Countless silver filaments, previously invisible, now blazed into existence in the air before us. They were the raw material of Fate, the building blocks of which our entire world was made. They gathered, twisting and coalescing, first into something incoherent and overwhelming. But Clotho tugged on the threads, and they obeyed. They wove themselves into a silent, moving tableau.
It was Agrion.
The ruins were there, the grass pushing through the cracked stones under a somber light. A version of myself, a silent puppet made of thread, knelt beside Callista. Her woven likeness was a mask of intense, hopeful concentration. A blaze of my own hellfire, a silver-blue light, filled the image. The black feather dissolved. The asphodel pushed through the earth.
My own likeness, a ghost woven from Fate, spoke. A distant, hollow echo filled my mind, as if coming from across a vast chasm.“You did it. You created lasting life.”
The image held for a single, perfect moment. Then, the threads unraveled, and the image dissolved into nothing. The air grew heavy again, the cold, hard reality of the walkway rushing back in.
Callista gaped in disbelief. “That’s... that’s it? That’s what she saw? But... it’s just a memory. From our visit to the village. Why is it important?”
I was just as confused. I’d demanded answers from the Moirae, and instead, they’d shown me a piece of my own past.
Oh. It was apiece. A fragment. And it was wrong. My mind raced, overlaying the woven image with the warmth and texture of my own memory. The flower. The feeling of Callista’s hand in mine. And then...
“It’s important because that’s not what happened,” I growled, the realization a cold dread that settled in my gut. “Not really.”
I turned my gaze on the Moirae. “We weren’t alone. Zoe was there. She spoke right after that.” In fact, the words she’d spoken in Agrion had been her very first. I turned back to the Moirae. “Why wasn’t she in the image? Why did the vision stop right there?”
“The vision is true, Cerberus,” Lachesis answered. “But as we said, and as you noticed, it is not complete. Daphne simply couldn’t see Zoe, because a seer’s gift, no matter how powerful, is flawed. In other words, she saw what she wanted to see. Whether she realized it or not.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. Even for the predator inside me, this was just too cruel. “So Daphne was led here by a vision of creation... only for it to guide her to her own end? What is the purpose of a gift like that?”
Atropos shook her head, as if disappointed in a child who refused to understand. “A seer’s gift does not show the end, Cerberus. It shows the unavoidable way forward.
“You asked us why we could not help the Keres’s mate. It is because fate is absolute. Hers was already chosen. Trying to change it would have only brought disaster onto all of us.”
The words were no doubt a reprimand meant for Charon, but the Ferryman ignored her. Perhaps he was just too tired to care.
“Daphne herself knew it, Theron,” he told me, instead. “In her heart, she knew it was impossible to change fate. But… She was human. And it is human to yearn for something different. To hope.
“She loved her Keres. She wanted their bond to work. But in the end… She had no choice but to walk the path she was meant for. And Phonos had no choice but to be her prison.”
I felt sick with the horror of it all. Even now, I hadn’t forgotten how it had felt to be separated from my mate. I’d been trapped in a cell, kept away from a mate that had forgotten me.
But at least I’d had someone to blame. Someone to hurt. Someone to attack. Phonos had none of that. And there was no way to save someone who had already been damned by the gods.
There was no one to blame. No monster to hunt. There were only the perfect, indifferent mechanics of a system that used desire as a weapon.
“It was always going to be like this, then,” Callista whispered, wrapping her arms around herself as if to hold the pieces of her world together. “It was always hopeless.”
Clotho stepped forward, the movement a ripple in the stillness. She looked at Callista, her lips curving into a small, maternal smile. “No, child. If there’s one thing you should learn about Asphodelia, it is that here, there is always hope.”
11
The Stygian Vessel
Phonos
A few weeks later
The vibrant green pressed in on me, alive and hateful.
A chaotic noise of buzzing insects and chirping birds beat against my eardrums. Too rich and sweet, the air scraped my lungs, thick with the scent of damp earth and blooming flowers. This world of endless, pointless growth felt almost obscene to a creature woven from death energy.
I sat on a bed of soft moss and hated myself more than ever before. My fingers found the base of a primary feather on my right wing. I gripped it tight and pulled.
A clean, white-hot line of pain seared through me, a welcome focus in the swirling chaos of my grief. The feather came free with a wet rip of flesh. I dropped it onto the moss and waited. For a glorious moment, there was only the wound. A breaking. A vulnerability. A sign that in this place, I, too, could be unmade.
