Threadcross
"Democracy is a fine idea until someone votes to redefine gravity."
Threadcross was never built. It happened—like mildew, or bureaucracy—with just enough momentum to make denial impossible.
It spirals around the great Stairway at the heart of the Plateau, growing out of resonance and indecision like moss on sacred stone. It is not the capital of the Unfathomed—nothing so neat. It is merely the loudest place to be uncertain.
It is the first stop for most Threads who awaken in the Unfathomed, pulled by the Spiral's gravity and deposited into a city that was not designed so much as endured into being.
I once mapped it. Three weeks later, the map contested itself in court.
The Spiral’s Shadow
The Spiral Stairway—wide enough for armies, temples, or processions of confused prophets—rises from the centre of Threadcross like the memory of purpose. It is the metaphysical heart of the Unfathomed, a great stone helix etched with languages older than shame.
New arrivals tend to emerge somewhere near its lower landings, blinking under the weight of resonance and rhetorical gravity. They arrive through doors, dreams, mistakes, or unresolved stories. Some fall from the sky. Some knock politely. Some do not know they’ve arrived at all.
The city wraps around the Stairway like a crown made by committee—shifting, sprawling, and more than a little proud of itself.
No one guards the Spiral.
No one owns it.
The Senate once tried.
The Stairway was unimpressed.
The Forum That Forgets It’s Decorative
Threadcross is governed—if you must call it that—by the Senate of Resonant Ideals. A 180-seat body with 20 representatives from each major realm of the Unfathomed, the Senate exists to give the illusion of control over the metaphysical.
They meet in a grand debating chamber built where the Archive District forgets to stop and the Accord forgets to compromise. The structure is part temple, part courthouse, and part architectural dare.
Inside, it resembles a coliseum. Senators descend into a central debating floor to perform ideological combat: logic, law, and loudness used as weapons. The acoustics are perfect. The seating is not. No two chairs are the same height, and one has been bleeding softly for decades.
One balcony is reserved for divine auditors. It has never been occupied. The snack table is still replenished weekly, for reasons no one will admit.
I once sat through a full session.
The motion was to rename the western gate.
The gate has since locked itself in protest.
Three Districts. Zero Agreement.
Threadcross is split into three major districts, each shaped by the neighbouring realms they border. These wards do not blend so much as argue their way into each other, with architecture that shifts depending on which doctrine is currently loudest.
Each is a living expression of belief—made from the raw stuff of conviction, ritual, and narrative self-importance.
The Ember District
Faith as Fireworks
Conviction has a volume here. And it is loud.
The Ember District is a riot of colour, sound, and sanctified performance. Streets are lined with pennants and palm leaves. Processions wind daily past temples, each more gilded and self-important than the last. Evangelists chant from balconies. Choirs duel in amphitheatres. Even the cobbles try to look pious.
Holy festivals are frequent, overlapping, and often contradictory. Parades clash mid-street in theological dance-offs. One fountain has been sanctified twelve times by different faiths. It now only spits fire.
Buildings are tall, scorched, and ornamental—cathedrals shaped like proclamations, arches blackened by incense, rooftops crowded with statues mid-sermon. The air smells of ash, sweat, and conviction rehearsed too many times.
Threads here are warriors, martyrs, zealots, and passionate apologists—some true believers, others desperately pretending to be.
The Accord District
Where the City Runs (on Time, If It Knows What’s Good for It)
This is Threadcross’s logistical heart. The Accord District is less about ideology and more about enforcement. It keeps the city’s infrastructure humming—regulating Thread flow, recalibrating time, and making sure the bells ring whether anyone hears them or not.
Buildings are blocky, precise, and brass-veined. Public squares display kinetic sculptures that dramatise key legal decisions. Streets are rigidly gridded and lit by lanterns filled with clockwork angels who record trespasses silently.
Clerks, engineers, soul-schedulers, divine administrators and bureaucrats operate here like priests of the operating manual. Elevators file grievances. There is a Department of Ritual Maintenance. They take bribes in calendar fragments.
It smells of parchment, ozone, and old mechanical sympathy.
The Threads who live here are precise, weary, and terrifyingly efficient.
The Archive District
Where Memories Wait for You to Be Ready
A spiral of towers, alleys, bridges, and regrets. This is Threadcross’s memory—the district that records, files, and registers every moment that tries to forget itself.
Vaults of judgement lie beneath archive-halls. Soul registrars process arrivals like census-takers at the end of time. Bureaucratic offices outnumber actual residents.
Buildings spiral like arguments. Hallways redirect mid-step. One library refuses to catalogue anything newer than last year. A tribunal once sentenced itself to silence. It complied.
Smells of candlewax, dust, and records that still cry out in ink.
The Threads here are tired. Not from work, but from remembering too much for too long.
Why So Many Stay (and Why Some Don’t)
No one plans to remain in Threadcross.
Some pause. Some pass through.
Some walk the Spiral the moment it appears beneath their feet.
But others… linger.
They stay for one more debate.
One more file to be closed.
One more parade to watch, sermon to preach, memory to refile.
One more attempt to decide who they were, before becoming what comes next.
Threadcross does not bind.
It waits.
And in the space it offers, many Threads lose urgency, but not purpose.
Some move on.
Many do not.
And the city welcomes both with exactly the same indifference.
At A Glance
What Is Threadcross?
A metaphysical city built around the Spiral Stairway, formed by the indecision and ideological weight of Threads between lives. It is the first stop for many souls in the Unfathomed—and sometimes the last.
Why It Exists
Not every Thread is ready to ascend or descend. Threadcross provides space for debate, delay, administration, and loud public conviction. It doesn’t judge. It just sorts.
What Defines It
Three districts:
- Ember for zeal, parades, and holy noise.
- Accord for divine logistics and punctual infrastructure.
- Archive for memory, bureaucracy, and misfiled theology.
Each reflects the realm it borders—and the beliefs of the souls within it.
Who Governs It
The Senate of Resonant Ideals, a 180-member body that debates metaphysical policy in a rhetorical coliseum. They pass laws. Reality does not notice.
Who Lives Here
Clerks, zealots, exiles, philosophers, Threadwalkers, and those who can’t quite let go. Some stay for centuries. Others leave in moments of clarity. A few come back, usually by mistake.
Why It Matters
Threadcross is not limbo. It is possibility with too many options.
It is the final pause before you choose your next myth.
Or forget you meant to.
Final Thought
The Spiral never asks.
It simply waits to see who’s still moving.
Comments