22. Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ophelia
T he room hums with power, alive in a way that presses against my skin. Light ripples across the obsidian walls, not from torches or fire, but from floating, endless screens. They shimmer with motion—fragments of lives unfolding like ghost stories. A child’s first laugh. A mother’s scream. A betrayal whispered under breath. Thousands of moments suspended in time, flickering across the surface of the dark like candlelight on water.
Blue fire coils in the center, rising without smoke, bending toward me as I step forward in recognition.
And there, suspended like a question in the dark, is the Loom.
It isn’t made of anything I can name. Not string. Not metal. Not wood. It’s built of something closer to nerve and light—threaded with strands that shimmer in impossible colors. Some glint like starlight on oil. Others twitch, barely tethered. Some are frayed so finely they could disappear if I blinked.
I lower to my knees. Not out of reverence, but inevitability.
The air tastes electric. The space hums with something sharp, like a held breath at the edge of a scream. A stool waits in the corner, simple and shadowed, as if carved from memory itself. I take it. It fits, just like it’s been waiting for me to arrive.
I reach toward the threads. And they move.
Not all—just the ones that know me. A gold strand grazes my fingertips and flares, stuttering with a rhythm I know too well. Another twines with it, barely pulsing. Fading.
I don’t question. I don’t flinch. I don’t think. I begin. The threads twist around my hands, guiding me—not like a teacher, but like a partner. Like the loom isn’t just a tool, but a listener. A witness. A participant.
I find the thread that broke. The one that tore when he fell. And without apology, I start to weave.
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here, threads humming through my hands, but something inside me has shifted. I can feel again. I want to create again. I want to live.
I turn on the stool and look over to Julian. He's still there, arms crossed, and smiling wide at me.
But he's not alone. His parents and brothers are standing to his right. His aunt and uncle along with his cousins to his left. Right beside him is a woman I almost forgot.
Not in truth—but in detail. Time softened her edges. I held on to fragments and prayed they were real.
But now she’s here.
And I remember everything.
The way her curls fall in soft spirals, always scented with lavender and honey. The faint dimple in her cheek that only appears when she smiles—like a secret she never meant to share. Her eyes—blue, wide, and full of that look she only gave me, like I was the center of every story she ever wanted to tell.
“Mom?” I whisper, breath snagging in my throat.
She nods, and tears spill before her smile can reach me.
I run to her and throw myself into her arms. She still feels the same. Like lullabies and warm sweaters. Like the safest place I’ve ever known. She pulls me tighter, hands cradling the back of my head.
“My sweet girl,” she whispers, voice trembling. “I’ve missed you every day.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, burying my face against her shoulder. “I thought I’d forgotten you.”
“You didn’t.” She leans back just enough to look at me, brushing hair from my face. “You remembered the parts that mattered.”
I nod, unable to speak, afraid that if I try, I’ll fall apart all over again.
She presses her forehead to mine, her thumb catching one of my tears. “You’re here now,” she says softly. “That’s all that matters.”
I can't even put into words how good I feel. It’s like spring bursting through my chest— every flower blooming at once just to say, you made it.
"We need to talk about the Infernal Union," Selene says, practically vibrating with excitement.
"Really?" Julian groans. "Ophelia just came back to me and is reconnecting with her mother. Is this really the moment?"
I laugh, walking straight into his arms. He wraps me up without hesitation, his warmth sinking into me like sunlight through skin. I tip my head back, and he leans down—
But this kiss isn’t light.
It’s lingering. Deep. A promise pressed to my mouth like he’s afraid to let go again. Like the only way to prove I’m real is to kiss me until I forget we were ever apart.
When we finally pull away, my heart is pounding—and his smile tells me he felt it too.
"Yes! Julian, this is our first Infernal Union!" Selene practically squeals, clapping like a schoolgirl at a blood ritual. “Do you even know how rare it is to plan a wedding where the vows might summon an elder god?”
Julian groans. “We just got back together. Can we wait, I don’t know, five minutes before picking out hellflowers and soulbond fonts?”
“Son,” Liora cuts in, her tone as regal as ever. “We just want what's best for you. Both of you.” Her gaze sharpens. “And I will be reviewing your guest list.”
"Noted," I mutter.
My mother grins, floating just an inch above the floor. “I get to walk my daughter down the aisle! Sure, I’m dead, and it’ll probably be through a portal of fire, but hey—I’ll be there.”
“That’s horrifyingly sweet,” Julian mutters under his breath.
“Also, Selene,” my mom adds, tilting her head. “If there’s going to be fire, I refuse to wear polyester in the afterlife.”
“Please, you’ll both look fabulous in custom-stitched soul silk,” Selene chirps.
Julian leans in, voice dry. “Do I need to sign a separate deal to survive this ceremony?”
“No,” all three women say at once.
“…Terrifying,” he mutters.
"We have some unfinished business first," I speak up. I approach the seven vacant thrones—massive, carved from obsidian, bone, and time itself. Each one pulses faintly with the echo of dominion. I stop before them, pressing my palm to the floor as I lower myself to my knees.
Eyes closed, I summon them. I don’t speak aloud. I don’t have to. My thoughts are threadbare but resolute.
Come.
The room changes. The air bends. One by one, they arrive. First, the scent of ash and roses. Cold follows. Flame comes last.
None speak, but I feel the weight of their eyes. Of eternity watching me. I rise. My voice doesn’t tremble, though my bones ache with the pressure. “I have a request.”
A pause. Permission to continue.
“I want to return to the living.”
Gasps echo through the chamber. A sharp flicker of movement. Something hisses. They think I mean forever. That I want to forsake my station.
I raise my hand before they can protest. “Not to abandon my place. To fulfill a thread. I wove a fate for Cassius and Melanie that must be completed with my own hands. And I want to see the rest of my family—to let them know I survived. That I found my place. You said I could keep those I love close.”
My voice softens. “I want to show them I didn’t disappear.”
A voice—not one, but many—speaks. One will. Seven powers. “Weaver of the Loom. Guardian of the thread. We grant your passage.”
My breath stutters.
“You may return, with the mother who bore you and the soulmatch who bled for you.” Their eyes blaze, each a different color of judgment and balance. “But remember, child of fire—fate does not forgive twice. What you take with you, you must honor.”
I bow low, my heart thunderous in my chest. “I will.”
And I rise—Ophelia Duvain, threadbender, soulbound, keeper of the Loom—ready to return.
We don’t walk. We descend. From Loom to world, from thread to flesh. And when my feet touch the earth again, it’s different. I'm different.
“We start with Cassius and Melanie.” My voice is calm. The kind that comes when anger runs out and something colder takes its place.
Julian doesn’t ask why. He just reaches for my hand. We disappear in smoke.
We reappear on a sidewalk that smells like stale desperation and overcooked microwave dinners.
The house in front of us looks like karma personally slapped it. Peeling paint, crooked shutters, a mailbox hanging by one screw, like it gave up halfway through delivering the bills. The porch sags like it knows this whole situation is beneath it. The grass? Dead. As if even the weeds were like, “No thanks.”
Julian raises an eyebrow. “This the right place, or did we accidentally land in a cautionary tale?”
I shrug. “Both, probably.”
He smirks. “Lovely. Shall we knock?”
I don’t answer. I just walk straight up the steps, letting my power leak out in little pulses—just enough to short out the electricity and make every mirror crack from the inside.
Inside, I hear scrambling. Footsteps. Panic. Good.
Let the show begin.
The door doesn’t open.
It explodes .
Splinters rain down like confetti at a funeral. Smoke curls through the gaping threshold like a storm trying to remember its name.
We step through. Julian appears beside me in a ripple of shadow and heat, calm and coiled like a blade sheathed in velvet. I’m flame. He’s the match. Together? We’re arson with a vendetta.
Inside, the house is exactly what I expected—cheap furniture, fake florals, the smell of microwave dinners and unresolved trauma. And right there in the middle of it, frozen like deer in demonic headlights—
Cassius.
Melanie.
Cassius is halfway out of a fraying recliner, mouth parted in what might be a scream or a stroke. Melanie stands at the kitchen island, a wine glass in one hand and terror in the other.
“Miss me?” I ask, voice sugar-sweet and full of venom.
Melanie drops the glass. It shatters against the floor, wine blooming like fresh blood. Cassius doesn’t speak. Not yet.
Julian steps forward, slow and deliberate. “You really downgraded. The aesthetics are…” He glances around, lips twitching. “Unfortunate.”
“Wh—what is this?” Cassius chokes. “You’re supposed to be—she was supposed to be gone.”
“Funny thing about fate,” I murmur, stepping closer. “It doesn’t like being rewritten. So I did what you never could.”
Melanie’s voice is barely a whisper. “What did you do?”
I smile. The lights flicker above us, every bulb pulsing with unnatural rhythm.
“I rewrote the Loom.”
Cassius stumbles back like I slapped him. “That’s impossible.”
“No,” I say, eyes locking with his, “what’s impossible is thinking you could rip my life apart and not pay the price.”
Julian crosses his arms, gaze deadly. “Go on. Tell them. What’s their fate?”
I let the silence stretch, tasting their fear like dessert.
I don’t whisper it. I declare it. “Oblivion.”
Melanie gasps. Cassius swears under his breath.
“You don’t get fire,” I continue, voice rising. “You don’t get glory. You don’t even get remembered. Your threads are already unraveling, strand by strand. In every realm, every version of time—your names are fading. Your power? Gone. Your legacy? Forgotten.”
They try to speak. I raise my hand—and the shadows hush them like a blade at the throat. “I was mercy,” I hiss. “I was forgiveness. I was done . But you kept reaching. Kept hurting. Kept taking. So now?”
I turn to Julian, my voice dropping to a near whisper. “Now, I collect.”
From the floorboards, from the smoke, from the corners of every forgotten shadow — Calliope rises.
Not like a ghost. Like vengeance incarnate.
Her curls are a wild halo of flame, golden hair ignited at the ends, eyes glowing with eldritch green light — not human, not heavenly. Something older. Something crueler. She floats, barefoot and graceful, wrapped in smoke.
Even the air recoils.
Melanie chokes on her own breath. “You—no. No, you’re dead,” she whimpers, eyes wild as she stumbles backward into the counter.
Calliope smiles like a knife dragged across glass. “Death was a nap, darling. You, however…” she says, voice like honey dripped over a blade, “are an offense to memory.”
Cassius scrambles, arms raised like that could help. “What do you want?” he pants, his voice already breaking.
Julian doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. “She wants what was stolen,” he says, voice low and sharp. “And she came to collect.”
Calliope’s feet never touch the ground. She glides across the floor like a painting come to life — too vivid, too powerful. Her hands glow faintly as she raises one finger, and the moment it points to Cassius — his body locks.
Every tendon, every joint — frozen.
“You took my daughter. You erased her future. And you ran like a coward,” Calliope says softly, almost lovingly. “But no one outruns me.”
Cracks spiderweb under his feet, glowing orange and red.
The floor splits. Not with grace—with violence. Like Hell biting through its leash.
Flames shoot up, runes, burning words, written in the language of the damned. They sear into Cassius’s skin as the chains rise—black, barbed, and alive, wrapping around his wrists, ankles, ribs, throat.
He tries to scream. The chains cinch tighter.
“Your soul never belonged to you,” Ophelia says, stepping into the glow of the fire. “You bartered with blood that wasn’t yours. So now?”
She lifts her hand. He starts to burn. Not fast. Not mercy. Slow. Peeling. Ripping. Screaming.
His mouth opens wide, teeth cracking from the heat, skin blistering down to muscle, not one part of him dies clean. The chains jerk downward, dragging him inch by inch toward the maw in the floor. His fingernails rip from his hands as he claws at the edge.
Julian doesn’t flinch. I doesn’t blink.
Calliope tilts her head, watching him like one might observe a fly drowning in syrup.
The floor yawns wide—
And Cassius vanishes in a final, blood-curdling scream.
Gone.
Melanie doesn’t scream. She begs. “No—no no no—” she says, crawling backward, sobs choking her words. Her skin begins to gray. Veins collapse under her skin, turning her translucent. Her fingers scratch at her chest like she can hold her identity in place.
“What's happening to me?” she gasps, her mouth shaking, eyes wild and unseeing. “I—who—”
Calliope kneels beside her, speaking softly, as though she’s talking to a child. “You’ll be nothing. That’s your punishment. No fire. No eternity. Just absence.”
“Not one person will remember you,” Ophelia adds, stepping closer. “Not your family. Not your lovers. Not even yourself.”
Melanie screams — but it’s not even sound anymore. It’s static. A void bleeding out of her mouth.
Her hair fades next. Her eyes follow. Her name peels off her soul like paint stripped from rotting wood.
And with a final, shuddering breath—she turns to dust. Not ash. Not smoke. Just dust.
Calliope stands, brushing invisible dirt from her hands.
“That was for her,” she says, not even looking back at what’s left. There’s nothing to look at.
“So,” Julian murmurs, his hand tightening around mine, “are you ready to see the rest of your family, my love?”
“I hope they understand,” I whisper, eyes fixed on the place where Cassius and Melanie ceased to exist.
“They will,” my mom says gently, brushing a curl behind my ear. “You’re stronger than when you left. And they’ll see that.” She smirks — full of mischief and maternal menace.
“I do look forward to meeting Rosalind,” she adds. “Maybe I’ll bring a flaming pie.”
Julian chokes on a laugh, half-wincing. “Please don’t traumatize the humans who actually likes us.”
“They'll be fine,” I say, grinning despite myself. “They're tougher than they look.”
It doesn't take long to find them. I follow the pulse of memory and magic straight to the doorstep of the only home I’d still call safe. No warning. No knock. Just the crackle of heat and shadow curling into air as we land.
Bella’s car is here. So is Dominic’s. And knowing him, Rhys is somewhere nearby, probably pacing like the storm he always is.
I freeze for a moment—long enough for Julian to reach for my hand. His fingers thread through mine, warm and grounding.
He doesn’t say Are you ready? He already knows I’m not. And I love him for not asking.
“They helped me,” I murmur. “Even when I was breaking. And I disappeared. Again.”
“You were surviving,” he says softly.
I look at the front door. The laughter I hear through the walls. The life that kept moving while I tried to stop mine.
“Okay,” I breathe. “How do you want to play this?”
Julian’s mouth curves just a little. “This is your moment, not mine.” He raises a brow. “We could knock… or we could just walk in like the immortal power couple we are.”
I snort, half-nervous, half-relieved. “Subtlety is dead, huh?”
He leans in. “We are literally from Hell, my love.”
And with that, I step forward, twist the doorknob and open the door.
They are all on the couches in the living room. Dominic and Rhys have their backs to the door, but when they come in, the two guys pull Rosalind and Bella behind them. That is, until they realize it’s me.
"Ophelia!" Bella gasps. She’s across the room in a heartbeat, barreling into me like gravity doesn't exist. Her arms wrap tight around my shoulders, crushing, desperate.
“You’re okay,” she breathes into my neck, her voice thick with tears. I feel them—hot and real—soaking into my skin. “You really came back.”
I nod against her shoulder, letting myself sink into the hug for a second longer. “I missed you,” I whisper.
“Don’t ever do that again,” she says, pulling back just enough to cup my face. Her mascara’s smudged, her lip quivers. “Promise me.”
“I’ll try,” I manage, blinking fast.
“Holy shit,” Dominic mutters from the doorway. His voice is low, reverent, like he’s trying to convince himself this isn’t some cruel hallucination. “You look… like yourself again.”
I offer him a soft smile. “I feel like myself again.”
He walks forward slowly, gaze flicking to Julian before resting on me. “I didn’t think I’d get to see this day. I’m glad I was wrong.” His smile is small, but real. “And if this ends in wedding cake and chaos? Count me in.”
Behind him, Rosalind steps forward. Her hands hover near her heart, like she’s holding something fragile and afraid to let go.
“You look like your mother,” she says quietly.
I turn—my mom is already stepping into the light behind me, golden curls loose around her shoulders, eyes shimmering with memory and recognition.
Rosalind exhales sharply. “Calliope.”
“Rosalind.” There’s history in that name. And when they move toward each other, there’s no hesitation—only understanding. They embrace like old friends who lost too much, and finally got something back.
“Thank you,” Calliope whispers. “For loving her like she was your own.”
Rosalind swallows. “She is mine.” She turns to me, her voice softer. “But she was always yours first.”
“I don’t mean to cut in…” Julian starts, his voice quiet but pointed, “but I think you should tell them about Cassius, Lia.”
I nod, heart thudding like thunder against bone. “I’m sorry,” I say, voice steady even as my chest tightens, “but Cassius’ soul was taken. Melanie’s time too."
“Lia…” Julian murmurs, his gaze steady on mine, but there’s warning in his tone. He knows what’s coming.
“Who’s Melanie?” Rosalind asks, her head tilting slightly, eyes narrowing in quiet confusion.
My breath stutters. “What do you mean, who’s Melanie?” I say, staring at her like I can force the memory back into place.
“That’s what I'm trying to tell you,” Julian says, folding his arms as his voice drops. “They don’t remember her.”
I glance at Bella, searching her face for recognition. “Your sister.”
“You're my only sister,” Bella replies, shaking her head, her brow furrowing.
I shift to Dominic, hope flickering in my chest. “Your ex-wife.”
"I was never married, Lia. I haven't been with anyone since we broke up," he says, blinking slowly, a frown tugging at his mouth.
My pulse spikes. I turn to Rhys, desperate now. “You investigated her. With my father. The corruption case. We met at a coffee house to talk about it. ”
“I investigated a lot of corruption,” Rhys says, lifting his shoulders in a small shrug. “But… I don’t remember anyone named Melanie.”
He’s not lying. None of them are.
“She’s been erased,” Julian says quietly, his jaw tight. “Not just gone. Unwritten.”
“Who are you talking about, sweetheart?” Rosalind asks, her voice gentle, but wary.
“No one, I guess,” I say, forcing a tight smile. “Doesn’t matter now.”
My mom clears her throat. “Well,” she says brightly, like she’s throwing open a window, “this took a turn. How about something more celebratory?”
Julian tilts his head. “Such as?”
“The Infernal Union,” she says, already grinning. “There’s a ceremony to plan. Fire. Magic. Matching cloaks if I get my way.”
Bella leans forward. “Wait—Infernal what?”
“We’re getting married,” I say, resting my hand on Julian’s chest. “And I want you all there.”
Julian meets their eyes, voice low but certain. “You’re our family. You belong.”
My mom nods, proud and radiant. “And I get to walk my daughter down the aisle. I might be dead, but I’ve still got style.”
Rhys exhales, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well... guess we’re going to Hell.”
Julian chuckles, low and real. “You’ll fit right in.”
They all laugh—uneasy, but genuine. The kind of laugh that feels like release.
I step back slightly, letting the moment settle, watching the people I once thought I’d lost forever. Bella is clinging to my arm again, asking about wardrobe requirements. Rhys is already trying to convince Dominic to wear something other than black. And in the corner, my mom and Rosalind are talking like old friends who were always meant to meet—two halves of the same strange fate finally aligned.
Julian moves beside me, brushing his knuckles against mine. I don’t have to look at him to feel the calm he carries now—not the sharp-edged power he used to wear, but something steadier. Something real.
“This is what you fought for,” he says softly. “Not vengeance. Not the Loom. This.”
And he’s right. I look around at the people I love—Bella’s laughter filling the room, Rosalind’s hand resting over my mother’s, Dominic pretending he’s not tearing up, Rhys shaking his head like he’s not half the chaos himself.
This.
This is what I never thought I’d get back.
And now?
It’s mine.
I take a breath. Not shaky. Not afraid.
“Let’s go home,” I whisper—meant for all of them, but mostly for the girl I used to be.
The one who finally made it.