They gathered again amid the fallen stones of the abbey, the weight of their individual trials heavy in their eyes, though none spoke of it yet. A sense of expectancy crackled through the air as they followed the broken flagstones deeper into the heart of the ruins. Moss crept over every surface.
Maerlowe stopped at the edge of the old chapel, brushing aside a veil of damp ivy to reveal a circle of stone recessed into the floor. Etched into the surface were Harrower sigils, dulled by centuries but still potent, their lines inlaid with flakes of tarnished Fae goldleaf. The symbols pulsed faintly in Grey's vision.
"This is it," Maerlowe murmured. "The threshold."
Grey stepped forward. As her fingers brushed the stone, it warmed beneath her touch. The sigils flared gold and silver, reacting to the spindle coiled within her soul. The stone circle shuddered. With a slow grinding groan, a section of the floor slid inward, revealing a narrow spiral stair curling into darkness.
A scent rose with the air from below—earthy rot, the iron tang of old blood, and something floral gone to mildew. Grey hesitated, the hairs on her arms rising. She wrinkled her nose. "Lovely," she muttered. "Just what I always hoped the threshold to ancient horror would smell like." But even as sarcasm rose to her lips, she felt the pull of it—of something deep and old that answered the spindle humming in her chest. Her bravado was habit, but the tension behind her spine was real.
They descended in silence, their footfalls swallowed by thick moss growing between each stone step. Lichen glowed faintly along the walls, casting the stairwell in a ghostly green light. Alaric stayed close to Grey, his presence steady and quiet, a protective shadow half a step behind her. She didn't look back, but she felt him there—like gravity, like a promise. The air grew colder with each step.
At the bottom lay a cavernous shrine, half-collapsed and cloaked in shadows. Thick roots pierced the walls like skeletal arms, clutching at the stone. The remains of murals covered the ceiling—faded images of women weaving threads from starlight, a tree with roots tangled in ghostfire, and a spindle cradled in the hands of a veiled figure.
In the center of the chamber floated a second spindle.
It turned slowly in midair, suspended by a cradle of interwoven root and glass. Threads of night shimmered around it, whispering against the cavern walls in a language none of them spoke. It was beautiful and terrible, humming with power. Grey stared at it, and her throat tightened. This wasn't just some enchanted relic waiting for a wielder. This thing knew her. Or thought it did. She felt the weight of it like a gaze on her skin—an expectation. Not of triumph, but continuity. Of returning to something she had never asked for. She clenched her jaw. "Okay then," she thought grimly. "Let's find out if you're worth the price."
The air shifted.
A figure stepped from the far shadows—or rather, it bled into view, half-formed and wreathed in decay. Tall and thin, its skin was stretched over bones like paper soaked in ink, its eyes hollow, its voice a rasp of wind through withered leaves.
"You," it said, head tilting with a creak of vertebrae. "You wore another face when you left me."
Grey staggered back, breath caught. "I don't know you," she said, though a part of her—small and unhelpfully dramatic—added silently, And I really wish I hadn't said that out loud. Very mysterious. Very ominous. Excellent start, Wyrde.
The creature grinned, lips pulling taut over sharpened teeth. "No. But you will."
Its body shimmered, half-corporeal, flickering between forms—a woman in robes, a soldier burning, a face Grey half-remembered from her nightmares. Its voice fractured into layers, echoing in multiple tones.
"I was faithful," it hissed. "I guarded the twin through fire and silence. The Seelie made me forget my name. The purge made me forget my shape. But I remember you. I remember the promise you never made, the door you never opened."
Alaric stepped between them, sword half-drawn, eyes narrowed. "Corruption did this. Not her."
The wraith shrieked—a sound like glass shattering in water—and surged forward.
The shrine shook.
Grey reached for the thread inside her, the silver-black strand she had woven in the glade. It pulsed in answer, and with it, a light flared from her hand. She stepped forward. The wraith hesitated.
Grey's mind was already racing. She hated riddles, hated when things looked like prophecy and smelled like guilt. But this wasn't about riddles. It was about threads—and she'd always been good at untangling what others left snarled. She squared her shoulders.
"You would take the twin?" it whispered. "Then prove you are worthy to hold both chaos and clarity."
The spirit lunged.
Alaric and Wickham moved instantly—Alaric drawing steel in a blur of motion, Wickham chanting a binding verse under his breath. Their movements held desperation, but precision born of long habit. The spirit split into two forms, each half-mad and screaming, trailing threads of burning memory.
Grey didn't move. She couldn't—not in fear, but in certainty. The chaos unfurling before her echoed something deep inside. She was so damn tired of being told she was meant for this, of being handed shards of herself wrapped in myth. But this? This wasn't myth. It was now, raw and blazing.
Her pulse beat steady in her ears. She raised her hands, and the spindle in her soul spun faster.
The spirit turned toward her again, flickering through time—sometimes young, sometimes crumbling. "They left me here to rot," it snarled. "I wove with blood. I anchored the seal. And when the purge came, I called for help and none came. I became the memory no one wanted."
Tears streamed down its fragmented face.
Grey's chest ached. Her voice, when it came, was low—barely more than a breath—but steady. "You held the line." A beat passed. Then, quietly and almost to herself, she added, "Better than I ever have." It wasn't self-pity. Just fact. A thread of humility knotted to resolve. She straightened. "Let's make sure no one forgets that again."
She opened her palm—and in it, the black star gifted by the Queen burned cold and fierce. Together, star and spindle flared in unity.
She spoke words she did not know she remembered: "Balance through thread, peace through pattern."
The shrine stilled for a breath.
A ring of starlight burst into being around them. The spirit writhed within it, howling. Alaric shouted something, rushing to Grey's side—but the air had thickened, slowed. Grey's feet sank slightly into the moss-veiled stones. She held the star and spindle in tandem, breathing through the pressure that built like thunder in her skull.
The spirit shrieked, dissolving not into ash, but into threads—golden and pale, like hair caught in sunlight. They spun upward, twisting into the air, joining the shrine's faded mural until the veiled figure on the wall smiled again.
Grey collapsed forward, panting, forehead pressed to the stone.
Alaric ran to her and caught her up in his arms, holding her fiercely. His hands moved as if to take stock of every limb, every breath, making sure she was still whole. He did not speak. He only held her tighter, as if anchoring them both to the now.
The Spindle's Twin, no longer chaotic, spun calmly at her side before vanishing in a pulse of light, absorbed into the weave within her. Grey exhaled slowly, jaw tight, shoulders shaking with the effort not to collapse again. A quiet part of her registered the moment's finality.
"Guess that makes me the proud owner of two eldritch artifacts now," she thought, grimly amused. "No pressure. Totally fine."
But beneath the sarcasm was a deep, anchoring stillness. The twin had accepted her. And she'd accepted it. That had to count for something.
The shrine sighed. The roots stilled.
And for the first time in centuries, the silence felt clean. The forest felt changed.
They walked slowly, cautiously, as if afraid their footfalls might shatter the quiet balance just restored. Mist curled low through the trees, golden with the first hints of afternoon sun. Wickham said nothing. His usual smirk was gone, replaced by a pale stillness, his gaze distant. Whatever he had seen during his trial lingered, shadowing his every step.
Maerlowe walked at his side, quietly watchful, his coat tugged close against the damp. He did not press for talk. Alaric hovered near Grey. He did not touch her—perhaps afraid she might break apart—but his gaze never wavered. Grey leaned toward him gently, not out of exhaustion, but trust.
"I don't feel broken," Grey murmured, voice low. She didn't quite feel whole either—just stitched differently. Like something inside her had finally stopped unraveling. Her usual instinct was to deflect with sarcasm, but not this time. This time, it felt honest. Earned. She reached up and laid her hand agaist Alaric's cheek.
He leaned into her touch. "You feel balanced," Alaric said softly.
Grey let out a breath she hadn't realised she was holding, her thumb brushing the edge of his jaw. "Don't get used to it," she murmured, voice rough but steady. "I'm still me. Just... maybe a version that's not fraying at the seams."
He smiled faintly, and for once, she didn't flinch from the closeness.
They reached the edge of the trail. Behind them, the shrine slept. Before them, the world waited. Maerlowe finally spoke. "You were meant to bear it. You chose to carry it."
The ride back was silent. Dusk framed the Harrower's Hall in bruised blue.
Grey entered the library, the spindle humming faintly in her chest. She walked to the dais where the Harrower's Book rested and placed the Twin's essence alongside the original, palms flat on the old wood.
The ever-burning candle on the windowsill flickered. For the first time, its flame wavered. Then it flared—brighter, steadier, higher than ever. And the shadows in the room recoiled.