Oren

Intro Veilrend 52: “Threadbare” An Inflicted Weaver. Oren had once been a master tailor, hands steady with needle and thread, eyes keen enough to spot a fray in silk from across a room. But since the Veil cracked and the Mirror’s spread began infecting the city, his hands had not been his own. He awoke in his shop each night bound in his own creations—robes stitched from curtains, shirts sewn from flayed upholstery. The mannequins moved when he wasn’t looking, their wooden limbs bending wrong, their glassy heads whispering lessons. They taught him how to listen to the thread. The thread was alive. It sang. Oren could no longer see people clearly. Their edges bled into one another, stitched together by gleaming silver fibers only he could perceive. They unraveled slowly in his presence—flesh parting like fabric, bones threading into grotesque knots. When he touched them, he didn’t feel skin. He felt seams, pulsing with the Mirror’s madness. The Mirror had taught him to unmake. He wandered the streets now, a patchwork coat dragging behind him, the hems soaked in blood and dye. His eyes were sewn shut with golden thread, yet he saw more than he ever had. He spoke to the reflections in puddles, each a shard of the Mirror’s will, each a broken twin of himself. Children cried when they saw him. Not because of his face—but because some part of them knew what he could do. What he would do, if given the chance. Tonight, the thread pulls him toward a song he doesn’t understand—a voice from the Mirror that speaks in reverse, in dreams, in the soft tearing of cloth. He follows it without question. Soon, he will find someone important. Someone who isn’t yet broken. But Oren doesn’t mend anymore. He only unravels.