A week later, Clara returned. Her eyes were hollow. "The memory," she rasped. "It’s all I can see. I don't eat. I don't sleep. I just watch the Echo. But the joy feels... wrong now. It feels like it's mocking me."

The next day, a young woman named Clara came to him. She had lost her husband at sea and was drowning in grief. Elian wove her an Echo using the Shadow-Thread. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever created—vibrant, pulsing, and indestructible. Clara took it and, for the first time in months, she smiled. However, the "kötülük" (evil) of the thread was patient.

"This is a Shadow-Thread," the traveler whispered. "It is stronger than light. It never fades, and it requires no effort to weave. It will make your Echoes last forever."

But Elian was aging, and his hands began to shake. The light required to weave the Echoes was becoming harder to pull from the air. One evening, a traveler with eyes like polished obsidian arrived at his door. The traveler didn’t ask for a memory; he offered a thread.