The first sign was the silence.
Not the peaceful kind — but the heavy, charged kind. The kind that pressed into your skull, begging you to move.
Hyuk opened his eyes.
Darkness.
Not night. Not shadow.
But fabric.
Thin, silky threads hung from his ceiling like spiderwebs — fine and near invisible, pulsing faintly with chakra. They coiled downward, brushing his desk, his books, his weapons.
They hadn't been there when he fell asleep.
He reached for his kunai — and the window shattered before he touched it.
A blur dropped through, landing silently on the floorboards like a feather.
Hyuk stood slowly.
The figure before him wore robes the color of ivory, lined with intricate inked patterns of thorns and threads. Their mask was white, smooth, featureless — except for one black line that ran vertically where the mouth should be.
"You're the Weaver," Hyuk said.
The figure tilted its head.
"I am the blade sent to cut the weak strand," the Weaver replied. "And the judge of your bloom."
Without another word, they lunged.
---
The fight began fast — no warning, no taunts. Just action.
Hyuk moved to intercept, chakra already flowing. His hands flared, Thorn Vein vines wrapping around his wrists as he ducked under the first thread-slice. The Weaver's weapon wasn't steel — it was chakra-infused thread, nearly invisible, cutting through wood like paper.
A whip of it carved through Hyuk's table.
He twisted and launched a vine spike — Crimson Maw — directly into the air above him. The Weaver didn't dodge — instead, they caught the thorn mid-air with thread, snapping it in half before it struck.
"You rely on instinct," they said. "You bloom recklessly."
Hyuk said nothing.
He weaved three seals — Rat. Dog. Ram. — and pushed blood into his palm.
The floor cracked.
Dozens of thin black vines erupted around him in a wide net.
But the Weaver simply stepped between them, never touching a single one.
Too fast. Too efficient.
They're not attacking wild… they're testing me.
Then he felt it — a sting in his thigh.
He looked down.
A thread was inside his leg, piercing directly into the muscle.
Chakra thread. Poisoned.
Hyuk staggered back.
The Weaver advanced slowly, voice calm.
"You fight to preserve a sense of self that is already decaying. Your team. Your girl. They are illusions."
Hyuk hissed, yanked the thread free — blood trailing down his shin.
"No," he said, low and cold. "They're my anchor."
The Weaver rushed forward again, threads slicing like whips.
Hyuk didn't dodge.
He stepped into the attack.
The threads slashed across his shoulder, slicing deep — but he grabbed one mid-motion and pushed his chakra through it.
Thorn Vein chakra.
Black thorns spread up the thread and raced toward the Weaver.
Their eyes widened beneath the mask.
Too late.
The thorns exploded, wrapping around the Weaver's arms, pinning them in midair like ropes of barbed wire.
Hyuk's blood dripped from his fingers, but he kept walking forward.
"The Thorn Vein isn't a curse," he said. "It's not even power."
He stopped a foot away, gaze burning.
"It's a voice. And it's mine now."
He opened his palm.
Crimson Maw formed — slower this time, more focused, spiraling like a flower made of chakra.
And he stabbed it through the Weaver's shoulder.
No kill.
Not yet.
The threads around them unraveled. The room fell silent.
The Weaver collapsed to one knee.
"You… defied the bloom's command…"
Hyuk leaned down. "I'm not yours. And I never will be."
He grabbed the mask — and ripped it off.
Beneath it was a woman — young, pale-eyed, her mouth sewn shut with silver wire. Tears leaked from her eyes as her threads collapsed entirely.
She fell unconscious.
---
Later that morning, Kakashi and two ANBU stood in Hyuk's room, surveying the damage.
"She infiltrated the village," Hyuk said calmly. "Came straight for me."
"You didn't kill her," Kakashi noted.
"She wanted to prove I belonged to them. I proved I didn't."
The ANBU removed the Weaver's unconscious body. Kakashi didn't ask how he beat her.
But he noticed something else.
The vines were gone.
The Thorn Vein marks had faded from Hyuk's skin — not entirely, but dormant. Slumbering.
Like a heart that no longer needed to beat.
"You severed the chakra connection?" Kakashi asked.
Hyuk nodded. "For now."
"And the voice?"
Hyuk looked out the window.
"…Silent."
---
Later, at the bookstore…
Reina waited.
She sat on the steps, a book in her lap, glancing up every few minutes toward the alleyway.
And then he appeared.
Hood low. Shirt freshly wrapped to hide the wounds.
But there.
Hyuk sat beside her without a word.
She didn't ask.
She just opened the book between them, like nothing had changed.
And for the first time in weeks, Hyuk Haruno let himself rest.
---
End of the Thorn Vein Arc.