Silk-Eyes Beneath the Cypress Moon

Long ago, in the age when the Guardian Dragons still walked openly among the Ryushin, there lived a village nestled deep in the Veilshroud Forest, where the trees wept silver pollen and the moonlight never fully reached the ground. This village, Itsumochi, was famous for its weavers—men and women who could knot strands of air and silk into garments light enough to slip through cracks in armor, strong enough to bind a tiger.
But their gift was not wholly their own.
It is said that in the oldest grove of the forest, wrapped in the roots of a great black cypress, lived a being known as Silk-Eyes—a spider not born of flesh, but spirit and thread. She had eight slender limbs as long as spears, a body that shimmered like lacquered obsidian, and pure white eyes like still pools reflecting ancient sins. Silk-Eyes wove not only silk, but stories, fates, and vows. Every oath spoken beneath her web was bound until death—or worse.
The first weaver of Itsumochi, a woman named Kureha, had stumbled upon Silk-Eyes as a child. Lost in the forest, she offered her last rice cake to the spider in exchange for safe passage home. Moved by the child’s honesty, Silk-Eyes spared her and gave her a gift: a spindle wound with a strand of spiritual silk, with one condition:

"Every generation, your line shall return to bind their fate to me. Swear by thread, and you shall always weave wonders. Break your word, and my children shall unspool you."

And so it was for centuries. Kureha's line flourished. Their tapestries adorned temples, their robes were gifted to dragon envoys. Each daughter of the line was taken to the old grove on the night of her twelfth summer, where she wove one promise of truth into Silk-Eyes’ web.
But time breeds arrogance, and blood thins.
When Kureha’s descendant, Kana, was brought to the grove, she refused. “What need have we of forest pacts?” she asked. “My needle is guided by skill, not spirits.” She cut the thread and turned her back on Silk-Eyes.
That winter, the weavers of Itsumochi fell ill. Their hands shook. Their threads frayed. Silk unraveled without reason. In desperation, Kana returned to the grove, but the cypress had withered, and Silk-Eyes was gone. Or so she thought.
That night, Kana dreamt of a thousand spiders crawling from her discarded spindle, whispering old oaths. She awoke to find her body covered in black silk, her mouth sewn shut, her eyes unable to blink.
The village elders declared it the Curse of the Broken Web. It is said that Kana's soul was unraveled strand by strand and used to rebind the oaths she had severed.
Now, once a decade, a masked figure draped in shifting black robes appears in Itsumochi during the waxing of the Cypress Moon. It offers a single black thread to the youngest weaver of age—no longer just of the Kureha line, but anyone who dares to take it. They say if you speak a vow while holding that thread, Silk-Eyes will hear—and will bind it in her secret web, hidden in the forest where no light shines.
Those who speak their vows true find great fortune.
Those who lie find spiders in their lungs.

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Related Sayings

• "Don't pull the spider's thread." — Do not test fate or break sacred promises.
• "She sees with Silk-Eyes." — Said of judges or mystics with keen insight into truth.
• "Tie it with eight knots." — A way to affirm one's commitment; Swear an oath upon your commitment.

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Table of Contents

Related Ethnicities

• Ryushin

Related Species

• Human

Related Locations

• Lungao

Related People

• Kana, the Unraveled
• Kureha of the Winding Loom
• Silk-Eyes