Dr. Saya Ohn had the office of a woman who'd stopped caring about the office thirty years ago.
Papers stacked on every surface. Three whiteboards covered in equations that had been written over other equations that had been written over diagrams. A desk that was technically present beneath the geological layers of journals, loose pages, and coffee-stained notebooks. The window looked out onto the university courtyard, but the view was blocked by a bookshelf that had been repositioned to create more wall space for a fourth whiteboard.
The woman herself was five feet tall. Maybe five-one in the shoes she wasn't wearing — her feet were bare on the office carpet, a concession to comfort that Voss suspected was less a quirk and more a statement. She was sixty-two. Korean. Hair gone entirely white and cut in a bob that she probably trimmed herself. Her eyes were the kind of sharp that made you check whether you had something on your face.
"So," she said, looking at Voss and Mira across the small clearing she'd made by pushing papers to the edges of her desk. "The Carver."
"Director Dren," Mira corrected. "Carver Corps."
"I know who he is. Everyone knows who he is. He killed a god with a knife." She looked at Voss directly. "Was it a knife?"
"Two knives. And Thread Sight."
"Thread Sight. The ability to perceive post-mortem mana signatures in recently deceased barrier-spawned organisms."
"That's the technical description."
"What's the real description?"
Voss considered. "I look at dead things and see what they were made of."
Dr. Ohn's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. The muscular precursor to one. "Better. You're here about the faceless things."
Mira opened her laptop and turned it toward Ohn. The screen showed the spectral analysis of the Threadless tissue. "The dimensional signature doesn't match the Abyssal Plane. Not even close. The base frequency is offset by a factor of—"
"I can read a spectral graph, Ms. Dren. I've been reading them since before you were born." Ohn pulled the laptop closer. Adjusted her glasses — reading glasses, thin metal frames that she kept on a chain around her neck. She studied the data for twenty seconds. Her eyes moved in a pattern Voss recognized: systematic, top-to-bottom, missing nothing.
"This is not Abyssal," she said.
"We know."
"This is not from any recorded dimensional plane."
"We know that too."
"How many recorded dimensional planes are there?"
Silence. Mira glanced at Voss. He looked back at Ohn.
"One," Ohn said. "As far as the scientific and military communities are concerned, there is one dimension that intersects with ours — the Abyssal Plane. Every Rift, every barrier, every monster for the past eight hundred years of recorded history has originated from the Abyssal Plane. It is the only known source of dimensional incursion."
"And now there's a second source."
"Now there appears to be a second source." She took off her glasses. Set them on the desk. Rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I've been theorizing about this for twenty years. Published three papers. Got laughed out of two conferences. Received a cease-and-desist from the RDC's chief science officer suggesting that my theories were 'alarmist and unsupported by evidence.'"
"What theories?" Mira leaned forward.
Ohn stood. Walked to the whiteboard behind her desk — the one that wasn't covered in equations. It had a single diagram: concentric circles, labeled in a handwriting so small Voss had to squint. The innermost circle was labeled PHYSICAL PLANE. The next ring out: ABYSSAL PLANE. And beyond that, a third ring, unlabeled, drawn in red ink.
"The Rifts are not windows into one dimension," Ohn said. "They are tears in a membrane that separates multiple dimensions. The Abyssal Plane is the closest — the first layer beyond our own. But it is not the only one. The mathematics have always allowed for additional planes. I've identified at least three possible dimensional signatures that could support independent ecosystems."
She tapped the red ring. "This is the one I could never characterize. A plane that exists at a different frequency than the Abyssal. Farther from our own in some ways. Closer in others. I called it the Sub-Structural Plane in my papers. A place where the fundamental building blocks of dimensional matter originate."
"The fundamental building blocks," Mira repeated. "You mean—"
"I mean the threads your brother sees." Ohn looked at Voss. The sharpness in her eyes was not academic now. It was personal. The look of a scientist who had spent two decades chasing a theory that everyone said was wrong and was now seeing evidence that it wasn't. "Thread Sight perceives post-mortem mana signatures. Those signatures are composed of dimensional energy — threads of the Abyssal Plane's fundamental material, woven into biological organisms. But what if those threads don't originate in the Abyssal Plane?"
Voss said nothing. He was thinking about the threads he'd seen in living rats. In the technician. In his own hand.
"What if the threads are a universal substrate? A building material that exists in ALL dimensions — including our own. The Abyssal Plane uses them. Our dimension uses them. And this new plane—"
"IS them," Mira said.
Ohn pointed at her. "Exactly. A dimension that doesn't use threads as building material. A dimension that IS the building material. A source plane. A—" She paused. Searched for the word.
"A loom," Mira said.
Ohn blinked. "I was going to say 'origin substrate,' but that's better. Catchier. A loom. Where the threads are woven."
"And the creatures coming through the Rifts from this plane—"
"Would be composed entirely of thread-material. Not mana-based biology that contains threads. Pure thread-architecture. Which would explain why your Thread Sight can't read them. You can't see threads in something that IS threads. It's like trying to see water while you're underwater. The medium is invisible because it's everything."
The room was quiet. Ohn's bare feet on the carpet. The hum of the university's climate system. Outside, students moved between buildings, carrying books and coffee and the unconcerned routines of people who didn't know about second dimensions.
"The Rift frequency data supports this," Mira said. She pulled up a new screen on her laptop. "Threadless spawns are increasing exponentially. But the total Rift count isn't changing — the same number of barriers are opening. What's changing is the composition. Standard Abyssal creatures are being replaced by Threadless creatures. It's like a radio signal shifting frequency. The Rift channel is the same, but the source is changing."
"The Sovereign's interference is gone," Ohn said. "The Demon Sovereign weaponized the Rifts. Directed them. Used them as supply lines from the Abyssal Plane exclusively. With the Sovereign destroyed, the Rifts are reverting to their natural state. And their natural state may not be exclusively Abyssal."
"You're saying the Rifts were always connected to multiple dimensions."
"I'm saying the Rifts are tears in a membrane between ALL adjacent dimensions. The Sovereign monopolized them — forced them to connect only to the Abyssal Plane. Now that monopoly is gone. And the other dimension is starting to bleed through."
Voss spoke for the first time in several minutes. "The ancient Carver."
Both women looked at him.
"Rehav gave me access to the classified pre-war archives. The ancient Carver's personal records. He mentions 'the eyeless ones' — creatures that his Thread Sight couldn't read. And he references 'the other place.' A dimension distinct from the Abyssal Plane."
Ohn's expression changed. The academic excitement compressed into something harder. "He knew. Eight hundred years ago, the ancient Carver knew about the second dimension."
"He knew about it. He wrote about it. And then someone burned that section of his records. The pages are damaged. Deliberately."
"Burned by whom?"
"Unknown. But whoever did it didn't want the information to survive."
Ohn walked back to her whiteboard. Stared at the concentric circles. The red ring, unlabeled for twenty years.
"The Loom," she said. "I'm going to call it the Loom. Because Ms. Dren is right — it's where the threads are woven." She picked up a marker. Wrote LOOM on the red ring in block letters. "And the creatures coming through—"
"Threadless," Voss said. "That's what the Corps is calling them."
"Threadless. Because they have no visible threads. Because they ARE threads." She capped the marker. Turned to face them. "Director Dren. I need access to your specimens. I need access to the ancient Carver's records. And I need a lab that isn't this office."
"I can provide all three."
"Good. Because if I'm right — and twenty years of being told I'm wrong has not changed my assessment — the Threadless are not invaders. They're not an army. They're not a threat in the way the Demon Sovereign was a threat."
"They've killed people."
"So does a hurricane. So does an earthquake. The question isn't whether they're dangerous. The question is whether they're directed." She looked at him over her glasses. "Your demon was a general commanding an army. Is this a general? Or is this weather?"
Voss thought about the B-rank barrier. The six Threadless moving in formation. Targeting the medic first. Adapting to his combat style in real time.
"I don't know yet," he said. "But weather doesn't coordinate."
Ohn's mouth did the thing again. The almost-smile. "Then that's the first question to answer. Are the Threadless intelligent? And if so — what do they want?"
---
They set up Ohn in the intelligence center's basement lab. The same room where Voss had been staring at Threadless corpses and accidentally evolving his Thread Sight. He didn't mention that second part.
Ohn moved in with the practical efficiency of someone who had been waiting for this moment for two decades. She brought her whiteboards. Her notes. Twenty years of theoretical work on multi-dimensional physics that the scientific community had dismissed and that was now, suddenly, the most relevant research in the world.
Mira worked alongside her. The two of them fell into a rhythm that reminded Voss of how Squad 7 operated in the field — complementary skills, minimal wasted motion, a shared language developing in real time. Ohn had the theoretical framework. Mira had the data. Together they were building a model of the Loom that was equal parts physics and speculation.
Voss left them to it. He had his own work.
The Threadless spawn rate hit twenty-two percent that evening. One in five barriers now contained creatures from the Loom. The Carver Corps was producing intelligence on the remaining four-fifths — standard Abyssal species, standard thread data, the normal flow of information that the military depended on. But for the growing minority, the Corps had nothing.
He stood at his office window, looking at the city. Barrier domes on the horizon. Small. Routine. Some of them containing wolves and lurkers that his people could read. Some of them containing Threadless creatures that his people could not.
His phone buzzed. Ryn.
*You missed dinner. Again.*
He checked the time. 9:47 PM. He'd been at the center since five in the morning.
*I'll make it up to you.*
*You'll make it up to me by eating something that isn't from the vending machine and sleeping more than four hours.*
*Those are two separate requests.*
*Consider them a package deal.*
He almost smiled. Almost. The expression made it to the muscles around his eyes and stalled there, caught in the gravity of the problems stacking up around him.
Twenty-two percent. Climbing.
The dead were going silent, body by body, barrier by barrier. And somewhere beyond the membrane of reality, a dimension made of threads was waking up.
Voss pocketed his phone. Pulled on his jacket — the new one, replacing the one the Threadless had converted. Walked to the door.
He paused. Looked at the wall mount where his blades hung. The carving blades that had opened ten thousand bodies. That had cut apart a god.
A Carver's tools. Designed for the dead.
What happened when the dead stopped being enough?
He left the office. Locked the door. Went home to rice and canned fish and a silence that, for the first time in months, felt less like comfort and more like something waiting.
