LORD OF DESTINY: Chapter 17: East
The crying didn’t stop.
Not in sound. In thread.
Through the rope on Kael’s wrist, he could feel it. A thin, frayed pull, east past the Frozen Coast, into the Salt Marshes.
Like someone was trying to scream without a voice.
“We go,” Kael said. He adjusted Toven on his hip. The boy was asleep now, face buried in Kael’s coat.
Mara walked beside them. Her hands were empty. No spindle. She kept looking at the kids like she couldn’t believe they were real.
“Who is it?” Lyra asked.
“I don’t know,” Kael said. “But it’s a Child. And they’re alone.”
They moved fast. Wind at their backs again. Small pulls. The thirteen threads above the kids spun like a compass needle, always pointing east.
On the second day the ground turned to mud. The Salt Marshes. Fog so thick you couldn’t see ten feet. The air smelled like metal and rot.
And the crying got louder.
Not in their ears. In their chests.
The oldest girl stopped walking. “There,” she whispered. Pointed.
Through the fog: a hut on stilts. One light. And wrapped around the whole thing, tied to the posts, were threads.
Dozens. Not black. Not white. Gray. Dead.
And in the doorway, hanging from a hook by her wrist, was a girl. Maybe 7. Her thread was gray too. And cut in three places.
She wasn’t moving.
“NO!” Mira shouted. She ran.
Kael caught her before she reached the water. “Wait.”
A man stepped out of the hut. Thin. Bald. Eyes white. But not Weaver-white. Mad-white.
He held a knife. And in his other hand, a spool of gray thread.
“You,” he said, seeing Kael. “You’re the one who broke it. You’re the reason fate is bleeding.”
He looked at the girl. “I’m fixing it. One thread at a time. If I cut enough of them, the Weaver will have to come back and stitch the world.”
Lyra raised her sword. “Get away from her.”
The man smiled. “Too late. I’ve already started. This one’s almost empty.”
Kael felt it. The girl’s thread wasn’t just cut. It was being drained. Every choice she could have made was leaking into the gray threads around the hut.
His scar went ice cold.
The thirteen kids behind him made a sound. Not crying. Anger.
Kael set Toven down. Mira grabbed his hand.
“Lesson four,” Kael said, voice low.
“Some pulls you don’t braid. You take back.”
He raised both hands.
Thirteen threads answered.
The gray threads around the hut shuddered.
The man raised the knife to the girl’s throat.