Overview
There are ten traditions taught at Thornwood. There are whispers of an eleventh. Aatos writes twelve books.
The thirteenth, if it exists, is something else entirely.
The Crossing is a theoretical tradition — referenced in no curriculum, acknowledged by no faculty, dismissed by every scholar who has proposed it as "mathematically interesting but physically impossible." The theory holds that the Loom is not simply a membrane holding the Wellspring back. It is a boundary between places. And if a tradition could filter through the boundary itself — not through emotion, not through logic, not through any aspect of the world the Loom protects, but through the membrane — then the practitioner would be able to pass through it.
Not to the Wellspring. To somewhere else. Somewhere on the other side of the wall.
The Theoretical Framework
Alice's Pattern Magic comes closest to engaging with the theory. The rules she sees are rules within reality. The Crossing would require seeing rules between realities — the structure of the Loom not as a wall but as a doorway whose handle has not yet been found.
The mathematics, according to Alice, are sound. The implications, according to everyone else, are terrifying.
What It Would Mean
If the Crossing is real, then Thornwood is not the only place the Loom protects. There are others. And the distance between them is measured not in miles but in the thickness of a membrane that is, by everyone's admission, getting thinner.
Notable
- Thirteenth tradition, theoretical and unconfirmed
- Would allow passage between realities, not just manipulation of this one
- The mathematics have been independently derived by three Thornwood scholars across three centuries; all three abandoned the research
- Aatos, when asked whether there is a thirteenth tradition, put down his pen. He has never been observed putting down his pen for any other question.