her chest, the ember of her mana stirred, like something old had been waiting inside her this whole time for the right song to begin.

And now that the melody had started, it would never sleep again.

***

Tomas didn’t see the Weaver coming.

One moment, he was crouched beside the goat pen, flicking pebbles at the fence post and trying to ignore the way his little sisters kept stuffing grass into their mouths like they were sheep.

The next, there was a shadow over his shoulder.

Tomas turned slowly. The man’s robes whispered with the breeze, too many layers to count. Silver thread caught the sun in hair-fine spirals. He wasn’t tall—at least not in the way grown men usually were—but his presence bent the air around him like heat above stone.

The twins stopped playing immediately. One hiccupped and dropped a daisy.

The man crouched beside Tomas as if he had all the time in the world.

Tomas didn’t move. His mouth was dry.

“Your name?” the man asked gently.

“…Tomas,” he said after a beat. He didn’t mean to whisper, but it came out that way.

The man’s hand—light, callused, surprisingly warm—settled on his shoulder without squeezing it, just rested it there.

Tomas froze.

A feeling like breath passed through him; he felt something move through him, as if probing for a hidden shape, like someone was tracing the edges of who he was without touching anything at all. His bones ached, like something deep inside them had been asleep and was now stretching, confused, blinking at the light.

The man’s gaze flicked sideways, past the house, toward the forest.

Toward her house, the direction where Eirian’s family lived.

Then he looked back at Tomas and murmured, almost like a lullaby:

“This one is raw, but open. If you send him to a proper Tower, they’ll shape the spark into a flame. If you wait too long… it might burn itself out.”

And just like that, he stood.

His robes stirred once, as if caught in a breeze Tomas couldn’t feel.

Then he was walking away—vanishing like mist burned off by sunlight.

Tomas sat very still.

The twins returned to shoving grass into their mouths.

***

Later, over dinner, Tomas’s parents couldn’t stop talking about it.

“He just appeared?” his mother asked, her voice rising like steam. “Not from the road? Not from the village path?”

“No.” His father looked shaken, though he tried not to show it. “He was there. And then he wasn’t.”

“And he touched the boy?” she hissed.

“Not like that,” Tomas muttered, picking at his soup. “He just… knew things.”

His father rubbed a hand through his hair. “A Weaver. In our fields.”

“Do you really think he was a Weaver? We have never seen one before; we have only heard of them,” her mother asked.

“I’m not sure about that, but it sounds like one of them. The only person who could tell in this village if he was one is Sera.”

“But she didn’t tell the village anything,” she explained.

“Bah… that woman can’t be trusted; she’s always with her plants like a sage, but she’s not even a wizard.”

“Don’t talk like that; you know that she saved my life.”

“Alright, alright,” he said, as if he didn’t want to talk about Sera anymore.

“But do you think he was serious?” she asked. “About sending him to a tower?”

“Would a Weaver waste breath if he wasn’t?”

They looked at Tomas then. Like he’d changed. Like the goat-smelling boy who ran barefoot through mud and scraped his knees on tree bark had suddenly become something else.

Tomas didn’t say a word. He just stared down at his spoon and thought about the forest.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the Weaver and what he had told him.

If you wait too long… It might burn itself out.

***

The next day, the whole village was called to the square.

It wasn’t often that the chief called for an assembly. Fewer times still that the bell rang before noon, when most folk were still elbow-deep in soil or oil or goat droppings.

But the chief stood beneath the elder tree, arms crossed and face grim. Orlen stood beside him, whispering low and fast.

When the people arrived—dozens of them in mud-streaked tunics and sun-cracked boots—the tension in the air was sharp enough to slice.

Orlen stepped forward.

“You all know me,” he said. “I don't stir trouble unless I have reason.”

Heads nodded. Even the barkeep paused from his usual muttering.

“A Weaver passed through our village.”

The silence was immediate; he let it sit, let it settle.

“Didn’t show himself to the wards. Didn’t announce his name. He walked through our land and left without a trace—but not without purpose; we all know that when a Weaver appears in a place, big changes are going to happen.”

Murmurs. Wide eyes.

“He left something behind,” Orlen continued. “A simple scroll—for some reason the scroll is no longer with us, but that’s not important right now.”

He took a pause before continuing, giving time to the villager to adjust to the new information.

“But it wasn’t just that,” Orlen added, glancing sideways.

Tomas blinked when his name was spoken.

The villagers turned.

“Tomas,” Orlen said, voice careful, “was also visited. The Weaver told his family the boy had potential—that he should be trained. Sent to a Tower.”

Gasps were heard across the people reunited, some disbelieving and others uncertain.

Tomas’s heart pounded in his ears.

“He didn’t leave instructions, but he gave a warning. If the spark isn’t shaped, it could… fade. Or worse.”

More murmurs, but softer now.

Someone in the crowd—Jaren, the baker’s son—whispered, “So he wasn’t one of the bad ones.”

Others nodded.

“If he wanted to destroy us,” another man said slowly, “he could have.”

“But he didn’t.”

“And he blessed the boy—”

“—left a scroll—”

“—watched the children play—”

The tension, like a boiling pot, cooled, and they breathed easier.

And when the chief raised a hand for silence, it came quick.

“Weavers don’t travel without cause,” he said. “We’ll mark his passage in the books. Watch the wards. But we’ll also… consider his words.”

He looked at Tomas. Then at Tomas’s parents.

“We’ll help if you choose to send him to a Tower. But we won’t force your hand.”

Tomas’s mother squeezed his shoulder. Hard.

He didn’t know if he wanted to leave.

But something deep in his chest had already started to stir.