Chapter 1: Straw and Thread
The rain tasted like ash.
Lumen lay still on the gravel, staring up at a sky that didn't belong to Earth. The clouds churned unnaturally, stitched across the heavens like torn cloth, glowing faintly with violet veins. His chest heaved. He coughed smoke.
"...This isn't a dream, is it?"
The pain in his ribs said no. The blood on his fingers said no. The distant echo of a laugh — high-pitched and playful, like a jester — said absolutely not.
It was the laugh he'd heard just before he died.
It hadn't been a heroic death. He hadn't saved anyone. He hadn't even known he was dying. One second he was stepping off the curb, earbuds in, the next he was staring into the painted face of a clown across the street. No one else seemed to notice it. It had pointed at him. Laughed. Then nothing.
Now here he was. Somewhere else. Somewhere... wrong.
The wind picked up, whistling low through the broken grass around him. The field was dead. Blackened. Charred as if it had been set on fire a week ago and then forgotten. A jagged line of stones made a crude road leading into a forest of twisted trees ahead. His body ached, but he moved.
He had to.
He wandered for hours. The sky didn't change. There was no sun, just dim light, like the world had a memory of daytime but forgot how to do it right.
It wasn't until he collapsed under the gnarled branches of a dying tree that he heard the voice.
🛠️ [System Initialization]
[Identity Scanned]
➤ Name: Unknown
➤ Race: Human (??? - External Anomaly Detected)
➤ Sigil Status: Common Tier ⟶ Assigned: Threadbinder
➤ Threat Level: Minimal
Engagement Level: Low
He blinked. "Who said that?"
Nothing answered.
But a glowing brand now shimmered on the back of his hand — a tiny symbol, like thread wrapped around a needle.
A sigil.
He didn't know how he knew that, but he did.
He was picked up by villagers not long after. Starving, half-conscious, muttering about needles and ashes. They gave him bread, suspicious glances, and a shovel.
"You want to eat, boy?" the village chief said. "Earn it. Go scare the birds off the south fields."
And so Lumen, the boy once from Earth, now from nowhere, stood in a field dressed in patched rags and a sack mask to block the wind. He spread his arms, balanced on a wooden pole for fun, and scared crows by yelling things like, "Boo!" and "Taxes are due!"
The children started calling him the Scarecrow.
He laughed. So did the crows. But he did his job.
At night, when the wind quieted and the stars flickered like dying fireflies, he stared at his sigil and whispered, "What am I supposed to be?"
The sigil never answered.
But one night, something else did.
He saw it near the woods. A creature, hunched and steaming, dragging its limbs through the dirt like they didn't belong to it. Its eyes glowed blue like furnace glass. It wasn't just wrong. It was broken. As if stitched together by mistake.
Lumen froze.
The creature stopped.
Then charged.
He ran. It followed.
He tripped over roots, his sack mask falling. He turned, out of breath, thinking he'd die a second time.
But his sigil burned.
Threads. Real ones. Shot out from his fingers like needles, coiling around branches and dragging him out of reach. The creature slammed into a tree behind him and exploded in sparks.
It was a machine. A monster. A message.
His first fight — survived by accident, by instinct, by thread.
When the villagers found the smashed remains of the thing the next morning, someone whispered:
"The Scarecrow did it."
And just like that, a name began to form.
He sat alone that night under the stars, chewing stale bread.
The wind rustled the fields. Somewhere, a crow cawed.
He chuckled.
"Scarecrow, huh?" he said, holding up his hand, watching the sigil pulse like a heartbeat. "Guess I'm stuck with it."
But the stars didn't laugh.
They watched.
And so did something else, far beyond the sky, smiling.
Waiting.
He worked the fields by day, learned the village patterns, and studied the feel of the sigil beneath his skin by night.
The villagers never asked where he came from. People here didn't ask questions unless they were ready to trade something for the answers. He played the fool — the outsider with strange words and stranger eyes. He laughed when they mocked him. He bowed when they pushed.
It was easier to be harmless. To be forgotten.
But the crows remembered.
There was a girl — no older than eleven — who used to bring him half her lunch. She said her mother warned her not to talk to "the stitched boy," but she did anyway.
One day, she asked him:
"What's your real name?"
He hesitated, then shrugged.
"Scarecrow, I guess."
She laughed, missing teeth.
"Isn't that sad?"
He smiled.
"Sometimes… the sad names are the ones that last longest."
🛠️ [System Update: Hidden Protocol Triggered]
📌 Emotion Trace Detected: Resonant Memory Node
⟶ Processing... unlocking dormant data...
❗ Connection Interrupted
Warning: Observation Thread Detected
▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓
Lumen jerked up from his sleep, sweat pouring from him like he'd run miles.
There was something in the trees again. Watching. Recording. Waiting.
He stood, slipped on his sack mask like armor, and walked out into the frost-lit field. He didn't know what he'd find — maybe nothing. Maybe everything.
But he walked anyway.
The village chapel was old — not for prayer, but for storage. Its cross was bent. Its doors creaked. Inside, under dust and cracked stone, Lumen found it.
A mirror.
Shattered.
But behind it, etched into the wall like a scar, was a symbol he'd seen before — in a dream, in the system window, in the stars.
🕯️ [Threadbinder]
Below it were five more faded sigils, arranged like spokes of a wheel — burned into the stone with heat that felt alive. As he stared, they pulsed faintly.
He reached out.
🛠️ [System Prompt: Unknown Interface Engaged]
🔍 "You are not meant to see this."
Override Denied.
Logging error: ❌
Logging error: ❌
Logging observer: ✅
░A puppet dances. A clown sings. The Scarecrow wakes.░
Lumen stepped back.
Something had seen him.
The next day, two villagers disappeared.
No blood. No signs. Just gone.
The same girl who had asked his name now looked at him different. Not with kindness.
With fear.
"You're cursed, Scarecrow," she said.
Maybe he was.
That night, he sat atop a pole he once used to mimic birds, sack over his face, whispering:
"Threadbinder… common… what does that even mean?"
No one answered.
But far away, beyond the trees, something giggled.
A shrill, muffled sound like cloth torn from flesh.
And in the woods, unseen by all but the moon:
Two figures stood.
One wore jester bells, red paint smeared across its eyes.
The other dangled on strings, its eyes hollow — head twitching unnaturally to the side.
The clown turned.
"He's not ready." it whispered.
The puppet didn't respond.
It didn't have to.
The threads of fate had already started to pull.
🛠️ [System Notice: Surveillance Window Opened]
🩸 Subject Tag: "Scarecrow"
Status: Incompatible Host
Override Risk: Rising
Emotion Drift: ☒☒☐☐☐
Containment Protocol: Observe. Let him grow. Then snap the thread.
░But if he cuts back first…░
That night, Lumen stared at the stars and smiled for no reason.
A wind swept the fields.
The crows circled.
And somewhere deep in the folds of reality, someone whispered his name — not the one he'd been born with…
…but the one he'd earn.
Scarecrow.