Greek myths speak of three sisters governing destiny: one spinning life's thread, another weaving its joys and sorrows, the eldest holding shears to end it.

To mortals, crafting life and fate remains the gods' arcane privilege—but Spindle, a Transcendent of the seventh sephirah, defied this law. For a fleeting moment, he stole Death’s shears and snipped a soul’s thread forever.

Starlight kindled in Spindle’s eyes—Olympian wisdom blazing through his frail frame. Unseen energies pulsed into his veins, whipping gales that smashed tower windows and hurled papers into chaos.

At the storm’s core, his voice dropped to a world-silencing whisper. It became a hurricane screeching cosmic truths only madness comprehends. The words crossed miles, muted London’s waking rumble, and drilled into a Doomsday Clock agent awaiting his train—a man clutching a ticket, unaware of his erased future.

The language was alien, yet its malice penetrated his marrow. Light drained from the world. An abyssal ocean swallowed him—no sound, no foothold, only infinite dark.

Something lurked in that void: colossal, ravenous, the shadow of desire itself. He struggled—but physics had fled. Trapped in vacuum, he hung like a fly in amber.

A scream died in his throat. Now came the whispers—sibilant, derisive—shredding reason, exposing his mind’s flimsy walls.

Sanity crumbled. Gibberish phrases boiled behind his eyes. Grinning vacantly, he shut his eyes and embraced oblivion.

The train screeched in. The platform stood empty, a ghostly smudge where the man had been. Crowds brushed past, blind to the vanishing, their memories already crumbling.

Severed from fate’s weave, he became a phantom: unseen, unheard, intangible. Even sunlight forgot him. His borrowed time would expire with the last fading memory.

Spindle slumped on his divan, wheezing. Bulbous tumors pressed his atrophied muscles—his body’s price for godlike power.

"Point me to him. I’ll cut his throat. This ritual’s too costly," growled Ulysses.

"...But certain," Spindle rasped. "Never...miss."

He couldn’t explain the dread coiling his gut—that any meeting between Ulysses and Doomsday Clock would unravel catastrophe. Fate’s threads whispered warnings; he, a weaver of destinies, obeyed intuition.

Yet voicing this fear might manifest it.

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"You saved Arthur and me...Let me repay that debt."

"Ancient history. Burn it."

"Never." Spindle’s breath hitched. "My brother...shoulders my power’s poison. Each surge of the Tide—each spell I cast—I feel his soul scream. Still, I reach for more...Useless brother. Guard him, Ulysses. His mind fractures as my flesh rots. But mending minds...harder than stitching wounds."

Ulysses stared through time itself. Finally: "Done. Even unsaid."

......

The dream-house lay storm-wrecked—splintered wood, ceramic shards, tables upended. Yet slowly, debris levitated, rejoining broken vases; chairs righted themselves...

All but the blood trail: thick, serpentine, leading from stairs to the scullery’s cracked door.

Beyond it: thuds of cleavers, steel scraping bone. A woman’s giggle recited recipes: "...descale...dice...hehe..."

Deep dreams leave no scars on waking minds.

Yvette awoke clutching two visions. In one, salt wind stung her face—she strode a battle-wrecked pirate ship as the fishman, hauling a prisoner toward blood-drunk crewmates. Curved blades mirrored a younger face—still human, scales barely smattering his skin.

Wild cheers erupted as dream-Yvette shaved the captive’s scalp bare, exposing tattoos: barbaric rites and glyphs circling a mermaid-god idol—the same pearl effigy she’d pried from that cultist’s slime.

Post-skinning, the fishman butchered his foe, flaunting the dripping scalp like a trophy. Now awake, Yvette grasped the truth: this gruesome canvas held the idol’s ritual secrets. She burned the images into memory, the glyphs still foggy.

Scrabbling for paper, she scrawled the symbols before dawn stole them.

Both fishman and victim were pirates. Both served the same deep god. War between? The idol’s centrality hinted why—its power worth slaughter, worth the fishman’s London hunt.

Pirates settled scores with rivals in rivers of blood, yet even their brutality paled against Yvette’s second nightmare.

The Tree of Life’s Ten Sephirot glowed like constellations, linked by twenty-two Pathways. Each unlocked Sephirah burned brighter, but its secrets risked madness—as Yvette discovered.

In abyssal blackness, ghostly jellyfish illuminated a nightmarish chase. A gargantuan mermaid-fish hybrid—part slug, part ancient oak—fled upward. Fleshy tendrils lashed beneath its disturbingly human face: a Renaissance beauty twisted in primal terror. What hunted this leviathan?

The answer came with earthquakes.

Something older awoke—a cancerous mass oozing tumors into tentacles. Jellyfish scattered. The monster’s claws snatched its prey effortlessly. As light died, Yvette heard wet crunching.

She awoke gasping. Shoving the horror aside, she sketched the tattooed scalp from her first vision instead.

...

“Explain this midnight intrusion.” Queen Margaret IV frowned over her ivory fan. Her Transcendent agent Leanna bowed deeper.

“Your Navy intercepted a traitor fleeing overseas. Regrettably, we impersonated an admiral to commandeer a ship. Supernatural complications occurred. The crew requires... official silencing.”

“You stole my warship?” The queen’s voice sharpened.

“An agent... altered his appearance, Your Majesty.”

Margaret skimmed the report, then froze. “The thief took ironclad battleship plans?”

Leanna blanched. “A clumsy cover story—”

“Those plans exist.” The queen’s whisper cut like steel. “Known only to two men. How did your spy learn this?”

A sleepy servant fetched Yvette. Her answer arrived swiftly: Shipping notices. Factory deals. Engineer hires. Commercial newspapers’ dry reports, stitched into military truth.

Margaret memorized “Yves de Fische” inside her fan—a royal honor. Without realizing, the girl had earned the Crown’s eye... and future courtiers’ bitter envy.