The Weaver's Maze

The world screamed. Not in sound, but in the fabric of it—a tearing sensation that ran through your bones like a bow drawn across a cello string. You were at the well, bucket half-raised, when the sky split.

Not the sky. The air. A seam of darkness opened above the baker's roof, and through it spilled a creature that had no right to exist—all angles and hunger, its skin the color of spoiled milk. It landed on the cobblestones with a wet, wrong sound.

Mother's voice rang out behind you. "Child, come away from there."

But you couldn't move. The thing's head swiveled, and where its eyes should have been were two perfect mirrors, reflecting you.

Then a hand closed around your wrist—hard, calloused, stranger's heat. He was there, the man who'd arrived three days ago with dust on his boots and a name he wouldn't give. He pulled you backward, and the world stuttered.

The well. The baker's roof. The cobblestones. They flickered, like a candle guttering, and for one impossible heartbeat you saw what lay beneath: ruins. Rot. A sky the color of old bruises.

"Don't look at it," he said, low and urgent. "Look at me."