A gifted one — a looker through my eyes. What has he seen? For even I have not yet witnessed… The end.

  Rivin had never been this deep into the Triple Wick before, never once braved the staircases leading up and up; instead, his journey here had only ever been in search of coin or pain, to find the value in bruising, the brotherhood in blood.

  They pass several of the Threads on the way, all of whom bow their heads and disperse to the edges of the hallways like the Madame is a walking repulsion, a force to surge the tides apart. Rivin studies the artwork on the walls as they go, trying to understand the symbols and the story being stolen here.

  “How is she?” Asks Coel, twiddling his fingers as they walk. “Is she still talking?”

  Atropos doesn’t slow her step. “Patience, child. You have waited this long.”

  They continue in silence, and Rivin can see that many of the framed paintings are ancient and torn, stitched and repaired with golden twine, the majority depicting three women of varying ages spinning a single long thread, while others are far more fantastical, setting scenes of winged beasts and bearded men wielding lightning, of glorious battles amongst clouds. The collection is completed by various damaged sculptures and busts, abdomens twisted into split postures, cracked hands splayed against pedestals, and heads split down the centre—some entirely absent of characteristics and yet still displayed proudly.

  Surrounding, the smallest of the Threads dust and clean, scrubbing tiles and monuments alike, heads bowed but not quite so obedient as their company, several eyes flicking up curiously to bore into Rivin’s back, while the others, in their translucent garments and chains, disappear behind the countless thick oaken doors, each carved intricately with correlating symbols from the plentiful signs.

  It’s not long before they come upon a final stairwell, a winding circle of iron steps leading towards the highest floor; above, not carved or painted, but rather a real ironwood staff, gnarled and darkly oiled, complete with a large and transcendent white gem—a heart—shimmering from a twisted root socket above a heavy bolted door.

  “She’s still up there?” Abi’s voice trembles, her hand tightening around her brother’s fist.

  Clotho reaches for the child, but like the first time, she stops herself and returns her hand to her side, compelled into inaction by something unnamable and heavy churning within her eyes. “She prefers it up here.” The Madame answers instead. “Clotho tends to most of her needs; the Threads see to her feeding and bathing. Trust, child. She is in the best of hands.”

  Rivin remembers then—without much trouble at all—the dying outside, heads lifted towards an impossible light. Abandoned. Forgotten. He swallows his bitterness, but it doesn’t work, and it bubbles up and past his clenched teeth to form a vicious venom. “Like all the others?” He spits, tilting his head towards a window arching a salmon-pink wall, the mosaics rippling over the sorry sight of the diseased below, the poverty above.

  For the first time since they set off, the Madame pauses, her thin brows furrowing. “Some fates are crueller than others, it’s true.” She responds, tapping the tips of her nails together. Tap. Tap. Tap. “Lachesis is lucky.”

  “Lucky?” scoffs Coel in disbelief, while Rivin looks up towards the isolated room, the heavy lock struck across the front. He can already smell her. That smell. Mothers smell. Nothing can hide it, not the incense. Not the sex.

  “She’s all alone.” Coel whimpers, tears welling within his eyes, and Abi’s too; the shared grief too much to bear now that they’re so close. “She’s been dying all alone.” He pinches his eyes closed, forcing out salty rivers. Rivin extends a hand to comfort him, but he’s too slow, all too suddenly eclipsed behind the mammoth size of the Madame.

  “Not alone, child.” Atropos bends, cupping Coel’s face, “With us, my sweet. With us.” Her voice is gentle. Almost motherly. Almost kind. “Her fate is not yet over; we would not keep her otherwise, you know this.” Rivin believes her, but he doesn’t trust her for a second. He can feel it in his bones, the insincerity dripping like venom, and yet her words appear to be soothing the boy, watering down the hot grief in his soul.

  “M-Mama…” Coel sucks back a hiccup as Atropos strokes his hair with her talons, fingering fondly over a patch of his scalp shaved clean, fresh shoots of new hair shyly budding around a complex and discoloured scar.

  “She speaks to me. ” Atropos continues. “I have been shown the ways to allot destiny, and I have seen that hers is yet beginning.” The pupil of her milky eye catches the light, glinting a hollowing white. “Yours too.” Her eyes flicker up towards Clotho. “Isn’t that right, sister dear?”

  Cloth nods weakly, whispering back, “yes, Madame.”

  Rivin can only frown. He feels like an outlier in an instant, watching the siblings melt into complacency, into the comfort of delusion, or… perhaps he’s being too hard-headed. Had they not made plans a day ago to follow the dream of a boy seizing on the floor and bleeding from the eyes? Had they not placed their fate into fantasies already? Is it so wrong to believe that there are others tormented by visions of the future? Still, he can’t help the uneasiness in his gut, the cold tips of his fingers as he watches the Madame dig her claws in with a smile.

  “She has taught me to read the Kismet,” the tall woman resumes, and Rivin tenses because of that word again, inclining his head curiously. “I admit that I am still learning, but I’m confident.” Atropos looks bashful, but only for a beat, before she straightens again, towering above them all. “She will live, my sweet. I have seen it. Trust.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Rivin intercedes, narrowing his eyes. “Your Kismet told you that… how?”

  “It is written.” Clotho replies, watching him carefully, for a while longer than he’d yet noticed. “Lachesis records all in the Books of Kismet.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  At that, Atropos shoots her sister a sharp glare before relaxing, rolling her shoulders and folding her hands in front of her lap. “Correct. It is written.”

  “And she…?” He steps forward, glancing once more towards the spiral staircase. “Dreams these destinies?”

  “Yes.” Coel mumbles, nodding along. “Mama has always seen.”

  “A burden and a curse,” the Madame muses, chuckling softly, “such is her fate.”

  Rivin swallows hard. He can still see Ricket on the floor, the blood pouring out of everywhere as his wrist snapped unnaturally, just like his leg and his ankle, the high-pitched little cries of someone trapped somewhere else. Mostly, the fear in his foggy, hazel gaze but the certainty too.

  Was that destiny being written? Was that fate being told?

  He’s sharply pulled away from his thoughts and back to reality by the crisp tone of the Madame, the rattle of her spinal-column braid as she spins and clasps her hands together. “Well then,” she chimes, ascending the first stair, “no more dawdling. Come, my sweets.” She looks back to crease her eyes with a tight smile. “The Mother of Moirai awaits you.”

  The room is suffocating and dark, lit dimly by a flickering lantern by the bedside where thin fingers drift across the ghost of light.

  “Sister dear,” Atropos greets the hand weakly following the flames dance before it skitters beneath sheets, hiding alongside the rest of a skeletal figure below a thin and satiny duvet. “It is as you predicted,” the Madame continues, her joyful voice rising. “Your children have returned.”

  Lachesis doesn’t move, not an inch that they can see beneath the covers that looks almost flat overtop her. What’s left of the woman little else now but a miniscule and shapeless lump, her head resting between fluffed pillows, sunken so that only thick and silky black tresses appear to grow from between them, fanned out like spilt ink across the cushions and sheets.

  “Mama?” Coel sounds hesitant and frightened, but Abi tries to rush to the cot's side right away, unafraid. The Madame holds her back, her talons poised over each sibling’s shoulder, digging in as the girl draws a sharp breath and cries, “Mama, we’re home!” The figure does not move; in fact, it seems to cease all motion completely. Frozen.

  Rivin waits by the door that Clotho holds open, her head still bowed, her eyes still shameful. “What’s with the lock?” He asks her quietly.

  She doesn’t look up, only shudders her response towards the ground, and wrings her fingers together. “It is written.”

  “Tch.” He scoffs in return, crossing his arms as his grey eyes return to the room, to the living corpse at the centre of the two children’s world.

  “Lachesis, will you not even rise to meet them?” Atropos taunts, tutting the shape as she unfurls her fingers to release them.

  Coel, who is growing more confident, begins his small steps forward, teetering on the edge. “Mama? Are you okay?”

  “Can you speak?” Abi darts ahead, already scrambling atop the mattress, the frame screaming beneath her small weight, and yet Lachesis does not greet them, does not even make to raise her head from between the pillows, instead remaining perfectly still, so much so that her chest does not rise nor fall for a long-winded moment before it begins to quiver.

  “Mama, we missed you.” Abi scoots closer, laying her head across the shape’s front. “Won’t you come out?”

  Rivin watches closely. No movement. Only shaking. Only the rattle of fragile bones as fear wraps them up tightly. “Is she even alive?” He whispers beneath his breath.

  “Mostly.” Answers Cloth.

  “You must forgive your mother, children.” Atropos smiles kindly. “She has seen through your eyes and felt your cuts and your burning. She is still recovering.” She tilts her head towards the lump. “Sister dear, won’t you try?” Rivin can’t see her face, but something is wrong with her voice, something sinister and wicked. “Won’t you hold your children, ultima vice?”

  Silence settles like a blanket, heavy and daunting, but only for the others, for Rivin can hear something soft and distant — a small and fuzzy voice trilling from the room within. He sees an arm raise slowly, the frail skin a deep and bluish violet, still trembling, before it settles delicately across Abi’s back and curls weakly into her shirt. It’s all that’s needed to have both siblings crying again, to have Coel rushing forward to throw himself atop the bed.

  “Good. Good.” Atropos coos, but Rivin’s heart only twists, only breaks, as he watches the skeleton so loosely draped in the flesh of a mother hold her weeping babes but not rise to look them in the eyes. To face them.

  The song is growing louder. He can almost recognise the words.

  ‘You don’t … remember me … I remember you.’

  “We came back,” Coel sobs, all too quickly a little one again, a boy that needs his parent—more than strength. More than dying bravely in the sun.

  Rivin bites his lip, tries to stop the abyss opening up again in his gut, but he fails; he fails because it’s never truly closed, and he can see himself there now, all small and pale, curled up besides her. He’s untangling the knots, brushing softly, softly, softly so it doesn’t all pull out again. Her lips are split, but smiling up at him; her eyes, once so like his own, now burst blue galaxies but no less gentle. No less tender.

  She loves him. She loves him so much, and he’s singing to her. Their song.

  ‘Twas not so long ago you broke my heart in two.’

  She tries to raise her hand to brush the hair from his eyes, but it falls back to the mattress. He captures it, massages her fingers, and feels the tears prickle and burn.

  ‘If we could start anew, I wouldn’t hesitate.’

  She parts her lips and he can see the ulcers inside, the bleeding on her tongue, and yet still, she says to him with those tender, loving, mother eyes:

  ‘I’d gladly take you back and tempt the hand of… Fate.’

  ‘Tears on my pillow…’

  “Are you okay?” It’s Clotho’s voice that breaks through the song, quiet and concerned.

  Rivin turns to face her slowly, a single tear escaping down the apple of his cheek as he blinks, and swallows, and tries to remember where he is. When he looks back at the room, Coel and Abi are there, their mama still trapped beneath the covers, silent save for weeping. “I…” He starts, but Atropos is by the door in an instant, mismatched eyes glaring down at him, curved down but not smiling, not really.

  “You best take your leave, Baby Grey,” she coos. “As you can see, the children are with their mother now.” Rivin tries to glimpse around her, but she won’t allow it, craning her tall and lanky body into view. “You have our sincere gratitude, but of course…” Her indigo blue eyes glimmers in the timid light. “My offer still stands.”

  He only shakes his head, dropping his gaze to the floor. He feels so… small all of a sudden. He wants to escape this place, escape those terrible lying eyes and the smell clogging up the room and stairwell.

  The Madame clicks her tongue, but she no longer sounds irritated nor upset, merely pleased. “Clotho, escort him back to his friends. See to it that they are handsomely rewarded for their efforts.” She tilts her head, gleeful and smug. “We will see you again, young Ghost.”

  Rivin grits his teeth, risking a last and successful glance beyond her. The siblings are still on the bed, hovering atop the buried woman, snuggling up like pups in the cold. Neither looks back. However, the pillows have parted ever so slightly.

  Lachesis has finally raised her head, all but a single bursting blue eye peering out from beneath the length of her hair, staring right at him, and as the door begins to fall closed, she speaks, and his heart stops, his breath and perhaps the whole world, too.

  “Pain in my heart,” she begins, raspy but rising, anguish rupturing from her chest as the room is cut off from him. Still, he hears her, splintering through his head, as loud as if it had been sung right into his ear. “Caused by… you.”