Kale stood alone in the ruins of the Hollow Tree.
Marell was gone—vanished during the night without a trace. No blood. No footprints. Just a faint echo of rot in the air and a tangle of severed fate threads, pulsing faintly where she had last stood.
"She knew too much. The Loom does not forgive."
Azrael's voice coiled in Kale's skull, smoother than ever.
Kale didn't answer. He couldn't.
Because now he saw it.
Not with eyes, but with something Azrael had left inside him. A second sight. A curse.
The world around him shimmered with fate threads—thin strands of glowing silk linking everything to everything else. Even the rocks had threads, though faint. But people... creatures... they were tangled in thousands.
Some threads stretched toward the future. Others back toward trauma and memory. All of it woven together, tight.
Except Kale.
His threads had been cut.
And now he could do the same to others.
Fateshatter.
He spent two days in the wild testing it.
The ability wasn't physical. It was conceptual. He couldn't just yank at someone's thread and kill them—there were rules.
Weak Threads — People on the edge of death or collapse had "cracked" threads. He could snap those easily.
Vital Threads — Every being had a few glowing threads linking to their vital functions—cutting one could paralyze or blind or silence them.
Looped Threads — Dangerous. These were destiny-bound. Cutting one could unravel reality… or rewind it.
The deeper he reached, the more Azrael whispered. And each time Kale listened, the threads bent a little easier.
By the third night, he found the village.
Or what was left of it.
Charred bones. Crushed stone. Thread-mass burnt to ash. And in the center: a Vault, torn open like a ribcage.
Kale stepped closer.
The air shimmered.
Then, he heard the sound: laughter, stretched like meat across metal.
"Did they send another scavenger?" the voice asked. "Or just a fool who doesn't know what he's carrying?"
A shape rose from the ruin.
Tall. Pale. Eyes sewn shut.
A man—but not quite.
Where Kale had rejected the Vault's whisper, this one had drunk deep. His body was wrapped in threads of fate—thousands, pulsing like veins. But they weren't natural. They were invasive, growing through his flesh, fusing with bone.
"Name's Dirnan," he said, tilting his head. "They called me Chosen once. Now I just call myself hungry."
Kale stepped back. "You opened a Vault too."
Dirnan grinned. "I didn't just open it. I merged with it."
He pointed at Kale.
"And now I smell another. Let's see if your soul tastes better than the last dozen."
The ground trembled.
Dirnan lunged, threads snapping outward like barbed whips.
Kale dove aside, eyes blazing as Fateshatter lit up his mind.
He saw Dirnan's threads—dense, coiled like a maze. Cutting any at random would be suicide.
But there—a black one, pulsing oddly. A contradiction. A parasitic thread growing from somewhere outside time.
He reached for it.
And Azrael screamed.
"NOT THAT ONE."
Too late.
Kale touched it.
Reality shivered.
Suddenly, he saw Dirnan's entire fate in a single flash:
A child sacrificed to a vault-god.
A man reborn in thread and blood.
A future where Dirnan becomes a god-eater by devouring others like Kale.
But that future was no longer certain.
Because Kale now held the thread that defined it.
He pulled.
Dirnan collapsed mid-attack, screaming as golden thread poured from his eyes and mouth. His threads snapped, one by one.
"What... did you do to me?" he gasped, shaking.
Kale stepped forward, vision glowing.
"I shattered your fate."
Then he pressed his hand to Dirnan's chest—and severed the last thread.
The Chosen fell, threads unspooling into nothing.
When the air calmed, Kale collapsed.
Blood poured from his nose. His vision blurred. Fateshatter was powerful—but each use burned more than it gave back. His body wasn't built for this.
"Yet," Azrael whispered. "But you are learning. And soon, they will send worse than him."
Kale stared into the stars.
And for the first time, he didn't feel fear.
He felt curiosity.
What would he become if he kept pulling?
End of Chapter 4