Threads of Fate and Rot

"Fear was a thing he could master—if he kept moving, if he didn’t name it. But the fear of never seeing her again, of never getting the chance to give her everything he carried for her—that was something else entirely." ~Kaelan Deymir

  The air was fetid—damp and thick with decay. Insects droned in a ceaseless hum, their presence pressing in from all sides. Kaelan’s mind drifted, phasing in and out of his skeletal corporeal form. His last words with Zephiriel echoed in his thoughts: a list of sacred items he would need to collect to begin mending the tapestry of fate—the one Nelous had damaged in his divine haste.
  It had been a long time since Kaelan sat across from Elara, sharing that brief dinner—since they had lived a moment suspended in time, a gift from fate itself. He remembered her face as clearly as if it were yesterday. They hadn’t spoken. They couldn’t. She was so beautiful.
  He could still see her: sitting in the kitchen of the Astral Arch, a halo of warm light around her. Alive. Breathing. His.
  Now, he was knee-deep in the mire of Tarrow Swamp. His clothes were drenched, stained by brackish water, algae clinging to him like second skin. He was far—so far—from the sun-bleached sands of Morindus.
  He carried a list now. Not merely a task of penance, but a divine burden: a series of labors to restore what had been broken. To heal the rent threads of fate, torn by the reckless hands of a god.
  Still, her face floated in his mind—an ember in the crystal of his heart, flickering with the rhythm of his pulse.
  He had been traveling for weeks now. The Threadbinders of Fate had given him a belt to shield him from the eyes of his master. Nelous could not see him now. He was going to fix this. He was going to make the tapestry whole.
  He had known, the moment their hands pressed together, that she would try to find him. That fierce look in her eyes had said it all: I won’t wait. I will come for you. So he kept moving, the swamp closing in around him. Somewhere in this rotting wilderness, a fight awaited him.
  The Threadbinders hadn’t told him much—only what was on the list. Apparently, even fate had its rules. They couldn’t interfere more than they already had. He remembered the words Zephiriel had spoken when they first met: “It is by my hands alone that you and the Wayfinder of Souls are still bound.” Those words stayed with him.
  Kaelan groaned as he stepped on something bloated beneath the water's surface—again. The deeper he went, the worse the stench became. With a weary sigh, he shifted into his skeletal form, the vesperite bones clicking softly into place. At least now, the stench wouldn’t reach him.
  I’m going to need to really wash my bones after this, he thought dryly, glancing at the filmy water again.
  Then he froze.
  His hollow, soulless eye sockets turned toward the horizon—where the swamp opened into a cave, its gaping mouth jagged like a ring of teeth. He flexed his bony fingers and rolled his shoulders.
  Whatever was inside... was old. And it had been waiting for him.
  Then it started—the sound of bones cracking. No, finer than that. Like eggshells breaking under slow pressure. The air began to stir. He could feel something waking up. Kaelan unsheathed his axe.
  Then, with a flash like lightning, movement surged from the mouth of the cave.
  Small, reptilian creatures spilled out—long-bodied things with needle-sharp teeth and slick, glistening hides. He watched the swamp ripple as they cut sinuous lines through the murky water, fast as thrown knives.
  The first wave came snapping at him. His axe moved in wide arcs, clean and practiced. Limbs fell. Water darkened with blood. The fight was tedious, but his bones remembered the ache of battle, the way momentum built in the marrow.
  “Nasty, toothy little nightblighters,” he hissed, burying his blade into the skull of another.
  A spray of blackish blood hit his ribs as the corpse collapsed with a hiss. More came, unceasing. The water churned now with bodies, the cloudy depths littered with twitching limbs and shattered bones.
  Still the sound persisted—that sickening crackle, like eggs splitting open.
  Kaelan pushed forward, toward the cave’s gaping mouth. Toward whatever had birthed these things.
  Algae and viscera clung to his bones. He plucked out lengths of entrails tangled in his ribs, the strands slithering through his fingers and plopping into the water below. The black ichor trailing from his body spread like spilled ink, curling over the swamp’s surface.
  He stood before the mouth of the cave—a ring of stone teeth—and was struck by a low vibration. A sound. Not quite a growl. A deep, keening wail that seemed to hum in his bones.
  Fate… is a cruel mistress, he thought grimly.
  His hollow eye sockets scanned the darkness ahead. At first, he saw only shadows. Then something moved.
  Shapes dangled from the ceiling—pale, slick sacs twitching with new life. Eggs. Dozens of them. One after another cracked open, releasing more of the brood. They scrambled down, snapping and chittering, drawn to something at the back of the cavern.
  Something cocooned.
  Kaelan stepped closer, squinting through the gloom. It wasn’t a thing. It was a person.
  Wrapped in thick, glistening webbing—alive. Barely. A hand had worked itself free from the cocoon, pale and trembling, fingers stretching toward a sword that dangled just out of reach from a rusted chain above.
  A human hand. Still breathing. Still trying.
  Enough, he thought.
  None of these wretched things were what he had come for. He took a breath—or would have, if he still had lungs—and let the magic coil through his vesperite bones like smoke through ancient glass. The broodlings froze mid-lunge, eyes glinting black as he raised a single hand. With a flex of his fingertips, he crushed their hearts. They dropped in unison, collapsing into the water with dull, lifeless splashes. The swamp fell still, the ripples widening slowly as silence spread. Life had left them.
  He looked at the cocoon again. It dripped with a strange, glistening ooze. Stepping closer, Kaelan raised his axe—he was just tall enough. One clean swing sliced through the bottom of the sack. A downpour of gelatinous, rancid sludge spilled out, sloshing over his rune-etched bones.
  He tucked Elara’s flame deeper into his chest as the man inside came tumbling free, hitting the water with a wet splash. Gasping, choking, the man scrambled backward through the muck—eyes wide as he caught sight of Kaelan’s skeletal form.
  “You’ve come to reap me!” he gasped, making the sign of Nelous over his heart.
  “No… if I wanted that, you’d already be dead,” Kaelan said, voice flat.
  Before more words could be exchanged, that sound came again—deep and guttural, like something ancient stirring in its sleep. The water rippled. Detritus shifted overhead; tiny rocks dislodged from the ceiling and splashed down around them. Whatever dwelled here was waking—and it was coming.
  Kaelan needed its heart. Its sinews. Sacred offerings for the tapestry of fate. A grim task. A brutal labor, if he lived to complete it.
  Without a word, he reached up, grabbed the man’s sword from where it dangled, and tossed it toward him.
  The man stuck his hand into the fetid water, retrieving his sword. Kaelan eyed him quietly as another sound rattled the bones of the cave. Carefully he assessed the eggs ensuring all of them were dead now. Behind him, he heard the sound of the man adjusting his sword grip.Kaelen turned to look at him this time.
  The man was clad in piecemeal armor, each dent and scrape telling its own tale. He had muddy brown hair and a lean, muscular build, with a scar running along the edge of his chin.
  “That’s the Ancient Maw,” he said in a raspy tone. “The Brood Mother. ’Bout time I killed her—for hangin’ me up to marinate.”
  If Kaelan had been in his human form, one brow would’ve lifted at an angle. Instead, his skull simply turned—first toward the man, then back into the looming dark ahead. The cave fell still. The sound of dripping viscera and distant stirring faded into a thick, tense silence. Kaelan looked back again; the man now held his sword with steady hands.
  “You got a name?” Kaelan said dryly. His laugh echoed from his skeletal chest, a hollow, rattling sound that didn’t quite resemble humor.
  “Riven. Riv,” the man replied, stepping closer, sword at the ready. “So then... Reaper. You’ve come to collect The Maw, haven’t you? I’ve lost track of time—I’ve been strung up in that sack a long while.”
  “Riv,” Kaelan said, his voice low. “We’re about to become fast friends. I’m Kaelan. I don’t know if you believe in fate, but here we are.”
  The air shifted then—stirring from the back of the cave, thick with heat and ancient breath. The Brood Mother was waiting.
  Kaelan felt it in his bones—the pull of something old and vast and cruel. The runes carved into his vesperite skeleton glowed faintly, responding to the tension coiling in the dark.
  He reached briefly to the crystal nestled in his chest, the one holding Elara’s ember. He tucked it deeper, instinctively shielding it.
  Fear was a thing he could master—if he kept moving, if he didn’t name it. But the fear of never seeing her again, of never getting the chance to give her everything he carried for her—that was something else entirely.
  He looked as though he were breathing. The rise and fall of his ribcage mimicked the motion, and his mandible parted slowly in the semblance of a steady exhale. He raised his axe and glanced back.
  “Riv? Was it? Anything you can tell me about the Ancient Maw?” Kaelan asked, his skull tilting slightly. “She’s patient,” Riv said, flexing his arms as his grip tightened on his sword. “If we stay in shallow water, she’ll come to us. But if we go deeper… the water’s a death trap.”
  There was something otherworldly about him. Kaelan caught it in his eyes—that flicker, the mark of something more. The sign of an Other. Rare beings in history, often whispered about but seldom seen. Kaelan couldn’t quite sense the magic around Riv, yet there was something undeniable in his stance—the calm acceptance of standing beside him, unshaken. The god-marked were often outside the rules, bound by different laws altogether.
  A ripple disturbed the still water, breaking their thoughts. The bones of the cave shuddered as something moved closer, something ancient, stirring in the darkness.
  Kaelan watched as Riv fastened a half-mask over his face, covering his nose and mouth. The transformation was immediate—Riv took on a far more menacing presence. The mask resembled the lower jaw of a demon, tusks jutting outward where his mouth should have been. For a fleeting moment, Riv’s eyes glowed with a strange, sickly green light.
  “Lucky you don’t have to breathe her poison,” Riv muttered, his voice muffled but clear.
  A ripple broke the surface at the far edge of the cave. Something surged in the deep—massive and unseen. Nostrils flared above the water as a grotesque mouth began to emerge, pushing upward through the mire. The air thickened with a foul, rancid stench. Kaelan could feel it in his bones, the ache of rot, the weight of ancient death. Dead broodlings floated like bloated offerings in the shallows, lifeless and swollen. Then she surfaced.
  Two massive, pitless black eyes fixed on them ,ancient, alien, unblinking. Her maw opened with a slow, horrifying stretch, wide enough to swallow a man whole. Rows of jagged teeth gleamed, some razor-sharp, others broken or rotting with age. With one sudden snap, she devoured the corpse of one of her own young. A deep, guttural rumble followed, vibrating through the cave walls like a growl from the depths of the world.
  With terrible speed, the Ancient Maw struck forward—Kaelan barely pivoted out of the way in time, axe raised, the blow passing so close it rattled his bones. Beside him, Riv didn’t flinch. He stood his ground, eyes burning with hatred as the beast thrashed, its massive body churning the water. The corpses of its own children slammed against the cave walls with violent splashes, turning grief into a grotesque storm of motion and noise.
  “About time I ended you, whore,” Riv spat.
  The Maw, though slow-moving, carried a terrible weight behind every motion. She surged forward in a sudden burst, her massive body breaking through the water like a tide of rot.
  Kaelen was knocked aside by the flick of her tail—his vesperite bones shuddered with the impact as he crashed into the cavern wall. Stalactites rained down around him. He landed hard, one hand braced over the ember in his chest as he struggled to steady himself.
  Riv scrambled back, wedged now between jagged stalagmites as the creature’s grotesque maw snapped at him.
  Her body gleamed—thick, fetid scales blackened with yellow streaks. Black ichor oozed from between them. Bulging pustules burst as she moved, each one releasing choking clouds of vapor into the cavern air.
  Kaelan righted himself as the swamp’s tainted ichor splashed across his bones. The Maw still had its sights on Riv—its massive jaws snapping shut with a crack that rattled the cave walls.
  The hollows of Kaelan’s skull fixed on the ancient beast, watching as its immense, bloated form shifted through the mire. Another dead broodling slid off its back and landed against his ribs with a wet thud.
  “Riv—keep it busy!” Kaelan called, his voice echoing with eerie resonance.
  He circled wide, eyes scanning the creature’s bulk for a weakness. There had to be a place to strike. Somewhere beneath all that hide and rot, something vital still beat. The tail whipped toward him. He threw himself to the side just in time as it crashed down, sending a plume of brackish water into the air. A nearby pustule ruptured with a grotesque squelch, releasing more of that foul-smelling fluid.
  Kaelan’s bones quaked beneath the weight of the sound. He had seen death in all its forms—but this… this was something else.
  Something twisted by rot and pestilence. Something that had festered in the forgotten dark.
  Riv was already moving—sword drawn, eyes glinting once more with that strange shade of green. He danced across the water, weaving between stalactites and shattered bones with unsettling grace. Slash. Parry. Twist. Bend. His footfalls barely made a sound as he slipped through the space like a specter, every motion honed, fluid, deliberate.
  He moved with the precision of someone who had fought for survival far too long—and the wild rhythm of someone who might actually be enjoying it. Kaelan knew that bravado, something about it hummed the god of luck, Athos, an other, an offspring maybe? Kaelan wasn’t sure if Riv was cursed or blessed. Either way, he fought like a charm plucked from Athos’s own table.
  The water splashed and frothed at his heels, but he never stumbled. He avoided the floating broodling corpses with uncanny ease, even as the Maw let out a bone-deep bellow of frustration that sent tremors through the cavern walls.
  Kaelan saw it—a faint ripple of light, almost imperceptible. Just beneath the creature’s left forearm, something shimmered, no larger than the tip of his finger. A weak spot. The area was missing scales, exposing raw flesh and muscle where a pustule had erupted.
  How in all the realms was he supposed to strike something that small?
  He raised his axe, only to be thrown aside by a violent thrash of the Maw’s body. He hit the cave wall with a sickening crack of bone against stone. He hissed through clenched teeth, dragging himself upright.
  “Enough,” he growled.
  The runes etched into his vesperite bones flared to life, pulsing with eerie, undead magic. Power hummed through him—dark, cold, and ancient. He surged forward through the reeking mire, eyes locked on that glimmering weak point.
  Then he struck.
  The axe hit home, sinking deep into the spot behind the Maw’s forearm. The creature screamed, a deafening, gurgling roar that shook the cavern to its core. At the same moment, Riv let out a wild yell and drove his sword into the Maw’s eye.
  The beast convulsed violently.
  Water surged. Ichor exploded from the Maw’s wounds. Pestilence sprayed in thick, black arcs across the cave as the creature thrashed—half-blind, enraged. Kaelan raised his hand axe in both hands, the runes along his arms glowing as he charged once more. Across the cavern, Riv looked moments from being snapped in half—his body caught between the Maw’s massive jaws. With a cry of fury and desperation, Kaelan brought the axe down.
  A fatal blow landed deep into the beast’s throat.
  The Maw let out a shrieking, keening cry that echoed like a death-knell through the cavern. It rolled violently, crushing its own dead broodlings in its thrashing. Its mouth twisted grotesquely, spasming as bile and fragments spilled out.
  Kaelan and Riv scrambled to higher ground, slipping and staggering toward a jagged outcropping above the tide of rot. The creature's life essence poured out into the mire—black, thick, and seething—spreading like ink through water.
  When the waters finally stilled, Kaelan waded forward—his steps slow, deliberate. The grim task awaited him. He knelt beside the carcass and drove his axe into the Maw’s chest. Its thick scales split open with an unnerving crunch, the sound echoing like bones snapping under pressure.
  He carved deeper, dragging the blade downward through flesh and rot, black blood coating the joints of his finger bones. Nearby, he heard Riv retching, the sound sharp and wet as it splashed into the mire.
  Kaelan didn’t look up.
  He reached in with both hands and pulled free the heart—massive, pulsing faintly even in death. It was foul to behold, slick and swollen with decay. Oily black blood dripped from it in slow ribbons, spreading through the water like ink.
  Then came the sinews. He worked methodically, cutting long, elastic cords from the beast’s interior. One by one, he coiled them around an old rune-etched bone retrieved from his pack.
  Behind him, Riv let out a disbelieving breath. “The hell,” he muttered.
  As Kaelan tucked away the heart, the rot of the swamp began to fade. The putrescence lifted, and with it, life returned. The waters began to clear. The bloated, overgrown body of the Ancient Maw started to crumble into ash, as though the cruel mark of its corruption was dissolving with fate itself.
  “Well, Riv,” Kaelan said, extending a hand, “looks like you’ve earned your freedom.”
  “Well, Reaper... I think I’m going to follow you for a bit. This could be interesting,” Riv replied with a crooked smile. His eyes glinted green again as they stepped together onto dry land.
  Behind them, the swamp slowly cleared, one step at a time. Kaelan reached into his rib cage, fingers brushing the crystal where Elara’s ember pulsed softly. He inhaled sharply—if only out of habit. Still there. Still safe.
  He would tell Riv about the quest soon enough. But not yet. First, he needed to clean his bones. They felt… marked. As if they had touched more than death today.