The Red String Effect

Chapter Four -- Part One: Tangled

Layla woke up to silence and it wasn't the comforting kind, but more of the kind that pressed against her ears, too deep, too absolute. For a moment she thought the storm had never ended, that the night with Luca and the faceless thing had been one long nightmare, but the light slanting through her broken window told her something different. Pale morning. Cold air. Damp sheets. Her room was a wreck—glass glittering on the floorboards, her notebook sprawled open on its spine, pages warped from rain.

And her thread pulsed. It hadn't stopped since the night before. Each beat sent a jolt through her chest, red and black twisting like a rope pulled taut. The knot burned under her ribs, a second heartbeat she couldn't silence. She passed her palms against her sternum and whispered, "Stop, please, stop." But it didn't. It never would. School felt unreal. Voices echoed strangely in the halls. Conversations fractured, students repeating themselves like broken tapes. She saw it now more than ever—the frays, the distortions, the way threads sagged and snapped around her.

At one point in English class, she looked up and saw her teacher's string split clean in two. He didn't notice. He kept lecturing about Shakespeare while his tether dangled lifeless from his chest. Layla's stomach rolled. No one else reacted. No one saw it. Except Luca. He sat in the back, as he always did, eyes fixed on her. And she hated that she needed that gaze—that it grounded her in a world where everything else was unraveling.

By lunch, she couldn't take it anymore. She pushed past the crowded cafeteria, past the buzzing threads knotted between friends and couples, and slammed out the side door into the rain. Luca was there. Of course, he was. "You're unraveling faster," he said, not unkindly. "Shut up." "You felt it, didn't you? Last night. The power." Layla whirled on him, her voice sharp. "That wasn't power—it was wrong. I hurt it, Luca. I—" her voice broke. "I don't even know what I am anymore."

He stepped closer, rain dripping from his hood. His expression was unreadable, but his voice was steady. "You're like me now." The words hit harder than any storm. "No," she whispered. "Yes. The knot has bound us. You're not just a Stringbearer anymore. You've crossed into the weave beneath." Layla's knees trembled. She clutched her arms around herself, trying to hold in the sickness curling through her veins. "I don't want this," she said again, her voice breaking. "I just want to be normal." Luca's gray eyes softened—not with pity, but with something heavier. "There's no normal anymore. Not for you. Not for me. The only way forward is through the tangle."

That night, Layla searched her grandmother's house. Her mother was asleep, the television buzzing softly in the living room, but Layla couldn't rest. The knot burned too much. She needed answers. In the attic, she dug deeper into the old trunks, searching for anything Peter might have left behind. Her flashlight beam skimmed over quilts, dusty figurines, stacks of National Geographics from the '70s. then she found it. A box shoved far into the corner, taped shut with brittle brown tape. Her heart hammered as she dragged it out. She peeled back the tape, coughing as dust burst into the air. Inside there were more notebooks. Dozens of them. Peter's. Her hands shook as she opened the first. Drawings. Pages and pages of them. Threads, knots, shadow figures. The same things she'd been sketching. And one word, written over and over in jagged letters. "Tangle."