The tremor ca again, a slow, rolling shiver through the silk beneath their feet, but this ti it wasn’t like the gentle, sensual pulses Allen had learned to control. This was heavier, deeper—like sothing big was moving in the dark. Xilthera’s golden eyes flicked toward the tunnel mouth, the afterglow still on her lips but the predator returning to her stare. Nyxilith shifted where she lay on her side, her spider legs tapping faintly as though feeling the vibrations for clues.
Allen didn’t break eye contact with the darkness ahead. "That’s not one of yours," he said, voice low.
"No," Xilthera answered, her lower body uncoiling from around him. Her legs clicked against the silk in a slow, restless pattern, her hair still tangled from where his hands had been buried in it monts ago. "That’s sothing from the Deep Thread."
The brood above them had gone quiet, every shape frozen in place, eight-eyed faces turned toward the tunnel. The silk seed to breathe—once, twice—before a faint glow appeared, blue and pale, swaying like a lantern in a windless cave. The light was wrong. It wasn’t fire, wasn’t magic Allen recognized—it pulsed irregularly, like a heartbeat that didn’t belong to anything human.
Then ca the sound.
It was the soft, dragging slide of sothing impossibly large, paired with the faint wet slap of flesh against silk. Fina instinctively stepped closer to Allen, one hand hovering near her dagger, though her eyes betrayed her unease. Rinni licked her lips, either nervous or excited—it was always hard to tell with her—but her knuckles tightened around the spear she’d picked up from a fallen brood guard earlier.
Syza looked like she wanted to retreat, but the web had a way of making retreat feel pointless.
The glow swelled brighter.
The thing that erged from the tunnel wasn’t a spider. It wasn’t anything Allen had seen in this Hollow yet—it had the segnted body of a centipede like Xilthera, but its plating was slick and translucent, showing pulsing veins and twitching muscle underneath. Its upper body was vaguely humanoid, but stretched too tall, the arms long and thin with fingers that tapered into points like sewing needles. Its head was a mask of bone, no eyes visible, only a vertical slit where a mouth should be—and from that slit ca the glow, pulsing with every slow exhale.
Xilthera’s lip curled. "Threadseeker."
It tilted its head toward the gathered group, and when it spoke, the voice wasn’t sound at all—it vibrated through the silk and into their bones, a cold, alien thrum. Weaver.
Allen straightened. "You’ve been looking for ."
The thing’s head shifted in sothing almost like a nod. The pattern is wrong. You do not belong to the Web.
Nyxilith pushed herself upright, strands of silk peeling from her back. "He belongs to ."
"And ," Xilthera added, her segnted tail coiling forward like a threat.
The Threadseeker ignored them. You must be unwoven.
It moved fast—impossibly fast for its size—legs snapping against the silk as it lunged. Allen didn’t even think; the silk answered him instantly, collapsing under his feet and dropping him a few paces down, forcing the creature’s strike to sail over him. The thing landed without sound, its needle-fingers slicing into the web and making it shriek in protest.
Fina darted in from the side, her dagger slashing across one of the translucent legs. The blade cut, but instead of blood, thin glowing threads spilled out, writhing in the air before fading. The creature didn’t even flinch—its head simply rotated toward her, mouth-slit widening.
Allen was already moving, yanking on the silk beneath it to twist into a spike, stabbing upward into its lower body. The impact made the glow inside it flare dangerously bright, and the thing’s screech wasn’t just sound—it made the entire web tremble, brood above chittering in agitation.
Rinni thrust her spear into its side, and this ti the reaction was imdiate—it jerked away from her with enough force to rip silk strands loose, sending them snapping like whips.
Xilthera was suddenly behind it, her many legs wrapping around its lower body, chitin plates grinding against its translucent armor. "Take its core!" she hissed.
Allen didn’t hesitate. He drove forward, grabbing hold of the creature’s torso where the glow was strongest. His fingers sank in—warm, wet, and thrumming like a plucked string. The thing convulsed, its needle-fingers stabbing wildly, catching silk instead of flesh as Allen tore the glowing mass free.
The mont it ca loose, the Threadseeker went limp, collapsing into the silk like a discarded puppet. The glow in Allen’s hands pulsed weakly, the light fading with each beat. He could feel sothing inside it—knowledge, raw and tangled, like a mory trying to crawl into his own mind.
He squeezed, and the glow dissolved into threads that sank into his palms.
The cavern was silent except for the heavy breaths of the living. The brood above began to move again, whispering in their strange, clicking tongue.
Xilthera’s gaze was fixed on Allen’s hands. "You’ve taken its pattern."
Nyxilith tilted her head, sothing sharp and approving in her smile. "You’re not just the Weaver now... you’re the Unraveler."
Allen looked down at the fading shimr still clinging to his skin and grinned. "Good. That ans I can do more than make this Hollow mine."
Far off, deeper in the tunnels, more glows began to stir.
This was just the first.
The silk still quivered from the Threadseeker’s death, a faint tremor running up through Allen’s legs into his spine, but it wasn’t just the web reacting—it was the whole Hollow, a slow, collective awareness pressing against his mind. The brood above whispered in layered clicks, their voices overlapping like dry rain on glass. Xilthera crouched beside the fallen husk, her claws tracing the translucent plating as if cataloging its structure for later use. Nyxilith lingered behind Allen, her spider legs weaving and unweaving strands as though her body couldn’t be still after the fight.
The glow in his hands had completely faded, leaving only the mory of that strange, humming warmth. But it had changed sothing. He could feel it—new threads in the web, ones that bent toward him like they were waiting for his pull. Every silk strand now had a faint undercurrent of that alien hum, like the Hollow itself was breathing in ti with him.
From deeper in the dark, more pale lights began to move. They didn’t hurry. They didn’t need to. The way they slid through the tunnels made Allen’s gut tighten—not fear exactly, but the sense that these things knew he was coming and were making room for him.
Fina wiped her blade clean, eyes locked on the distant glow. "If that was one, how many more are there?"
"Too many," Xilthera said, straightening with slow elegance. "The Deep Thread doesn’t send them alone unless it wants to test sothing. It will co harder next ti."
"Harder?" Rinni smirked, but her grip on her spear stayed tight. "Good. I like when they fight back."
Allen glanced at her, the corner of his mouth quirking. "Then you’ll love this next part."
Without warning, he yanked on the silk, the command running through it like a lightning strike. The web obeyed, shifting underfoot until thick strands rose from the floor, curling into a barrier around them. The lights ahead flickered and shifted, as if confused by the sudden wall. The brood above hissed their approval, the sound rattling in their throats.
Nyxilith stepped close, her voice low and silken. "That’s new. That’s not just weaving... you’re redirecting the pattern."
Allen flexed his hands, feeling the Hollow’s threads hum against his skin. "I’m not just its guest anymore. This place listens to ."
Xilthera’s gaze sharpened. "Then you’re dangerous to more than just the Threadseekers."
He didn’t bother denying it.
The barrier shifted again at his thought, opening a narrow path that led toward the heart of the glow ahead. The silk around them rippled in agreent, and Allen took the first step, his boots sinking slightly into the tensioned threads. The others followed without hesitation, though Fina stayed close enough that her shoulder brushed his arm, and Rinni kept glancing upward, watching for movent above.
The tunnel narrowed as they moved forward, the strands growing thicker, more layered, until it felt like they were walking through the inside of a cocoon. The glow ahead swelled brighter, and with it ca the sound of silk under tension—not the soft, living kind, but the brittle, dry snap of sothing old.
They erged into a chamber unlike the others—no open space, no hanging brood. This was a nest, but not for Xilthera’s kind. The walls were lined with skeletal husks, humanoid but twisted, each wrapped in layers of grey silk so thin they were almost transparent. Inside each husk, faint threads of blue light pulsed like veins.
The lights they’d seen earlier were here—three more Threadseekers, each hunched and motionless, their glow dim as if waiting for a signal.
Xilthera hissed under her breath. "Feeding pit."
Allen didn’t give them ti to stir. He pulled—hard—and the web in the room answered with violent speed. Strands whipped from the walls, lashing around the nearest Threadseeker’s limbs and dragging it sideways into the silk-lined wall, impaling it on the hardened spines beneath. The glow inside it flared, sputtered, and went out.
The other two moved instantly, their long needle-fingers snapping toward Allen, but this ti he didn’t dodge. He caught one’s arm in his bare hand, feeling the hum of its inner threads, and instead of tearing it free, he wove—forcing its arm to braid in on itself until it hung uselessly. The thing shrieked, the sound knifing through the silk in a way that made the brood above shift in agitation.
Fina and Rinni struck together at the third, Fina’s blade cutting deep into its torso while Rinni ramd her spear through the slit of its mouth, the glow spilling out like threads of smoke before fading.
When it was over, the chamber was silent but for the faint twitching of the dead.
Allen stood among them, the web still trembling faintly from his pull. That hum in his hands hadn’t faded—in fact, it had grown, the Hollow’s threads twisting tighter around his mind.
Nyxilith’s gaze was fixed on him, her smile thin but knowing. "You’re not just unweaving their patterns, Weaver. You’re taking them into yours."
He didn’t deny it. "If the Deep Thread wants out, it’s going to have to cut its own web apart to do it."
From sowhere deep beyond the tunnels, a low, resonant pulse answered him—not sound, not light, but a vibration that made the silk under their feet bow as if in submission.
Allen smiled.
The Hollow was his now.
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