The Loom of Destiny Part One

Hours passed, and the fire began to dwindle down to embers, its light fragile against the dark sky. The small encampment outside of the shrine was nearly silent, the heavy hush only broken by the soft crackle of wood giving way to ash or the occasional rustle of branches.

The night pressed in from every angle, and even the gods had grown tired, their bodies not as powerful as they once were. Hikari’s soft breaths created a soft rhythm as she slept soundly, curled into the hoari that Mizuchi had folded her into. Her small hands were clasped to her chest as if she were holding something precious, even as she slept.

And Mizuchi, watchful and calming by nature, lay peacefully on his side on the bridge. He had lowered his head and closed his eyes to listen to the sound of the small lake, but was coaxed into a serene slumber.

Even Shosei, always alert and ready to record everything that happened, was fast asleep. He slumped against a large boulder, his glasses sliding down his nose at a slight angle, lips slightly parted as he murmured nonsense in his sleep.

Of the gods, only Yahata remained wide awake, sitting apart from the group with his back pressed against a tree. Perhaps it was because he had rested longer than the other two, or perhaps it was his lack of trust…Shion wasn’t sure. But there he sat, silent as the stone Shosei rested against. His broad form cast a menacing, yet protective, shadow across them.

Shion had been so tired before; she had thought that she would fall asleep with ease or even collapse from exhaustion – as had become the norm. Instead, her thoughts churned, restless. The silence here pressed harder on her than it ever had back in her own world. Shion shivered softly, drawing her knees to her chest and resting her chin atop them for a moment. The embers pulsed faintly, a steady and calm heartbeat. She watched for what felt like forever before her gaze found its way to Shosei’s satchel.

She chewed her bottom lip for a moment. ‘If I can’t sleep, I should at least spend more time learning,’ she reasoned with herself. She moved forward on her haunches and stretched her hand outward. For a moment, her fingers hesitated. She exhaled softly and slipped free one of the volumes she had helped restore. It was a thin tome bound in cracked, dark blue leather. The binding was frayed, and the pages were yellowed. When she opened it, however, the script glowed faintly, eager to be read once more after centuries of blankness.

Carefully, she brushed her hand over the page and began to read. But what she read surprised her. The book in her hands was neither a battle record nor a prophecy. It was the story of a life. Within the leather-bound pages was the chronicle of a clumsy mortal scribe who dwelled in the shadows of the Great Temple’s halls. He was not revered; his voice was not worth listening to, according to most, and so he barely spoke. The priests and warriors who visited the temple, and even the gods themselves, merely tolerated the young man for his skill in record keeping. His only companions were the texts that he often read over and over late into the night.

Shion’s brow furrowed, and her throat tightened. Her eyes dissected each line carefully, feeling the sting of familiarity in the description of this quiet man. He was so easily overlooked, his fragile life bound in thin pages.

It was Chishan, the God of Fate, who took notice of him.

The great Weaver of the Threads of Fate was charmed by the mortal’s dedication. Chishan began to linger at the temples, long after the other gods had departed. At first, he only marveled at the mortal scribe’s unyielding patience and the quiet devotion that seemed to seep into every line he penned in his scrolls and books. Soon, Chishan showed himself and began to ask questions not about kingdoms or wartime heroes, but of the scribe’s thoughts and the quiet truths he saw.

As the seasons passed, the bond between the pair grew stronger. It wasn’t through spectacle, but through patient persistence, through a need neither had admitted until it became undeniable. A lonely god, left to watch over and guide the fates of all living things, and a mortal scribe who had long since forgotten his name, answering only to the lowly title of ‘shosei.’

Shion looked at the God curiously, but her vision blurred with tears. Her fingers trembled softly against the fragile parchment as memories rose to the surface. The retreating back of her mother. ‘I can’t handle it anymore. She doesn’t speak, and she won’t stop acting out!’ her mother had cried as she shoved several boxes into the arms of Shion’s grandmother. 

Abandoned by her own voice and subsequently, abandoned by her own mother. Her years had been lonely; the warmth of her grandmother’s hands was the only anchor she had known in the treacherous storm of her youth. And when her grandmother had passed, mere days before she turned 16 years old, she was set adrift once more.

At her age, she had managed to secure a small apartment of her own, living on the money her grandmother had left her. The only companions she had in her world had been the books that filled every shelf and filled all of the spaces where words could not. There, she had convinced herself that survival was enough; thriving in the company of others had never been an option for her. At least, that’s what she had believed.

‘So…he was like me,’ she realized sadly, pressing her fingertips to the fragile script. All alone. And yet, he continued writing and trying, even when no one listened. She drew in a shaky breath as her eyes darted from the God whose tome she had swiped, back to the chronicle as it sat in her lap.

Chishan had been moved by how profound the mortal was and how the scribe always drew on knowledge that even the gods had not considered. Finally, moved by man’s quiet resilience and brilliant mind, the God of Fate petitioned the other gods. They needed someone like this young man, someone knowledgeable who would record their history. But the others had laughed – what use did an eternal scribe have? Chishan would not yield. It was he, after all, that controlled fate at the end of the day. And so, he turned to his loom.

With deliberate defiance, he carefully rewove the scribe’s tapestry, fortifying the fibers with golden threads of immortality. A once mortal life was not bound to eternity, reshaped into the divine. It was on that day that Shosei, the God of Knowledge, Scribe to the Heavens, was born. He was a god born of devotion itself rather than conquest or control of the elements.

Shion felt a soft squeeze in her chest as she glanced at Shosei’s sleeping form. His position had become even more awkwardly angled, his red hair was tousled, and his expression was soft in rest. He slept soundly, unguarded and without a concern for preserving the knowledge that, at heart, he was a mortal.

“Chi…shan…” he murmured, an almost loving smile unlike any she had seen tugging at the corner of his lips.

As Shion closed the book gently in her lap, the story lingered in her mind. She felt as though she truly understood Shosei now and why he had taken to her so kindly. But more than that, this chronicle was proof of what he and Mizuchi had told her - that silence, devotion, and perseverance had the ability to shape the divine. It echoed Mizuchi's quiet reminder about the sacredness of water: 'Water carries memory.' It was a deeply profound recognition that echoed in Shion's understanding of her own place in their world. And for the first time, Shion felt as though perhaps her own path, which felt so fractured and uncertain, might carry her beyond years of loneliness and isolation.

Perhaps her silence was not the cage she had always believed it to be. Just as water remembers its path, she now understood that her journey, too, carried the imprints of her past, a silent but persistent reminder swirling like a current through her life. Perhaps, in the same way that ink flowed from a quill to create a beautiful script on a page, it could be transformed.

Shion pressed the book tightly to her chest, curling forward as if to protect the text from the elements. For the first time, the idea of eternity did not feel terrifying. It felt… possible.

Unseen to her, Yahata’s eyes had remained on her, unwavering even now as she dozed off. From where he sat, he had watched her carefully take the book to read it. He had seen the subtle tremors in her hands and the shine in her eyes as she had read the book’s passages.

Though he was unable to express it in words at this time, the shift in his expression, though faint, spoke volumes. A flicker of understanding, or perhaps recognition, stirred in his silence.

His hand flexed once against the earth, then stilled, as if he had crushed the thought before it could form. He opened and closed his fist a few more times and watched her.

The fire crackled softly as Shion finally lay down, curling close to the warmth. She kept the book clutched to her chest as her eyes fluttered shut.

The night carried on slowly, bogged down by something within it that felt heavier now—threads stretching unseen, binding past to present, mortal to divine.​