Location: The Forbidden North — The Shattered Icefields
POV: Caelis Thorne
The wind here didn't howl—it screamed.
Caelis pulled his cloak tighter, boots crunching over glasslike ice. Each step risked death. Beneath him, black water stirred—too dark to be sea, too alive to be lake. The North had been sealed for centuries, marked by old maps as "Here the stars end."
But he wasn't here for stars.
He was here for the last Keeper of Fate.
---
The Ghost Who Waited
Her name was lost to time.
They called her the Weaver, the Oracle of Threads, the one who saw all endings and buried most. She had vanished before the fall of the last god-king. Some said she'd gone mad. Others said she'd made a deal with death and won.
Caelis had only one reason to seek her:
He'd seen the truth buried in Thamaris's final scream.
The god wasn't done.
He had planned this.
---
The Mirror-Cracked Temple
The temple sat atop a hill of bone-white ice, its spires split by time and war. The inside was a reflection of a reflection—mirrors warped by age, each showing a different version of Caelis: tyrant, lover, traitor, savior.
Then… a voice.
> "You seek your end, child of vengeance."
The Weaver stood behind him—skin translucent, eyes silver, hair trailing like comet tails.
"I seek a future," he said.
"No," she whispered, walking past him to the wall of mirrors. "You seek to change a future already claimed."
She turned to face him, and her voice became many:
> "There are three ends. One you accept.
One you create.
One that devours all others."
---
The Thread of Fire
The Weaver handed him a spool of red thread.
"Each soul is woven from choice," she said. "But yours has been touched by divinity and rage. That is a dangerous braid."
Caelis accepted it.
"What do I do with this?"
"Find the other who holds the twin thread."
"Who?"
She smiled. Sadly.
> "The girl who denied godhood.
The vampire who refuses death.
The boy who was broken in the tower.
Or perhaps… all three."
---
Final Scene — The Thread Burns
As Caelis left the temple, a storm swallowed the skies behind him.
The ice cracked.
The water below opened.
And something huge began to rise.
Not Thamaris. Not yet.
But something older.
Something that remembered the gods before they had names.