I. The Loom's First Thread

The first time Elias saw her, she was woven into the air itself.

He had been walking home late, the air thick with the scent of rain that hadn't yet fallen. The town was quiet, the kind of quiet that seeps into your bones and makes you feel like the only living thing left. The old mill stood at the end of the road, forgotten, slumped against the sky like something that had given up long ago.

And then - he saw her.

She stood at the very edge of the abandoned street, where the pavement crumbled into wild grass. The mill loomed behind her, its broken windows like hollow eyes, empty and watching.

But she wasn't empty.

She was too much and not enough all at once.

Her dress wasn't fabric - it moved., not in the wind, not like something being touched by the world around it.

It moved on its own.

Thread unraveled and rewove itself at the same time, a constant flicker between being created and being undone.

And she was watching him.

Elias stopped.

A cold sensation trickled down the back of his neck, pooling at the base of his spine.

The streetlights flickered.

He wanted to look away, to pretend he hadn't seen her.

But love doesn't start with logic.

It starts with something deep.

A pull.

A thread, thin as a whisper.

The moment stretched between them, silent but full. Full of something ancient, heavy, waiting.

She didn't move.

But the air around her did.

He blinked.

For the briefest moment, he saw golden threads stretched between them, thin as silk, connecting his ribs to hers, his wrists to hers, his breath to hers - as if he had always been meant to find her.

And then, they were gone.

A trick of the light.

A figment of his tired mind.

That's what he told himself.

That night, he followed the thread.

And it led him to her.

II. Her Name Was Selene

She never told him how she got there.

Only that she had been waiting.

Elias never asked why - because some questions didn't have answers, and some answers shouldn't be spoken aloud.

The old mill had been abandoned for decades, reduced to a skeleton of rusted beams and crumbling stone. What had once been the heartbeat of the town, a place where hands worked tirelessly at looms, weaving together futures, had now become nothing but dust and echoes.

But to Selene, it was home.

"Do you see them?" she asked him once.

It was late - it was always late when he saw her. The moon hung low, painting the ruins in silver light. The night air hummed, thick and waiting.

Elias followed her gaze into the dark, past the broken machines and sagging wooden rafters.

"See who?"

She smiled but never answered.

Her smiles were always like that - half-truths, unfinished sentences, something always left unsaid.

He should have cared.

He should have noticed the way her eyes lingered on things that weren't there. The way she listened too carefully as if hearing something else beneath the silence.

But love makes you blind to warnings.

He loved her.

And love, he had learned, wasn't about logic.

________________________________________

It didn't matter that she was only there at night.

It didn't matter that she never walked past the iron fence surrounding the mill. That she never came looking for him. That she never touched the world outside.

It didn't matter that her hands never seemed to truly touch his.

Their fingers brushed, it felt like the space between moments, the quiet between breaths - something that existed but never quite solidified.

It didn't matter that sometimes when she spoke, the air behind her shimmered.

Like she wasn't standing in the present but somewhere just behind it.

Like she was always one step away from vanishing.

Elias didn't care.

Because when she smiled at him, it was real.

When she whispered his name, it belonged to her.

And the way she looked at him - like he was something worth waiting for - made him believe that maybe she had been.

Maybe he had been too.

________________________________________

"I shouldn't love you."

She whispered it one night, her voice softer than the wind.

The stars burned bright overhead, stretching endlessly above them. Elias lay beside her on the old mill's rooftop, feeling the cool bite of stone beneath his palms, the distant hum of the night pressing against his skin.

He turned his head toward her, their faces close, close enough to see the silver thread of moonlight catching in her hair.

"Then don't." He smiled, teasing.

She didn't smile back.

Instead, she reached out, fingers brushing his cheek.

And Elias felt it.

Not warmth. Not cold.

Just... the edge of something.

Like a breath caught between two worlds.

A place that wasn't quite here and wasn't quite gone.

"I have no choice," she whispered.

The words threaded through him, pulling tight, wrapping around something deep inside.

And Elias felt it, too.

That pull.

That thread.

The one that had been guiding him since the first night he saw her.

The one that had been waiting for him long before he ever arrived.

________________________________________

III. The Threads Were Waiting

The town whispered about the mill.

They said it wasn't a place they lived.

If you walked inside at the wrong time, you'd hear the machines whirring, the looms weaving.

But they were empty now, weren't they?

The workers had gone. The factory had died. The town had moved on.

Hadn't it?

They said if you stayed too long, you might hear something else.

Something older.

Something is still working in the dark.

Something that had never stopped.

Elias didn't care.

Love makes you blind.

Love makes you deaf to the warnings.

________________________________________

The first time he stepped inside, the air shifted.

Not the way abandoned places settle, not the way an empty building groans when left to rot.

It was something else.

A feeling - thick and humming, pressing against his skin like the weight of something unseen.

The dust didn't sit right.

It should have coated everything - thick, untouched, suffocating.

But it wasn't.

There were trails.

Places where the dust had been disturbed. Where it had been moved.

As if someone had been walking here.

As if many had.

The floor wasn't rotten like it should have been.

It felt? preserved.

Kept.

And then he saw them.

Threads.

Thin, golden, shifting in the dim light - woven into the air, into the machines, into the walls, into the nothingness.

They weren't draped like cobwebs.

They weren't abandoned.

They were waiting.

Tension hummed through them as if, at any moment, they might move.

Might pull.

It might tighten around something that had already been caught.

Elias reached out.

And the moment his fingers brushed one -

He heard them.

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IV. The Voices of the Unwoven

A thousand voices whispering at once.

A thousand stories, stitched into the fabric of the mill, trapped in the threads.

They weren't screaming.

They weren't crying.

They were waiting.

Love letters that had never been sent.

Confessions that had never been spoken.

Futures that had never been finished.

And Elias felt them.

A weight against his ribs.

A pull beneath his skin.

Like something was unraveling inside him - or being woven into something else.

His breath caught in his throat.

The voices folded into each other, layering, overlapping, stories bleeding into one another until he could no longer tell where one ended and another began.

Then, beneath them all, he heard it.

A voice that did not belong to the others.

A voice that did not belong to the past.

"Elias!"

________________________________________

He turned -

Selene stood at the center of the mill.

But she wasn't alone.

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V. The Others

They stood behind her.

Figures - not quite people, not quite shadows.

They were woven into the space between light and dark, their forms flickering like old film caught between frames.

Their faces?

There were too many.

They blurred, shifting, their features never settling on one shape.

And yet, Elias could feel them watching.

Waiting.

Selene's chest rose and fell too quickly.

She wasn't afraid.

She was pleading.

"You have to leave," she said.

"You shouldn't be here."

The golden threads quivered.

The figures stood still, but the mill around them moved.

The walls breathed.

The machines tensed, their rusted edges pressing inward like something was waking beneath them.

"What are they?" Elias asked.

Selene didn't answer.

She didn't have to.

Because he knew.

They were the ones who had never left.

________________________________________

VI. Love That Was Never Let Go

"This place keeps things," she whispered.

"Keeps people."

The figures did not blink.

They did not move closer.

They did not need to.

The threads were already pulling.

A cold sensation wrapped around Elias's wrists, his ankles, his ribs.

Not tight.

Not yet.

Just enough to hold him still.

To test the weight of him.

To see if he would fit into the pattern.

Selene stepped forward.

Her hands touched his face.

This time, they were solid.

This time, he could feel her.

"I don't want to lose you," she whispered.

The mill groaned.

The golden threads tensed.

And Elias finally understood.

________________________________________

VII. The Last Choice

This was not about ghosts.

This was not about death.

This was about unfinished love.

The kind that never gets its ending.

The kind that never lets go.

The kind that the Loom takes and weaves into itself, over and over again, until the story no longer belongs to the people who lived it.

Until it belongs to the Loom.

Until it is woven into the pattern, to be replayed, rewritten, and retold.

Again.

And again.

And again.

________________________________________

Elias looked at Selene.

On the way, she looked at him like he was something she couldn't bear to lose.

In this way, the figures did not step forward because they did not have to.

On the way, the golden threads were already wrapping around him, waiting for him to make a choice that was never really a choice at all.

He could stay.

Be with her.

Become part of the Loom, part of the story, part of the pattern that never truly ends.

Or he could leave.

And if he left -

Would Selene still be waiting?

Would she fade from the pattern, disappear entirely, become something forgotten instead of something trapped?

Or would she stay, woven into the fabric of the mill, whispering his name until someone else walked inside and followed the threads?

Until they found her?

Until they made the same choice?

________________________________________

The mill whispered.

The golden threads tightened.

Selene's fingers trembled against his cheek.

And Elias made his choice.

________________________________________

VIII. The Loom Always Wins

The next morning, the mill was quiet.

The dust settled.

The threads did not move.

And if you passed by in the early light, you would see a boy standing just inside the doorway.

Still.

Waiting.

Watching.

And if you listened closely, you might hear it -

A voice.

Soft. Familiar.

Calling a name.

But you should never answer.

Because those who step inside -

They never leave.

________________________________________

No one saw Elias again after that night.

But the mill never felt empty.

The town tried to forget. They whispered about the missing bo the way they had whispered about others before him. How it was sad, how it was strange, how he was too young to just disappear without a trace.

But they never searched for long.

Because deep down, they knew.

They knew what happened to those who stayed too long.

What happened to those who fell too deep into love?

________________________________________

On some nights, when the sky was black as ink, the wind would still, and the mill would come alive again.

The looms - silent for decades - whispered back to life.

If you listened closely, you could hear them. The pull of the thread. The slow, rhythmic hum of weaving.

But the machines were empty, weren't they?

Nothing should have been moving.

Nothing should have been there.

And yet -

If you stood at just the right angle, in just the right light, you might see them.

Threads.

Thin. Golden.

Trembling against the empty walls woven through the abandoned rafters.

Waiting.

Watching.

Sometimes, a figure stood at the edge of the trees.

A girl in white, her dress never quite still, always shifting, always unraveling at the edges.

Waiting.

Watching.

And if you dared step closer, if you let your breath slow if you let the weight of silence press against your ribs -

You might hear him.

A man's voice, soft, desperate, searching.

"Selene?"

It is always the same name.

It is always the same call.

And there is never an answer.

Not anymore.

________________________________________

VII. The Loom Never LeLeto

The town stays away now.

They know better than to wander too close.

But sometimes, curiosity wins.

The lost ones - **the ones searching for something, the ones aching for love that never found its way to them - **they come.

They stand outside the mill.

They listen to the whispers.

And if they stay too long -

If they step inside -

The threads tighten.

The Loom hums.

And another story is woven.

Another love story without an ending.

Another thread, waiting to pull the next heart into its pattern.

Because love never truly dies.

It just waits.

Tangled between worlds, forever pulling at the ones who were never meant to let go.

For now...