Threads of Space vs. Karma Threads

The two kinds of thread that bind the Loom — the great roads between worlds, and the finer private web between souls.

The Loom of Heavens is bound by two distinct kinds of thread. Confusing one for the other is a common error among lower cultivators, for only the second becomes visible to them, and only late.

Threads of space

Threads of space are the great roads of the Loom — the tunnels binding universe to universe. Travel between stitches runs along them, and only a being of sufficient power can walk them. A frontier world such as Blaze hangs from only a handful of these; a central universe is crossed by thousands.

A cultivator gains the capacity to step onto a thread of space at the fifth of the nine realms — Void Stepping — when a small inner world first opens within them.

Karma threads

Karma threads are finer and private: the web running between souls rather than between worlds. Debt, love, grudge, the pull of master to inheritor, the alignment of a destiny — each is a cord in this web.

Karma is invisible to mortals. The heaviest cords begin to glow to advanced cultivators at Soul Expansion; to the very highest beings, nearly all of it is legible. Fate can be read along a karma thread and — very carefully — nudged. It was by reading his own karma along such a thread that Skolar recognised a trajectory in a distant child that mirrored his own.

Space threads bind worlds. Karma threads bind souls. They are not the same web, and the wise do not mistake the one for the other.

Theories & resonances

The Weavers' Codex reports a "current — the same shape repeating across worlds." Whether that current is a karma thread read by a machine that does not know what it holds is an open question. The wiki may theorise; it may not conclude.