“Indeed.” Atropos hummed under her breath, watching the blood already pooling over the woman’s temple. “The circumstances are less than ideal.”
She leaned forward slightly and laid her fingers upon the thread. The moment she made contact, the granite walls of the hall vanished. In their place, the scorched earth of Agrion stretched under a mortal sun.
Once, this village had witnessed the massacre that had led their hellhound child to find his mate, Callista. On this day, their little death-touched weaver had proven she had never belonged in Agrion at all.
Callista now knelt on the ground that could have easily become her tomb. Under her fingertips, an asphodel was coming to life. Death energy responded to her almost as naturally as it did to the Moirae.
“It was an excellent weave, for a beginner,” Clotho commented. It wasn’t in her nature to feel proud, but she’d taken Callista under her tutelage. She was entitled to make some exceptions.
By Callista’s side stood Theron, a pillar of hellfire and shadow. The most dangerous Cerberus the Moirae had woven since the Shift. The seer watched them both together. No doubt, a part of her craved what they shared.
But seers weren’t creatures meant for comfort. Her mind traveled onward, dragged by a vision she couldn’t hope to control. Her panic echoed all the way into the Loom, stirring the mechanism. The Moirae waited and watched, but their hands had already begun to work.
The world resolved again into the cold, damp air of the Stygian Docks. Before them, the Ferryman, Charon, stood over his dark altar. A mortal woman surrendered a happy memory to be sealed into a coin. “The Ferryman claims his toll,” Lachesis said. “A piece of the past, sacrificed for a future.”
Did the seer understand it? Perhaps, perhaps not. Mortal minds could not grasp the powers Charon served, or the reasons for his actions.
Somewhere above the dock, a dark-winged creature hovered, desperately hunting for answers. A primal screech echoed through the air, and the seer’s thread pulsed in recognition. The Moirae shared a look. “The Keres’s mate senses him,” Clotho whispered. “And she will seek him out.”
It was unavoidable. All souls sought out their match, no matter how much that search cost them. Phonos had been the same. Why would his match be any different?
But the mortal didn’t see him. Her consciousness tore her away from the docks, hurtling through the void directly toward the Weavers’ Hall itself.
The death energy in the Loom surged, crackling with power. This was it, the moment they had been waiting for. A new creature would now join the ranks of the Thanatos-blessed.
It would be a manticore, Clotho decided, as she guided the first thread into its form. “Your past was one of destruction. A family, slaughtered by invaders.”
The seer had been orphaned, too, though she could not remember how. Her consciousness shuddered in response to every word.
Lachesis raised her glowing bronze rod, measuring the length of the new thread and anchoring it firmly into the Weave. “Your present is a gift from Thanatos. You exist once more, a new weave in Asphodelia’s service.”
Atropos didn’t touch the Loom. She observed the multitude of shimmering futures that flickered around the manticore, all the possibilities that stretched out for its existence. “The future depends on your choices. You have many threads tied to your weave. What will you choose?”
The manticore could not answer, but the Loom did. It unfurled, and countless threads bloomed around them in a surreal kaleidoscope. For the Moirae, it was beautiful. Serene. But the seer couldn’t process it.
A fragment of the past drifted from the threads, the ruin of a civilization crystal clear in the Moirae’s vision.The city burned for seven days. We tried to fight them off, but… There were too many of them.
The seer’s mind staggered under the increasing weight. The present came forth, a simple prayer from a satyr girl in Korinos.Mother, I miss you. Why did you have to die?
It was grief, an emotion the people of Asphodelia could never feel. But its potent echoes raked over the weave. The seer’s limbs began to jerk and thrash against the earth, a violent, uncontrolled dance in the mud.
A final thread wrapped around her mind like a snake and squeezed.The blade found its mark. Deep in the man’s heart, ending his life before he could move a muscle.
A simple glimpse of an assassin’s future. Written in the stars, brutal and unchangeable. The mortal’s jaw slammed shut with the force of a sprung trap. A psychic echo of sharp, tearing pain reverberated back along her thread, carrying the phantom tang of blood, bitter with the taste of mortal suffering.
If things had been different, the Moirae could have helped. But seers were fate’s chosen. The Moirae couldn’t touch her.
The thread vanished, leaving the mortal broken, limp and bleeding in the mud.
Clotho was the first to speak, easily finding the name of the fallen soul. “Daphne of Dodona.”
“Not of Dodona anymore,” Lachesis corrected her. “Her fate is bound to Asphodelia.”
Atropos didn’t even look up from her contemplation of the future threads. Her reply was a final, absolute truth, spoken to the universe itself.
“It always was. Whether she is ready for it or not.”
1
