Reality didn't shatter like glass.

It frayed—quietly, persistently—like old thread tugged too long at the seams.

And Leo Valdez was already unraveling before the first piece fell.

He woke at 5:00 AM, again, as if the hour itself were stalking him.

The dorm room looked unchanged—poster peeling in the corner, desk cluttered with books and coded spiral-bound journals—but something felt... fundamentally unseated. Like gravity had forgotten its job. The air hung too still, like it was listening.

Leo sat up, sheets damp and twisted around his legs. The digital display on his alarm clock pulsed 5:01 AM in a slow, arrhythmic beat. Yesterday, it had frozen the same way. And the day before.

He'd changed the batteries. Twice.

He moved slowly, deliberately, as if speed might trigger something. His fingers trembled slightly—not fear, not yet. Anticipation. That gnawing sense that something waited just beyond the corner of his vision.

There, near the outlet—flicker-flick.

Two sharp blinks.

Dit-dit. Morse code for I.

His phone vibrated once on the desk. No ringtone. No contact name.

Unknown Number: You see them now, don't you? The threads? They saw you first.

Leo's breath caught. The message burned cold through his nerves. No name appeared in the thread—just that ominous "Unknown Number" that made his skin crawl.

He remembered Jessica Winters from calculus—galaxies doodled in the corners of her notebooks, black ink moons orbiting tiny stick-figure astronauts. Yesterday, her gaze had lingered on him too long. Her lips had moved in silence, forming either help or run—he couldn't be sure.

And then—he saw them.

Thin, luminescent filaments stretched across the room like strands of spider silk glinting in moonlight. From his desk lamp to his laptop. From the bookshelf to the ceiling vent. Glowing threads, barely perceptible, trembling with a sentience of their own.

They hummed—not with sound, but with sensation. He felt them in his teeth, his spine, his breath.

"Not now," he muttered to himself. "Midterm. I have a midterm."

The threads pulsed in reply. As if amused. Or disappointed.

Then came the whispers. They weren't voices, exactly—more like memories being spoken aloud in a language he didn't remember learning. Words curled around his eardrums and slid down his throat like smoke.

In the bathroom, Leo stared into the mirror.

He looked mostly the same. Mostly.

Black hair unkempt from tossing in bed. Hazel eyes rimmed with darkness, skin pale beneath fluorescent flicker. But his reflection rippled—the edges wavered like heat on asphalt. A tiny warping, a shimmer that suggested something behind the image… or within it.

The threads were here too, wrapping the mirror's edge. One reached forward, stretching across the glass like a claw.

He felt pressure. Phantom fingers curling against his throat. Not tight—yet. But present. Suggestive.

He turned away.

Another buzz.

Unknown Number: The threads are just the beginning. Watch for the Weaver in Gray. He's been watching you since the storm.

The storm. Three months ago. The blackout. Nineteen minutes of pitch-black silence while birds fell from the sky like broken wind chimes. He'd written it off as an anomaly. A power failure. A bad dream.

But something had started then.

The dorm kitchen was eerily quiet for a Thursday morning. Normally, there'd be burnt toast smells and someone complaining about the coffee maker.

Javi was there at the stove. But Leo hadn't heard him enter.

"Blueberries or chocolate chips?" Javi asked, as if nothing were wrong.

Leo blinked. Javi's face flickered. Just once. For less than a second.

Where skin had been, there was a swirling void—black and amber, shifting and screaming. Faces pressed outward from within like insects behind glass.

Then it was Javi again.

"Blueberries," Leo said automatically.

Javi flipped a pancake with practiced ease. "Did you hear about Jessica Winters?"

Leo's fork froze halfway to his mouth. "What about her?"

"Gone. Disappeared sometime last night. Campus security found her bag by the library steps." Javi's voice carried genuine concern. "That's the third student this month."

A silver thread slithered from Javi's hoodie sleeve, pulsing with the rhythm of his heartbeat. Leo's eyes tracked its movement, mesmerized and horrified.

Yesterday, he'd seen the same kind of thread coiled around Jessica's wrist in calculus.

"They'll find her," Javi said, but something in his tone suggested he didn't believe it.

Leo's reply came cold and quiet. "They won't."

Javi stared. Too long. His expression shifted as if processing an unexpected response.

"You sound pretty certain about that," he said carefully.

Leo didn't answer. Couldn't. Not without unraveling more than just his own sanity.

In the library, nothing felt safe. Not even the silence.

Books sat still on their shelves, but their titles shifted when Leo wasn't looking directly at them. "Basic Quantum Structures" became "Harvesters of Fractured Time." A thin silver thread drifted between two sections like a lazy serpent.

He tried to focus on his notes, but the words swam on the page. His handwriting from yesterday looked different somehow—more angular, as if something else had guided his pen.

"Hey. You okay?"

Leo's blood turned to ice water.

A girl stood beside his table, shadows nesting in the hollows of her eyes, dark hair falling like a curtain around her face. She looked like Jessica Winters—same height, same build, same concerned tilt of her head.

But Jessica Winters was missing.

"You're—" he began.

"Amy," she said quickly. "Amy Chen. We have Professor Martinez's American Lit together?" Her voice carried a slight tremor, like she was forcing herself to stay calm. "You looked like you were about to pass out."

Leo studied her face. The resemblance to Jessica was uncanny, but subtle differences emerged—a small scar above her left eyebrow, eyes more green than brown, a nervous habit of touching her ear.

"Sorry. Tired. Midterms."

"Tell me about it." Amy glanced around the library nervously. "Hey, you wouldn't want to walk back to the dorms together, would you? With all these disappearances..."

Leo hesitated. Something about her seemed genuine, but after this morning's messages, trust felt like a luxury he couldn't afford.

"Sure," he said finally.

They walked in silence through the quad. The late afternoon sun cast long shadows that seemed to reach for them with grasping fingers.

A woman walked by with her golden retriever—Mrs. Henderson, the groundskeeper's wife. She nodded politely as they passed. Nothing unusual there, except Leo could have sworn he'd heard someone mention she'd transferred to another campus last month.

The campus shuttle rumbled past, and through the window, Leo glimpsed Kenny behind the wheel. The same Kenny who'd driven the route for twenty years before his heart attack last semester. Before his memorial service.

The world was peeling. And the glue holding it together had started to rot.

"Do you ever feel watched?" Amy asked suddenly.

"All the time," Leo replied without hesitation.

She stopped walking. "It's more than that, isn't it? People aren't just disappearing. They're being... replaced. Or pulled away by something."

Leo turned to face her fully. "What do you know?"

Before she could answer, the world sang—a low, rumbling note like the sky had swallowed thunder. The silver threads he'd been seeing all day suddenly became visible everywhere, stretching between buildings, wrapping around lampposts, connecting every living thing in a vast, pulsing web.

And at the center of it all, standing at the mouth of the narrow alley between the library and student center, was a man in gray.

He stood perfectly still, coat smooth as liquid mercury, silver hair that didn't shine but seemed to drink light. His smile was a scalpel's edge. His eyes held depth like cliff edges: beautiful, awful, hungry.

His shadow writhed independent of his body, threads of darkness twitching like dying things.

Reality bent around him like metal near a magnet. The air thickened. Buildings leaned inward like worshippers bowing before an altar.

Amy screamed.

The thread around her wrist—when had it appeared?—tightened like a noose.

"NO—" Leo lunged forward, but she was already being dragged backward, her scream cutting off as darkness swallowed her whole. As if she'd never existed at all.

Silence. A breathless, ringing emptiness.

Only a single frayed thread remained, dangling in the air where she'd stood. It sparked in dim pulses—morse code, maybe. A goodbye. Or a warning.

The man in gray was gone. But Leo could still feel his smile like a brand against his skin.

Another buzz.

Unknown Number: Welcome to the unraveling, Leo Valdez. Try not to scream. It only encourages them.

Leo closed his eyes, then opened them again.

The quad looked normal. Students walked past, chatting about assignments and weekend plans. No one seemed to notice that Amy Chen had just been erased from existence.

No one except Leo.

This wasn't madness.

It wasn't a dream.

The monsters were real.

And now that he'd seen them, they would never let him look away again.

The night didn't end when Amy vanished.

Leo stood frozen in the quad, heart hammering against his ribs. The silver thread that had bound Amy Chen still quivered in the air, severed, its frayed edges curling inward like a dying thing. The silence pressed in—not the quiet of an empty campus, but something deeper. A void that seemed to pulse with its own malevolent life.

Around him, students continued their evening routines as if nothing had happened. As if Amy Chen had never existed at all.

But Leo remembered. The way she'd touched her ear nervously. The scar above her left eyebrow. The terror in her voice when she'd asked him to walk with her.

His phone buzzed again.

Unknown Number: She was meant to be forgotten. But you remember. That changes everything.

Leo's hands shook as he typed back: Who are you?

The response came immediately: Someone who's been watching the Weaver work. We need to talk.

A new message followed with an address: Abandoned chemistry building. Basement level. Come alone, or more will disappear tonight.

Leo stared at the screen. Every instinct screamed trap, but Amy's final scream echoed in his memory. If there was even a chance someone could explain what was happening...

The abandoned chemistry building loomed at the edge of campus like a gothic monument to failed experiments. Condemned after a lab fire three years ago, it stood empty and forgotten—the perfect place for secrets to hide.

Leo's footsteps echoed in the empty corridor as he descended to the basement level. Emergency lighting cast everything in sickly yellow, and the air tasted of old smoke and something else—something that reminded him of the moment Amy disappeared.

"You came."

Leo spun toward the voice. A woman emerged from the shadows—mid-thirties, Asian features, wearing a dark coat that seemed to absorb light. Most striking were her eyes: they held the same haunted awareness Leo recognized in his own reflection.

"Detective Sarah Chen," she said, extending a hand. "I've been investigating the disappearances for months."

"Chen?" Leo's throat tightened. "Are you related to—"

"Amy was my cousin." Her voice carried a weight that spoke of recent loss. "I got her message twenty minutes before she vanished. She said she'd found someone else who could see the threads."

Leo's mind reeled. "You knew about the threads? About what's been happening?"

Chen pulled out a tablet, swiping through files and photos. "Seventeen students over the past six months. Professors, staff members, even a few townspeople. All forgotten within hours of disappearing. Their names fade from records, their faces blur in photographs. But digital forensics remembers—cached pages, backup servers, metadata that hasn't been corrupted yet."

She showed him a photo that made his blood freeze: Jessica Winters, smiling at a campus coffee shop. But even as he watched, her features seemed to shift, becoming indistinct.

"Jessica disappeared three days ago," Chen continued. "Before that, it was Professor Peterson from the Physics department. Before him, Katie Chen—another cousin of mine. The pattern is accelerating."

Leo studied the timeline on her tablet. "Every three days. And they're all connected somehow?"

"More than connected. Watch." Chen overlaid a campus map with location markers for each disappearance. "North dormitory. Engineering building. Computer lab. Main library. And now the quad where Amy..."

Leo's breath caught as the pattern emerged: five points forming a perfect pentagram across the campus.

"Someone's building something," he whispered. "Using the disappearances as anchor points."

"The Weaver in Gray," Chen said. "That's what Amy called him in her last message to me. She said he'd been watching her, following her through the threads that connect everything on campus."

Leo's phone buzzed. Both he and Chen looked down at their screens simultaneously.

Unknown Number: The detective found you. Good. Four points complete. One remains. Find the center before midnight, or the pattern activates. Then everyone disappears.

Chen swore under her breath. "Midnight? That's less than four hours."

Leo was already calculating, his mind racing through geometric possibilities. "If it's a pentagram with four points established, the fifth point should be..." He traced his finger across the map on her tablet. "The student center. Right in the middle of campus."

"But what's the center?" Chen asked, zooming in on the area enclosed by the pentagram points. "What's he actually building?"

Leo's stomach dropped as the answer hit him. "The old bell tower. It's the exact geographic center of the original campus layout. And it's been abandoned since—"

"Since the fire three years ago," Chen finished. "The same fire that forced them to close the chemistry building."

They stared at each other as the implications sank in. The pattern wasn't random. It had been planned for years.

Leo's phone rang—not a text this time, but an actual call from an unknown number. Chen nodded, and he answered on speaker.

"Leo." The voice was silk over broken glass, cultured and ancient. The Weaver in Gray. "You've been remarkably persistent for someone so young."

"What do you want?" Leo managed, his voice steadier than he felt.

"What I've always wanted. To complete the great work. Your campus sits on a convergence of ley lines—natural channels of energy that have flowed here for millennia. The indigenous peoples knew its power. They're why they considered this ground sacred."

Chen leaned forward. "And you're using the disappearances to tap into that power?"

A low chuckle. "Detective Chen. Amy spoke of you often in her final moments. The disappearances aren't theft, my dear. They're willing sacrifice. Each person I take becomes part of something greater—a network of consciousness that spans dimensions."

"Jessica wasn't willing," Leo said through gritted teeth.

"Wasn't she? She sought forbidden knowledge, just as you do. Her notebooks were filled with questions about reality's true nature. I simply provided answers."

Leo's mind flashed to Jessica's doodles—not just random galaxies, but star maps. Constellation patterns that matched the threads he'd been seeing.

"The threads," he said. "You're using them to break down barriers between dimensions."

"Very good. The threads connect all consciousness, all reality. But they're fragile in your limited perception. My work strengthens them, makes them permanent pathways. When the pattern completes at midnight, the barriers dissolve entirely."

Chen's voice was sharp. "And everyone on campus?"

"Becomes part of the greater consciousness. No more loneliness, no more isolation. Perfect unity."

"You mean death," Leo said.

"I mean transcendence."

The line went dead.

Chen was already moving, gathering her equipment. "We need to get to that bell tower. If he completes the pattern—"

"Wait." Leo grabbed her arm. "He wants us there. This whole conversation, leading us to figure out the center—it's too easy. He's orchestrating this."

Chen paused, considering. "Then what do you suggest?"

Leo thought about the threads he'd been seeing, the way they connected everything on campus. About Amy's final words, about Jessica's star maps, about the messages that had guided him to this moment.

"The pattern needs five points to activate," he said slowly. "But what if we disrupt one of the existing points instead of trying to prevent the fifth?"

"How?"

Leo pulled up the campus map on his phone. "The disappearances created anchor points, but they're maintained by the threads connecting them to the center. If we can sever those connections..."

"We break the pattern," Chen finished, understanding dawning in her eyes. "But how do we cut threads made of supernatural energy?"

Leo thought about his quantum physics courses, about Dr. Larson's lectures on entanglement and wave function collapse. "Observation changes quantum states. If the threads exist in some kind of superposition between dimensions, observing them might force them to collapse into a single state."

"That's a hell of a theory to bet everyone's lives on."

"You have a better idea?"

Chen checked her watch: 8:47 PM. "We need help. More observers, more chances to disrupt the pattern."

"My roommate Javi knows about the disappearances. And I have a friend coming up from State—Mike. He's an engineering student, thinks in mathematical patterns."

"Get them. Meet me at the north dormitory in thirty minutes. That's where Katie disappeared—the first anchor point. If we can disrupt it..." Chen paused, studying the pattern on her tablet. "Actually, there might be another way."

She pulled up a different view, showing the threads as Leo had described them—silver lines connecting each disappearance point to the center. "You said the threads carry consciousness, right? What if some part of the victims is still there, trapped in the network?"

Leo's pulse quickened. "You think we could communicate with them?"

"I think we could try to wake them up. If even one person trapped in the pattern fights back from the inside..."

"It might destabilize the whole network," Leo finished.

His phone buzzed with a message from an unknown number, but this time the tone felt different—urgent, desperate:

Leo, it's Jessica. I'm still here, still aware. He has us trapped in the threads, but I can feel the others. Amy just arrived—she's fighting him. We need you to disrupt the north point. Can you see the silver thread leading from Katie's dormitory room? Follow it to where she's trapped and—

The message cut off abruptly, replaced by the familiar silk voice:

Clever girl. But you're too late. The pattern is already stronger than you know.

Chen and Leo exchanged grim looks. The game had changed. This wasn't just about preventing a fifth disappearance—it was about rescuing the people already caught in the Weaver's web.

And they had less than three hours to figure out how.

As they hurried back toward campus, neither of them noticed the figure watching from the chemistry building's roof. The man in gray smiled, his silver hair catching moonlight that cast no reflection. Everything was proceeding exactly as planned.

The threads pulsed with stolen consciousness, and midnight approached with inevitable certainty.

Leo's Honda Civic wheezed to life on the third try, Chen already in the passenger seat with her equipment bag. The threads visible to Leo's enhanced perception had grown thicker, more agitated, as if sensing the approaching culmination.

"Your friend Mike—when did you say he was arriving?" Chen asked as they drove toward the north dormitory.

"He should be here by now. I'll call him." Leo hit speed dial, putting the call on speaker as they navigated the darkening campus.

"Leo?" Mike's voice came through, slightly strained. "Man, this place is giving me the creeps. I'm parked outside your dorm, but something's wrong with the building. The windows on the third floor are all dark, and I swear I saw someone watching me from one of them."

"That's Katie Chen's floor," Chen said grimly. "The first anchor point."

"Mike, listen carefully," Leo said, pulling into the dormitory parking lot. "Get out of there right now. Meet us by the main entrance—don't go inside alone."

They found Mike standing by his Toyota, looking pale in the streetlight. He was tall and lanky as Leo remembered, but something had changed in the few hours since he'd arrived. His usual calm, engineering-student demeanor had cracked.

"Leo, I've been seeing things," Mike said without preamble. "Threads, like you described. And there's something in that building that doesn't want to be observed."

Chen extended her hand. "Detective Sarah Chen. And you're right—there's definitely something in there. Something that used to be a student named Katie Chen. My cousin."

Mike shook her hand, his expression shifting to one of grim understanding. "So this is all real. The supernatural stuff, the pattern you mapped out."

"Unfortunately, yes," Leo said. "And we need your help to break it."

They stood looking up at the north dormitory, its brick facade seeming to absorb the streetlight rather than reflect it. The threads Leo could see were writhing more violently now, and he caught glimpses of faces in the building's dark windows—students who should have been there, but weren't quite solid enough to be real.

"What's the plan?" Mike asked, his engineer's mind already working on the problem.

Chen pulled out her tablet, showing them the building's floor plan. "Katie disappeared from room 312. If the anchor point is still active, there should be a concentration of supernatural energy there."

"And if we disrupt it?" Leo asked.

"Theory one: we weaken the pattern and buy time to prevent the fifth anchor. Theory two: we free Katie and potentially the others trapped in the network."

"Theory three?" Mike prompted.

Chen's expression darkened. "We make the Weaver angry enough to accelerate his timeline and complete the pattern early."

They were interrupted by Leo's phone buzzing with another message. This time, when he looked at the screen, he saw something that made his blood freeze: a photo of Javi, sitting at his desk in their dorm room, apparently studying. But silver threads were wrapped around his wrists, and his eyes held a distant, dreamy expression that Leo recognized from old missing persons reports.

The message below the photo was simple: Come to the bell tower alone, or your roommate joins the network.

"He has Javi," Leo said, showing them the screen.

Chen swore. "He's accelerating the timeline. Forcing our hand."

Mike studied the photo with an engineer's eye for detail. "Look at the timestamp. This was taken twenty minutes ago, but look at the shadows in the room. That's not evening light—it's dawn. This photo is from the future."

Leo's mind reeled. "He's not just manipulating space through the threads—he's manipulating time."

"Which means we might already be too late," Chen said.

But even as despair threatened to overwhelm them, Leo noticed something else in the photo: Javi's notebook, open on the desk, covered with equations and diagrams that looked familiar. His roommate had been researching the disappearances on his own, mapping the same patterns they'd discovered.

"Wait," Leo said, zooming in on the notebook. "Javi figured something out. Look at this equation—it's not just mapping the pentagram pattern. He's calculated what happens if you disrupt multiple anchor points simultaneously."

Mike leaned in, his engineering background helping him parse the mathematical relationships. "He's right. If you break the pattern at multiple points at once, instead of cascading failure, you get..." He paused, checking the math. "Recursive feedback. The network turns in on itself."

"Like a computer virus," Chen said, understanding. "But how do we coordinate simultaneous disruptions across campus?"

Leo looked up at the dormitory, then at his friends, feeling the weight of impossible choices. "We split up. Each of us takes an anchor point."

"That's suicide," Chen protested. "We don't even know exactly how to disrupt them."

"But we know they're maintained by observation and consciousness," Leo said, pieces clicking together. "Javi's math shows what happens if the observers become the disruptors instead of just passive witnesses."

His phone buzzed again. This time the message was from Jessica:

Leo, I can feel him getting stronger. The network is almost complete. But Amy found something—a way to reverse the process from inside. We need you to trust us and let the pattern complete.

"Let it complete?" Chen read over his shoulder. "That's insane."

Another message followed: Not complete the way he wants. Complete it with willing observers instead of stolen consciousness. Break his control from within.

Mike was still studying Javi's equations. "Actually, it might work. Look—if you substitute willing participants for coerced ones in the network equations, the entire system inverts. Instead of draining consciousness, it amplifies it."

Leo felt the threads around them shifting, responding to their growing understanding. "He's been stealing consciousness to power the network. But if we feed it willing consciousness instead..."

"We take control of the network ourselves," Chen finished. "And use it to free everyone he's trapped."

It was a desperate plan with too many variables and too much that could go wrong. But as midnight approached and the threads grew more agitated, Leo realized they were out of safer options.

"Okay," he said, decision crystallizing. "Here's what we do."

The threads pulsed with anticipation as he outlined their strategy, and somewhere in the network that connected all consciousness, Jessica Winters smiled for the first time since her disappearance.

The final game was about to begin.

The evening air in Millbrook carried an unnatural chill, heavy with the weight of things unseen. Leo and Mike left the police station in a haze, the confrontation with the shadow-thing leaving an electric hum in their ears. Detective Chen had promised to dig deeper, but her face betrayed the same dread that churned in Leo's gut. She believed him—or at least believed enough to act.

But belief didn't make the threads stop. If anything, they were worse now, thickening like smoke over a fire about to rage out of control.

"Do you feel that?" Mike asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Feel what?"

"The static. Like the air's vibrating."

Leo nodded, checking his phone—three missed calls from Javi and a dozen unread texts in the dorm group chat. None of that mattered now. He hadn't said it out loud, but the threads were louder than ever, their whispers bleeding into his mind like an old radio stuck between stations. They weren't just tugging—they were screaming, pulling him toward Cedar Street. Toward the next point in the pentagram.

Mike hesitated, then pulled out his phone. "I'll map the closest route. If someone's disappearing tonight, we need to get there first."

"No shit," Leo muttered, his fingers tapping nervously against his thigh. He should be cramming for Dr. Larson's midterm right now, not chasing supernatural threads across town. "Maybe we should call for backup?"

"Who? Campus security? The police who just watched a shadow-monster and still looked skeptical? Your TikTok followers?"

The rational part of Leo's brain screamed to bail, but the same impulse that had gotten him to jump from the quarry cliff last summer pushed him forward. The threads wouldn't let him think clearly anyway. They yanked at his very being, compelling him to move, to act. It felt like drowning in the weight of unseen forces, each thread binding tighter as the minutes ticked away.

The house on Cedar Street loomed at the edge of town, a skeletal silhouette against the fading twilight. Its shutters hung crooked, and the porch sagged under the weight of time and neglect. No lights flickered within; only the faint rustle of the wind and the creak of loose boards greeted them as they approached.

But it wasn't empty. The threads told Leo that much. They writhed around the house like living things, pulsating with a darkness that made him shiver.

"We shouldn't be here," Mike muttered, his earlier resolve fading as they stepped onto the porch. The boards groaned under their weight, and the smell of mildew and decay clawed at their noses.

"No choice, man. The pattern leads here," Leo replied, his voice tight. He wished he had told someone else where they were going—at least then someone might come looking when they didn't show up for tomorrow's study group. "Whatever's happening—"

The front door swung open with a sound like a dying breath, cutting him off. They froze, staring into the yawning darkness beyond.

A single light flickered inside, casting long, shifting shadows that seemed to move with a will of their own. At the far end of the hall stood a figure—a man in gray, his silver hair catching the dim light like a predator's glint. His sharp smile was unchanged, but his eyes held something ancient, something that promised suffering.

"Good evening," the man said, his voice smooth as silk but undercut with a serrated edge. "You're early."

"Who are you?" Leo demanded, fists clenched. Part of him wanted to livestream this whole thing—who would believe it otherwise?

The man in gray tilted his head, his smile widening. "Names are irrelevant, but you may call me Riven. As for what I want... it's already in motion. The question is, what are you willing to do to stop it?"

Riven stepped forward, and the air seemed to contract around him. The threads in the room lashed violently, pulling at Leo and Mike with invisible hands. They were no longer silvery but blackened, charred by some unseen fire.

"You see the patterns, don't you?" Riven continued, his tone almost gentle. "Beautiful, aren't they? Every thread, every point of light, weaving something far greater than the sum of its parts. And you..." He gestured toward Leo, his eyes narrowing. "You're the only one who can see the whole picture."

"What are you talking about?" Leo snapped, though he already knew. The threads had chosen him for a reason. They showed him things no one else could see, pulling him into a web he didn't understand. If anyone from his Physics study group could see him now...

Riven's smile faltered, replaced by something colder. "The pattern is incomplete," he said, his voice dropping to a low growl. "Tonight, another thread will be severed, and the design will grow stronger. Unless, of course, you wish to intervene."

The sound of footsteps on creaking stairs made them spin around. A shadow moved at the edge of the room, flickering in and out of existence like a dying candle flame. It wasn't human—that much was clear. Its form shifted constantly, limbs stretching and bending in ways that defied logic. And its eyes... they glowed with a hunger that turned Leo's stomach.

"Meet the Harbinger," Riven said with a flourish. "A servant of the pattern. You see, the threads demand sacrifice. Without it, they unravel. Chaos reigns. Surely, you wouldn't want that?"

The Harbinger lunged, its movements fluid and alien. The air crackled with electricity as it moved, leaving a scent like burning metal. Mike barely had time to shove Leo out of the way before it struck, its claws raking deep grooves into the floor where they had stood.

"Run!" Leo shouted, grabbing Mike's arm and pulling him toward the back of the house. They stumbled through darkened rooms, the Harbinger's guttural growls echoing behind them.

"Where the hell are we going?" Mike panted.

"I don't know!" Leo admitted, his voice cracking. The threads were everywhere now, forming a labyrinth that twisted his perception. Doors appeared where there shouldn't be any, hallways stretched endlessly, and the Harbinger's presence seemed to seep through the walls like toxic gas.

They burst into a room that felt... wrong. The walls pulsed like a heartbeat, and in the center stood an altar draped in crimson fabric. Symbols Leo didn't recognize were etched into its surface, glowing faintly. Above it, threads converged into a single point—a tangled, writhing knot that seemed to radiate malevolence.

"This is it," Leo whispered, his eyes locked on the altar. The symbols reminded him of the eigenstate diagrams from Dr. Larson's lecture, but twisted, corrupted. "This is where it's happening."

A sudden, deafening crack split the air as the Harbinger barreled into the room. Its form expanded, limbs stretching impossibly wide to block any escape. The temperature dropped twenty degrees in an instant, Leo's breath forming clouds before his face. He felt the threads pulling him toward the altar, urging him to act, but he didn't know how or why.

Riven's voice echoed from somewhere unseen, calm and taunting. "You can break the pattern, Leo. But it will cost you. Are you willing to pay the price?"

The Harbinger lunged again, and this time there was nowhere to run.