*LORD OF DESTINY:,*Chapter 8: Twelve Threads*
Kael didn’t touch the thread.
It touched him.
And for half a second he saw through the baby’s eyes. The whole village. Every person, every choice they’d made since the Cut. No Weaver filtering it. Just raw, messy, free will.
Then it snapped back to the baby’s wrist and went dull.
“Okay,” Kael said, breathing hard. “Okay. We move. Now.”
Lyra was already counting heads. “Orrin has 2. There’s 3 in Greywell, 1 in Karthos lower district, 4 scattered through the Ash Plains, and 2 near the coast.” She looked at him. “Twelve total. And we have no idea what they can do yet.”
“Then we keep them somewhere safe,” Kael said. “Somewhere no one can pull them apart.”
“The Spire,” Lyra said immediately. Then she shook her head. “No. The Spire is empty. Anyone could walk in.”
Kael looked down at the baby. She was watching him, thumb in mouth, thread curled around her wrist like a bracelet. “Not the Spire. The mountain.”
“The bone?”
“It grew out of nothing once,” Kael said. “Maybe it remembers how. If the Weaver’s coming back through them, we hide them where it started.”
Lyra nodded. “I’ll send riders. We bring them all to you in three days. Can you—”
“I’ll hold,” Kael said. The scar over his heart was warm again. Not growing. Just warm.
That night, Kael slept on the floor of the house in Orrin. The baby slept in a cradle next to him. The thread stayed around her wrist.
At midnight, it moved.
It lifted off her skin, floated to Kael, and tapped his scar. Once. Twice.
Then it drew a shape in the air.
A map.
Twelve points of light.
And one black point in the center, moving.
Kael sat up. “Lyra.”
She was awake already, sword in hand. “I saw it too. In my dreams.”
“The moving one,” Kael said. “That’s not a child.”
Lyra’s face went hard. “That’s Coren.”
Outside, the wind changed. Far off, on the road to Karthos, torches appeared. Dozens of them. Moving fast.
A voice called from the dark. Not loud. But every house heard it.
“Hello, little brother. I heard you were collecting strays.”
Coren stood at the edge of the village. His coat was gone. The black marks covered his whole neck now, and crawled up to his jaw. In his hands he held another thread. This one was red.
“I’m not here to hurt them,” Coren said. “I’m here to teach them. Before someone else does.”
Behind him, the torches stopped. Men with swords. No banners. No Lord’s sigil.
Mercenaries.
“They’re paying me a lot to bring back one of the Children,” Coren said, almost sad. “A new King in Karthos wants to control fate again. Imagine that.”
The baby in the cradle woke up. The thread around her wrist glowed.
Kael stood. “Then you picked the wrong village.”
Coren smiled. “We’ll see. Rule one still applies, brother. Pull, don’t cut.”
He raised the red thread.
The Children of the Cut started crying. All at once. In twelve different villages.