*LORD OF DESTINY: Chapter 18 : The Taking
The knife touched her throat.
Kael didn’t shout.
He pulled.
“With me,” he said to the thirteen.
The kids didn’t grab the man. They didn’t grab the knife.
They grabbed the gray threads.
Dozens of them. Wrapped around the hut. Draining out of the girl.
“Lesson four,” Kael said again. “Some pulls you take back.”
The thirteen threads split. Not to braid. To _reel in_.
Each kid took a handful of gray thread. Mara took two. Lyra took three and cut the rest with her sword.
And then they pulled.
Not away from the girl.
Back into her.
The man with the spool screamed. “You can’t! She’s supposed to be empty! She’s supposed to—”
Kael stepped forward. His rope hit the gray threads and tied into them.
He saw it. Every choice the man had stolen.
A first step. A first word. A laugh. A name.
All sitting in the spool, gray and cold.
Kael pulled.
The spool jerked in the man’s hand. The threads went taut.
The girl on the hook gasped. Her eyes opened. Gray at first. Then black. Then her own color. Brown.
Light went back into her. Not leaking. Pouring.
The gray threads went white. Then clear. Then gone. Like fog burning off.
The man dropped the knife. The spool cracked in his hands and turned to dust.
He fell to his knees. “It was supposed to bring her back,” he whispered. “My daughter. I thought if I filled the world with empty places, the Weaver would fill them with her.”
Lyra didn’t kill him. She just tied his hands.
Kael cut the girl down. She was so light. Too light.
Her name was Nira. Seven years old. She looked at Kael and the first thing she did was touch the gold scar on his jaw.
“Teacher,” she whispered. “You brought me back.”
Kael held her. She was shaking. Her thread was thin, but whole. No gold line yet. Just black. And it was growing stronger by the second.
Mira climbed onto Kael’s other side and grabbed Nira’s hand. “You’re with us now,” she said. “We don’t let people take things.”
Toven nodded from the mud. “We braid.”
The hut collapsed behind them. The gray was gone. The marsh felt... lighter.
The man didn’t fight when Lyra led him away. “What will you do with me?” he asked.
“Teach you,” Kael said. “Same as everyone else.”
That night they made camp on dry ground. Fourteen threads now spun above the kids. Twelve black, one white, one black with gold.
Nira slept between Mira and Toven, holding both their hands.
Through the rope on Kael’s wrist, Kael felt it.
The crying had stopped.
But in its place: two more tugs.
North-east. And south.
And they weren’t alone.
Someone else was pulling back.