- A life thread
- A soul
- A Fate Weave
When one’s Life ends :
- The Life Thread snaps
- Death separates the Life from the flesh.
- Reapers collect the soul
- The soul enters the veil {the transition-state between Life and whatever comes next}
Beyond the veil, Fate governs and marks souls for reincarnation.
The marked soul is released to choose its own beginning.
The marked soul can be reborn in any timeline or reality.
Reincarnated souls lose memory of their past Life.
Some reincarnated souls retain traces of their former vessel.
Not all souls are marked.
Not all souls reincarnate.
Record Thirteen - Cairon
A cell.
Stone blocks formed the walls, uneven and chipped, stacked without care. Moisture clung to them, seeping through the cracks like the place was slowly rotting from the inside. The walls were thick. Built to keep screams from travelling, built before anyone cared if prisoners were ever meant to leave. The floor was bare stone, hollowed in shallow dips where bodies had knelt, fallen or simply stopped resisting.
Iron rings were embedded directly into the ceiling, black with age. Chains hung from them, heavy, brutal, each link thick enough to break fingers if handled wrong.
In the center of the room, a young girl hung restrained.
Her wrists were bound in iron cuffs, arms pulled upward until her shoulders burned with the strain. The chains stretched tight above her, forcing her to stand on the tips of her feet, barely touching the floor. Every movement made the metal bite colder into her skin. Her head hung slightly forward, hair falling into her face, shadowing her eyes.
The air smelled like rust, mold and something faintly metallic.
Outside the cell, two guards sat on overturned crates, armor half-unbuckled, expressions twisted with irritation.
One of them clicked his tongue, leaned forward and spat through the bars. The glob hit the stone just short of her feet.
“Why do we have to be here?” he muttered, voice thick with resentment.
The other guard scoffed, dragging a hand down his face.
“Today was supposed to be my day off.”
He stood suddenly and kicked the bars of the cell, the iron shrieking in protest.
“Instead I’m stuck babysitting this wench.”
She flinched, but said nothing.
Cairon watched her.
Not from the corridor. Not from the ceiling.
He sat where structure failed. At the edge of everything.
The Above.
From there universes unfolded beneath him like a page in a book.
He had watched the enforcers take her.
Watched her dead mother’s body hauled through the market like waste and lowered into the great garden beyond the market walls. Where cabbages and other vegetables grew fat and pale from what the soil had learned to swallow.
The girl stirred weakly against the chains.
Her head tilted slowly.
It took effort. You could see it in how her neck shook, in how her breath stuttered halfway up. Her eyes found the guards. They were big. Brown. Pretty. Once warm, once bright.
Now they were dull with exhaustion.
Her eyelids trembled, reluctantly, as if they had already decided to close for good and had to be forced back into the world.
She waited.
One the guards noticed first and barked in disgust.
“What are you looking at!?“
Her eyes fluttered, threatening to sink shut again. She dragged them open by will alone, fixed them back on them, holding the gaze with quiet stubbornness.
“What are you looking at!?”the guard barked again.
The other guard scoffed. “You deaf, wench?”
Nothing.
Her mouth wavered. Not from fear but from fatigue. Her chin dipped, then lifted again with effort. Even chained, even shaking, she chose to keep looking.
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The guards surged to their feet, fury spilling over. One unlocked the cell, the iron shrieking as the door swung open. They didn’t bother with words. Rods came down hard. Once, twice, again. Striking ribs, shoulders, legs. The chains rattled violently as her body jerked with each blow.
They left her gasping, head hanging lower than before and stomped back out of the cell.
Back outside, one collapsed onto his crate and lifted a dented mug, taking a long, greedy swallow of Blackwort-draught : thick, bitter, brewed from root and ash-leaf sap, the kind of drink that burned going down and left the mouth numb.
“Stupid whore. I shouldn’t be here,” he grumbled.
“I should be at Moist Tavern. Virgins dancing on me..”
Taverns served ale, wine and sometimes food. Long wooden tables, loud laughter and someone playing a lute badly in the corner.
The other guard didn’t respond right away.
He stared at the girl.
Slowly.
His mouth curled.
“Hey,” he nudged the first man with his elbow, chin tilting toward the cell. “We’ve got blackwort… and time.”
They stood.
Moved toward her.
Reached.
Their bodies came apart soundlessly.
No blood, no scream. Skin, muscle, bone all dissolving into pale strands of light. A faint arc of silver flashed once through the space, a scythe’s curve. The hem of a cloak woven from dark matter vanished into the space.
The girl lifted her head.
The cell was gone.
The chains were gone.
She was somewhere else.
She sat in a place with no distance. No sky. No ground. No air she could feel, yet she breathed.
She turned.
The man with the white hair sat beside her.
The man from the market.
The man who was furious when her mother pleaded for Death.
Why do mortals think I’m the solution to their problems…
Fine, I’ll answer her prayer…
“You killed my mama.” she said quietly.
Her voice shook, but she didn’t raise it.
“You said…fine. You said you’d answer her prayer.” Her throat tightened. “And then she died. After you left.”
Cairon didn’t turn his head.
“I thought you wanted her to die,” he replied, flat and emotionless.
Silence.
“That mortal never loved you,” he said calmly. “I don’t understand why you cried for her.”
The girl’s head lowered.
Her shoulders folded inward, small. Her fingers curled slowly into tight fists, nails biting her palms.
Then
The nothing beneath her shifted. The space she sat in loosened. She was lifted without hands, without force, drawn upward by something that wasn’t there.
The endless dark peeled open.
The world reassembled itself around her in fragments.
Market.
A girl wept in front of her.
Small. Thin. Wrapped in clothes too worn to be warm. Her arms were locked tight around a lifeless body.
The girl was her. Moments before the enforcers had taken her and locked her up.
Another figure stood in front of the weeping her.
Her mother.
Blurry. Semi-transparent. The edges of her form wavered.
“What…? No. Wait.”
Her mother’s voice cracked though the scene.
“Why is it me?!”
The girl clenched her hands in her lap.
“Useless garbage,” her mother snarled. “She couldn’t do anything right.”
The girl’s face tightened. No one could see her. Not her past self. Not her mother.
“Couldn’t even sell herself properly for food.”
Her jaw tightened. Her eyes glistened. But she didn’t cry.
The crying her below sobbed harder, unaware of the words being spoken above her head.
The world surged in again. Everything dissolved.
She was back in the endless place. She sat exactly as before. Legs folded beneath her. Hands resting limply in her lap.
Her fists shook harder.
Then her face crumpled.
Sound tore out of her chest. Tears spilled fast, her body folded in on itself, crying like someone who had been holding it back for years.
The quiet stretched after her crying faded.
Her shoulders sagged.
“...Am I dead?” she asked.
The words came out hoarse, scraped raw from crying too hard for too long.
“No.”
The answer was immediate. Flat. Certain.
She swallowed.
“...Are you a god?”
“No.”
A pause.
Her throat worked again.
“... What are you?”
“Death.”
Her hand flinched. Just once. A sharp twitch. Instinct screaming before thought could catch up. But she didn’t pull away. Didn’t scramble back. She stayed where she was, head lowered, hair falling forward like a curtain.
“Why were you begging to die?”
Her head lowered further. The nothing around them dimmed, as if responding to the memory pulling her inward.
The cell came back to her.
She remembered watching the guards faces twist.
She could feel it. The quiet sigh she’d let out when they finally snapped and stepped forward.
Relief, thin and shameful.
She remembered thinking…
Hit me harder..
Don’t stop..
Finish it..
Then she heard it.
A sharp, irritated click of his tongue.
She flinched and finally lifted her head.
His face was composed. Calm. Distant. Unreadable. In his eyes. Anger held perfectly still.
“Im sorry…” she whispered, already lowering her head again. Her voice trembled. “I didn’t…”
“Why did you want to die,” he interrupted quietly, “When you really didn’t want to die?”
His voice dipped, sharpened just enough. Her lips trembled. Tears spilled freely now, streaking down her cheeks, dripping off her chin.
“I thought…” she swallowed hard, fingers clutching at her clothes. “… I thought if they killed me… it would be easier.”
For a moment only his eyes moved. They slid toward her, then away again, back into the endless nothing stretching before them.
Silence.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, smaller this time.
Apologizing instinctively for disappointing something she didn’t fully understand.
For making Death angry. For not being strong enough.
The nothing around them remained vast and still.
And he did not answer her apology.
Silence stretched again.
She kept glancing at him. Quick little side eyes. Then looking away immediately.
Her fingers twisted together in her lap, untwisting, twisting again. She rubbed her thumb against her knuckle. Her mouth opened… closed… opened again.
“What,” he said flatly, not looking at her.
“...Thanks. For saving me. “
He didn’t respond.
She scooted an inch closer to him.
Then another.
A pause.
“Um…” she whispered. “…Death.”
He finally turned his head. His eyes landed on her. She immediately lost whatever courage she thought she had.
“No,” he said.
She blinked, confused.
“You will not stay here with me.”
She yelped softly, immediately curling inward, eyes dropping to the empty space below like she could hide in it.
“Your thoughts are loud,” he added, already turning away again.
Silence again.
“Why do you even want to stay here?” he asked after a moment.
A beat.
“Are you stupid.”
She snapped upright. “I’m not!”
Too loud.
Her face burned. She folded in on herself again, tracing invisible lines in the nothing with her finger.
“There’s… nothing waiting for me,” she muttered. “I’ll probably go back to begging. Then I’ll get captured again. And sold off or worse.”
She swallowed.
“But…” she lifted her head. Her brown eyes fixed on him now, earnest. “You saved me. You’re… nice. You helped my mama. She was sick for a long time and I could tell she was suffering. Thankyou.”
Her knuckles folded in on themselves, pressing into her thighs.
“I know you think she was bad,” she continued. “But she wasn’t. Not before.”
A pause.
“And you have not killed me yet.”
“Soo I thought I’d stay here. With you. I won’t be a bother, I swear. I can… I can …”
She looked around desperately, searching for a task, a purpose.
There was nothing.
“Mortals are not allowed here.”
She inhaled to argue.
“No,” he cut in immediately.
She deflated. Her shoulders drooped. Her face sank. It was the saddest, most defeated little expression.
Don’t worry,” he said. “You are not going back there.”
Her head snapped up.
She was now close. Too close. Floating directly in front of him. Her face inches from his, breath hitching.
Her eyes widened. She saw it. A faint smile.
Then the space broke.
She was thrown backward, space twisting and spiraling, the endless expanse folding in on itself.
She reached out instinctively, fingers stretching toward him.
“... !”
Her eyelids grew heavy mid motion. Her hand fell.
Darkness wrapped around her gently.
Many eons later.
Not in the same world. Not in the same universe.
In a small modern town wrapped in soft morning light, a newborn cried.
Pretty brown eyes blinked open, shimmered with tears.
A woman cradled the child close, rocking gently.
“It’s alright,” she murmured softly. “Don’t cry.”
She kissed the child’s hair.
“Mina.”
…PRESENT…
Cairon sat in front of the girl.
A chair dragged from her desk turned backward beneath him. Arms folded over the top rail. Chin resting lightly on his hands.
Watching. Waiting for Elos to appear and save her again.
The girl sat on her bed, shaking. Terrified.
His gaze remained calm.
Her face tilted just slightly as she tried not to look at him. Her lashes trembled.
Her eyes…
Brown.
Pretty.
Even clouded by fear, even dimmed by exhaustion.
For a fraction of a second, something ancient flickered in his gaze.
He remembered those eyes staring up at him.
Brown and stubborn.
The beggar girl.
Reborn.
He had not killed her. He had separated her soul and sent it beyond the veil. He had not chosen her next life. He had not chosen a time. He had released her into the current of fate and let the soul search for its own beginning.
“...Hm.”
He reached out and brushed two of fingers against her cheek, wiping away the dried line where tears had carved their silent path.
Her breathing softened instantly.
The tension in her shoulders drained. Her eyes fluttered, then closed.
Sleep claimed her.
He stood.
He pulled the blanket up around her, tucked it beneath her frame.
Then he stepped back.
The Chrono-Reaper, lingering at the edge of the room, bowed without a sound and vanished.
He vanished with it.
The girl slept on.
Singer Lain: Starbloom
A saint groomed for sacrifice awakens a sleeping god and summons a ruinous, slow-burn love. Divine music, forbidden Heat, and a world where faith has fangs.
BOOK ONE COMPLETE!
- dark romantasy ? slow burn
- a saint who won’t stay silent
- dragon gods, blood-magic, chosen-one fallout
- hearts vs. holy orders
- daily updates!
“A lush, sensual fantasy about power, purity, and the magic that blooms when a girl dares to sing her own song.”
Exiled to fetch the mythic Starbloom, Lain meets Mallow, a roguish herbalist with gentler hands than the clergy’s, and Morgan Balthir, a veinwright whose vows taste like chains. The Underserpent is waking. So is she.