DISPATCH DIALOGUES

Transmission from Within the Cycle

DISPATCH 05 — Kainen

Some voices echo forward. Others echo back. Kainen’s belongs to both directions.

He Speaks When It Matters

Q1: Before the Loom fell, who were you?

A trader. A husband.
A man who thought the road between the Verdant Reach and the Loom was the whole world.

I knew the bends in the river and the merchants who lied about their weights.
I knew the way Liora’s voice sounded when she spoke of Threads as if they were alive.

She could’ve been Loomkeeper. She chose me instead.
I never asked her why.
I was afraid to know.

Q2: And after the Factory was destroyed?

After… I wasn’t anything worth naming.

The Factory burned. Liora was gone.
I tried scavenging in the Wastes.
It was work you could do without thinking, which was all I was good for.

But it didn’t fill the space she left. Nothing did.

Ashbrew helped me forget.
Until forgetting became the only thing I was good at.

Elen raised Caio.
I watched.
Watching was easier than being needed.

Q3: Why start walking again?

Because I was tired of being the reason my children had no one left.

Because the road was still there, even if I didn’t remember where it ended.

I don’t know if I was looking for Liora or trying to follow her into whatever place took her.

Maybe both.
Maybe neither.
I just knew that staying still was killing me slower than I deserved.

Q4: What do you know now that you didn’t then?

That strength isn’t holding the world together.
It’s letting yourself be part of it again.

That grief can become a kind of shelter — but if you stay in it too long, the roof caves in.

And that no matter how far gone you think you are, the Pattern hasn’t stopped watching.

Sometimes it even waits.