The Thread and The Blade

 Things get better between Dalyah and I after Roderick’s offer. She looks at me not with distrust anymore, but tentative curiosity, and I do my best to be a good example. I try to keep positive, and the knowledge that, well, Knowledge gave me helps.

It also helps that Dalylah still hasn't answered Roderick’s proposal.

Yuki, of course, sees the change in dynamics, but stays silent this time. I guess, in her mind, some change is better than no change at all, and, honestly, I can’t fault her for that.

A few days pass without incident, and I’m feeling much better, when it happens again. The library doesn’t break this time - it unravels.

The shelves don’t crack or bend like before. Instead, they stretch into lines: thin, gleaming cords that tremble as if the air itself has been pulled too tight. Ink bleeds out of the books, not dripping but unraveling, twisting into filaments that shimmer gold at the edges.

I blink hard. It doesn’t help. The entire room is no longer a room but a loom, infinite and claustrophobic at once, threads humming like strings in some forgotten instrument. I groan.

“Really? Again?” I ask the air. And then I see it.

My diary. Pages torn from it, ripped clean out, flutter down the cords like leaves in autumn. Only, instead of falling, they’re caught, tugged, stitched together into something larger. A fabric that’s never finished, always in motion, floating towards… Something.

There, in the middle of it all, she sits: a grandmotherly figure in a rocking chair that wasn’t there a moment ago. Needles of silver flash in her hands, moving too fast for someone her age, but the calm on her face is timeless. Every stitch pulls something from me. Every knot is a story forced into a shape I don’t quite recognize anymore.

“Really? First Knowledge, now you? What happened, is this the God’s way of feeling remorse?” I ask as I approach her. She laughs a bit.

“Even us make mistakes once or twice, my dear.”

The Goddess of Destiny hums as she works, a soft little tune, the kind grandmothers use to lull restless children. Her yarn isn’t yarn: it’s lives. Threads of gold, some smooth, some frayed, some stained, some shining so brightly it hurts to look at them. And between them, my torn pages, becoming part of her endless project.

I freeze.

Because I recognize the thread in her hand. The ink fading across it used to be mine.

“…That’s my memories.” I whisper. My voice feels raw, like I just confessed something dangerous to someone who already knew.

She doesn’t look up. Just smiles with the kind of warmth that makes me want to scream.

“Of course it is, dear. Nothing is wasted. Even whatever tears can be woven again.”

The silver needles never stop moving. Each click feels like a heartbeat I don’t own anymore. The Goddess of Destiny hums, steady as a metronome, while I just… Watch myself being unraveled and rewoven.

“Everything can be stitched back.” She says at last, her tone soft, patient, like she’s explaining a recipe to a child. And yet, beneath that warmth, her words cut with the precision of a scalpel. “But never the same. Like a mended garment, the seam will always show. And that seam is its own truth. The scar is a story too.”

I force my gaze to the fabric in her lap. A memory flickers there, reconstituted.

My childhood bedroom. Posters on the wall. The blanket I kept kicking off in summer.

But it’s wrong.

My mother’s face blurs when I try to focus on it, as if someone smudged her with an eraser. The smell that should be her cooking- garlic and oil and rice steaming on the stove - comes out instead as something alien, fried dough I’ve maybe never tasted.

My stomach twists. It looks like mine. But it isn’t mine.

I swallow. My voice comes out thin. “That’s not… Real. Is it?”

The Goddess doesn’t flinch.

“Real enough. Memory is never truth, Aya. Only thread. And even thread frays.”

I want to scream at her. That my life wasn’t thread, it wasn’t fabric, it wasn’t disposable. That she’s sewing over the holes of my parents’ laughter, my own damn heartbeat. But the words knot in my throat.

Because she’s not wrong.

I stare at the crooked seam running through the image of my childhood. It glares back at me like a scar across skin. Imperfect. Permanent.

And for the first time, it doesn’t crush me.

Scars mean you lived through the wound. Seams mean the cloth didn’t end where it tore.

I press a hand against my chest. I’m still here, even if the stitches show.

“Scars are also proof of survival.” I murmur, the words slipping out before I can stop them.

The Goddess smiles, as if she expected me to get there all along. Her needles keep working. The sound is almost comforting now. Almost.

The knitting pauses. Not because Destiny stops, but because the ground seems to learn how to shiver.

A shadow passes through the aisles of the library, broad, heavy, certain. The shelves don’t creak, they brace, as if they’ve learned respect.

And then she steps into sight.

“Two in a row?” I ask, almost wheezing. “Does Failure know you are invading her domain?”

The Goddess of Strength doesn’t need an introduction. Her presence is introduction enough. She laugh, boisterously, her whole body shaking with mirth. Shoulders like carved stone, arms corded with scars that look like entire wars carved their names there. Her braid swings behind her like a rope thick enough to anchor mountains.

“She knows. She let us in, after all, just so we could talk to you, Aya.”

I tense, expecting judgment. Expecting her to measure me against some impossible standard - speed, endurance, flawless victories.

Instead, she leans down, eyes glacial and direct, and says, with a low rumble of a voice:

“You fall. But you stand again. I like that. Shows strength of character.”

That’s it. No sermon. No critique. Just a single, solid truth.

It shouldn’t hit me so hard. But it does.

For once, I’m not being weighed against perfection. I’m not being told how far I’ve fallen short. She looked at me - me, the tired, frayed, trembling thing I am - and called it strength.

My throat tightens. I don’t dare thank her out loud, but I hold onto that recognition like a medal no one else will ever see.

I don’t feel perfect, but I don’t feel the need to be perfect. But I feel enough.

And for the first time, that’s not failure. That’s pride.

“Remember that the strong don’t stand alone. Remember that the strong fight for something. Be strong, Aya, like you’ve shown us you can be.” She give a tap on my chest, and I feel my frayed soul strengthening somehow. “And I’m sorry for what I said before. You proved me wrong.”

The Goddess of Strength straightens again, gives a curt nod, and fades back into shadow, leaving the scent of iron and firewood behind.

Destiny doesn’t stop knitting. But I swear, her needles move a little lighter now, like even she approves.

Destiny doesn’t look up. Her needles keep clicking, silver against silver, steady as breathing. But her voice cuts through the hush like it’s been waiting there the whole time.

“Threads do not weave themselves. Others can be pulled into the same cloth.”

The sentence feels casual, almost offhand, but the library reacts.

Two threads flare into being at the edges of the half woven fabric. Not gold, not white, not the neutral shades of memory. One red and one violet. Bright. Alive.

They hum in the air like plucked strings. The violet one taut and sharp, like a bowstring drawn to breaking. The precision, the focus, the steady discipline of Yuki. The other, the red one, wild, flickering, refusing to be straightened. The heat, fury, and fire of Dalylah.

My breath catches, and I reach out without thinking.

The threads pulse against my fingertips, not warm, not cold, but vibrating with something I can’t name. For a moment I think I’ll catch them, that I’ll finally understand what Destiny means.

And then they vanish. Gone, like a whisper swallowed by silence.

I clutch at the empty air. Nothing left. Not even an afterimage.

Destiny doesn’t pause her knitting. Doesn’t explain. Doesn’t need to.

But I feel it in my chest, heavier than any scar she’s shown me so far.

This isn’t just about me anymore.

Whatever’s happening… The gods aren’t pulling only my thread.

“What… Are they ok?”

“Your friends are fine, dear. They fight for you, even when you don’t see it. Some of us have their eyes on them.” Destiny replies, a soft smile on her face.

I gasp.

“Are they…?”

“Not yet. But soon, perhaps. It all depends on how they will face the others. For now, I’ll keep knitting you all together. It will make a nice sweater, I believe. Thank you for this brighter thread, Aya. I’m sorry it took so long for the rest of us to see your worth.”

“I… Thank you?” I half say, half ask. Destiny just smiles.

Then, the library exhales. The stretched threads and the silver needles fade back into wood, stone, and paper. Destiny fades with everything else. For a moment it all almost looks normal again, except the diary on the table is no longer the same.

The pages I lost are back, but not the way they were. They’ve been stitched into place with seams of golden thread, crooked lines cutting through my handwriting. Words slant where they shouldn’t. Sentences break mid-thought. It’s ugly, almost painful to look at.

I press my fingertips to the uneven surface. The thread bites against my skin, raised like scar tissue, the same scars I carry on my arms. For once, it doesn’t feel like mockery. It feels like proof that I am alive.

A laugh huffs out of me, bitter but lighter than before.

“I don’t need to be whole.” I whisper, not to the diary, not even to the Gods, but to myself. “I just need to keep being.”

The air shivers, and Destiny’s voice lingers in my mind, softer than thread unraveling, sharp as a needle point.

“Even torn threads can hold the weight of a world.”

I close the diary. It feels heavier now, not in a way that drags me down, but in a way that anchors me.

When I step out of the library, the night air cuts cold and real against my cheeks. The stars above don’t care that I’m stitched together. They shine anyway. And that’s enough.