Chapter 11 Unwoven
Unwoven
Callista
For more years than I could remember, truth had been my greatest enemy. I’d hidden my curse, my brokenness, behind clever deceptions, pretending to be normal.
It was almost ironic that at the very moment I no longer needed to hide, another truth had come to haunt me.
“It was you,” I croaked out, tasting bile on my tongue. “You’re the ones who caused the massacre. With your screech.”
Enyo didn’t answer. She was still kneeling beside Phonos, energy flowing from her fingertips. I couldn’t blame her for prioritizing her son, but dear gods, I needed some answers, too.
“Enyo… Tell me the truth. You were there, in Agrion. Weren’t you?”
My pleading tone finally drew a response out of her. “Yes. We were.”
When she didn’t elaborate, I forced myself to insist. These were the worst possible circumstances for a confrontation, but I couldn’t just let this go.
“My neighbors...” I started, then stopped. What was I trying to say? That they hadn’t deserved to die? But they’d been preparing to kill me for something I couldn’t control.
“Were about to execute you,” Enyo finished in my stead. Her voice sounded blank, almost distant, as if she wasn’t talking to me at all. “We gave them better targets.”
Her hands, the same ones that had combed my hair just this morning, were covered in blood and shaking.
I didn’t think I’d ever been more confused in my life.
“But why, Enyo? Why go so far? You didn’t even know me.
” Back then, they couldn’t have realized I was death-touched.
And if they had, they could have just asked me to come with them, without killing everyone.
“It wasn’t about you, Callista,” Enyo corrected me, as if explaining something obvious. “We went after a village that had offended Thanatos. We gave them all the blessing of death. Your survival was... fortunate.”
Fortunate. That was one way of putting it. I’d have been more inclined to say it made absolutely no sense.
“Then why wasn’t I affected by your screech?” I asked. “Everyone else went mad with rage, but I stayed clear-headed.” Even Theron had been affected, in the Kratos Circle duel, but not me.
Phonos stirred weakly, his glazed eyes zeroing on me the same way they always did. “Because you’re my match,” he wheezed. “Death screeches can’t touch true mates.”
Even broken and bleeding, he still believed we were destined for each other. The certainty in his damaged voice made my heart clench.
“Callista,” he continued, “I... I’m sorry… About your village. But they are happier now.”
He had no way of knowing that, no way of promising something he could barely understand. And I had no way of knowing what he truly thought, what his reasoning really had been.
A scream bubbled in my throat, frustrated and angry.
It should have been a relief that they hadn’t destroyed Agrion just for my sake, but it wasn’t.
I’d trusted Phonos so much, trusted them all, at a time when my own mind had betrayed me.
Their presence had done little to ease the pain of Theron’s absence, but it had still meant a lot.
And now, it had all turned out to be a lie.
Yes, that was what I wanted to say. Liar. Murderer. But the words… Just didn’t come.
For the first time since I’d started talking to Enyo, I realized something was terribly wrong. Enyo’s efforts weren’t helping Phonos get better at all. Unlike in the barge, his wounds simply refused to close.
They needed a proper healer. We had to get Iaso here at once. But Iaso was nowhere near the Spire, and even by barge, it would take forever to bring her here.
Enyo could have gone, but for whatever reason, she hadn’t. She lingered at Phonos’s side, still trying to help him, even if it obviously wasn’t working.
“Mother,” Phonos said, and tried to take Enyo’s hand. His fingers passed straight through it, like a wisp of cloud.
Horror crept up my spine, and I scanned the room, searching for the other wounded Keres.
That was when I saw it, the terrifying result of Theron’s attack.
Alecto’s edges were blurring, her form becoming translucent.
Megaera slumped against the wall, her aged face shifting as if she couldn’t remember what she was supposed to look like.
I grabbed Theron’s arm, burying my fingers in his fur. Enyo’s desperate warning flashed through my head. He doesn’t bring ending. He brings absolute void!
The Keres weren’t just injured. They were disappearing.
Enyo’s shoulders shook, and I realized she’d seen this coming. “Stay with me, Phonos,” she whispered. “Please, stay with me.”
To her right, Alecto let out a small noise. Enyo shot a glance toward her and her face went white when she saw what was happening. “No. Not you, too.”
I felt numb. The world was blurring around the edges as I tried to process what was happening. “T-Theron,” I stammered, “what do we do? We have to help them.”
Theron looked as lost as I was. And why wouldn't he be? Whatever had transformed him into that creature, he clearly hadn’t been prepared for it, or for the consequences.
“Not my children,” Enyo continued to sob, crawling between them, having seemingly forgotten all about us.
The air in the chamber suddenly thickened, and the spire trembled under the weight of an unseen power. “You can’t help them, bride of Agrion. The House of Keres is being consumed by time itself.”
The words came from everywhere and nowhere. Three familiar figures materialized in the ruined chamber. The Moirae. The maiden Clotho, the matron Lachesis, and the crone Atropos, all standing side by side, just like they had the day of the duel.
“Past, present, and future,” they intoned. “Memory, destruction, and age. There’s nothing you can do to fight it.”
The impossibility of the situation hit me harder than ever before. The Moirae were right. Each head had affected the Keres children differently. Theron’s other form had controlled time. What could we hope to fix about this?
But Enyo wasn’t willing to give up. She prostrated herself at the Moirae’s feet, begging. “Revered Moirae, please. Don’t let them fade away like this.”
I held my breath, waiting for the Moirae’s answer. Enyo had said the Moirae couldn’t undo whatever Theron had done, but it couldn’t be that hopeless. Not if they were here.
“There is a way,” Atropos said quietly, confirming my guess. “The question is whether you have earned the right.”
Understanding dawned in Enyo’s eyes. Her entire body shook as she pressed her forehead against the crumbling floor. My stomach lurched. Whatever she was about to ask for, I already knew it wouldn’t be good.
I was more right than I could have dreamed. “I beg for the honor of unweaving,” Enyo said. “Let my existence save theirs.”
Unweaving? Wait… What was she talking about?
A memory flashed through my head, my first conversation with Iaso snapping through me like a vicious whip. Both she and Enyo had spoken of being woven by the Moirae. By that logic, being unwoven must mean… Enyo was talking about her own death.
The three sisters exchanged glances, considering the request. I willed them to refuse, to offer a better option. They didn’t. “You have served Asphodelia faithfully for centuries,” Lachesis finally decided. “The honor may be granted.”
“The unweaving is final,” Atropos warned her. Her scissors glinted against her waist, far more threatening than Elena’s had ever been. “There will be no return. Your essence will become pure energy, nothing more.”
“I understand.” Enyo’s voice was steady, filled with purpose. “Your gift humbles me, Revered Moirae.”
Tears filled my eyes, and I couldn’t help but protest. “Enyo, no. There has to be another way.”
Enyo turned to look at her children one final time. The woman who’d welcomed me into her family, who’d made me feel like I belonged somewhere, was about to die to save the people I’d grown to care about.
Then, she looked at me. “Callista, do not weep. I know you don’t understand, not yet... But this is truly a blessing.”
I didn’t know if I believed that, but I forced myself to say nothing more. Enyo had made her choice, and I needed to respect it. I could only take refuge in Theron’s presence and pray this worked.
The Moirae joined hands around Enyo. A spindle floated above Clotho, a measuring rod over Lachesis, a pair of scissors over Atropos. Their ancient power clustered together, pressing on my skin. And then, it reached for Enyo.
The Keres matriarch didn’t die like a human would have. Instead, she came apart at the seams. Threads became visible along her outline, almost as if she was a pattern in a loom, not a person. The threads began to separate, peeling away from her body in delicate strands.
“I can see them,” she whispered, the Moirae’s power making her eyes glow from within. “Everyone in our weave-line. Everyone I’ve ever loved.”
I pressed my face against Theron’s chest, shaking.
I didn’t want to watch, but I couldn’t turn away, either.
Enyo’s magnificent wings were already fraying, individual feathers dissolving into strands of silver-blue.
The process looked methodical, almost surgical.
Not violent destruction but careful undoing, each thread returning to its original state.
As Enyo’s flesh came apart, the light she emanated streamed toward her children. Where the energy touched Phonos, his body stopped fading away. Alecto’s blurred edges sharpened back into focus, and Megaera’s aged features returned to their proper state. They were going to live.
“Thank you,” Enyo said to her children as her face began to disappear. “For being mine to love.”
I didn’t hear the words being spoken. Her vocal cords, the same ones that had cursed Agrion, must have already vanished. But I felt her goodbye, anyway, as if she was reaching out to me too.
“Always, Mother,” Phonos replied, no longer sounding as weak as before.
Enyo smiled and closed her eyes. There was a bright flash, and just like that, the last of her existence dissolved into pure death energy. When it was over, only a single black feather remained where she had knelt.
I stared at the feather, my throat tight with conflicted emotions. No matter what Enyo had done or believed, the kindness she’d shown me felt real. No matter what secrets the Keres had kept, they’d cared for me. And now, Enyo was gone. Forever.
The Moirae began to fade from the chamber. “When you are ready,” Lachesis said to us, “complete what was begun between you. Your threads have found their proper pattern.”
And then they vanished, leaving us in the ruins with three healing Keres and the memory of a mother’s sacrifice.
Phonos picked up the feather, his hand steady despite everything he’d endured. He looked at me with eyes that held no blame, only weary acceptance. “This wasn’t what any of us wanted, but... I think she would have wished for you to have this.”
When he offered me the feather, I couldn’t bring myself to refuse it. Everything still felt so wrong, so complicated. He didn’t seem to be mourning Enyo the way I’d expected. But I believed him when he said she’d wanted something different for all of us.
Cradling the feather against my chest, I leaned against Theron. His arms offered the only stability in a world that had shown me too much, too fast.
“We should go,” he said gently. “Let them heal.”
I nodded, and he picked me up and carried me through the shattered window. Neither of us spoke. We both knew that we needed time to grasp what we’d witnessed, what we’d lost, what we’d gained.
Below us, Asphodelia kept glowing with gentle light. My new home, where people were woven from the deaths of others, where mothers could unmake themselves to save their children, where the massacre of my village wasn’t considered murder.
I was learning to live in this world. Today, I’d learned that understanding it might take much longer.