A figure stepped out of a portal, her bare feet silent against the warm wooden surface of the eternally pristine patio. Beyond, the crystal-clear pond rippled, reacting to the fluctuation of her magic, and the lights it had been reflecting danced all around her.

Aisa looked around the painfully familiar space and closed her remaining eye. She inhaled the scented fresh air for a moment, then she stepped down the stairs toward the pond. The scent–reminiscent of night jasmine–was from a flower she had requested from Dionysus and Persephone themselves. She had only been able to get them in a room together to create the magical plant when her sisters had called in their favors as well.

That was half a millennium ago.

They were now all dead.

She shook her head. The scent was already affecting her. And she wasn’t about to waste the potential accumulated by the conspicuous white and glowing flowers.

Her eyes darted to what rested at the center of the islet, surrounded by the flowers. A three-bust memorial adorned its center, resting atop a marble socle. The central figure showcased a glowing, fist-sized gemstone of royal-red, patterned with white striations, while the left Heirgem appeared to be made of crystalized shadow speckled with diamonds, shining like the dark night's sky.

The last bust was empty.

Aisa wondered what her own Heirgem would look like, once it took its place with her sisters’.

How long it would take for the vultures to come in and loot the place?

She looked around at the space she had created with her siblings so long ago. And even though she had things to do and matters to tend to, she couldn’t shake off the ghostly hand of grief as it tightened around her throat.

She wiped the dampness from her eye and looked around.

Patterns in stars phased in and out of the night sky, while Dreamsong crickets and the nearby river filled the night with a discordant and quiet cacophony of whispers and warnings and if one were to look deeply into the reflection of the pond, they would see images, fading in and out, morphing and changing. A jumble of past moments, of current events, and of future possibilities.

This was home–or had been. When she and her sisters used to hold watch and observe the flow of Fate. Safeguarding it. And guiding it.

The workings she created along with her sisters warped this space. Any mortal who stepped in this domain would see their mind shredded, like a cat’s clawed swipe through spiderwebs. They would cease to be.

But the potent environment couldn’t do that to her. And certainly not to the presence she now felt brush against her aura.

“I need space, Rostum.”

The presence retracted, and Aisa went back to the task at hand. She exhaled slowly, stretching her neck as she did. Glancing at the cards that floated in her vision, she dismissed them. She wouldn’t be needing any of them for what she was about to do.

Aisa had felt the quiver in the threads of Fate for the last few days. At first, she assumed it was something minor. A new demi-god rising. Or something happening in the Beyond or any of the other Great Realms. But the strings of Fate kept twitching, and even though she could not find the source, the disturbance kept brushing against the back of her mind. No wines or draught had helped.

So she had to come see.

Aisa sat near the heart of this space, right in front of the pond, facing the flowers. On the left seat of an unassuming wooden bench.

The other two spots stayed empty.

She tried to not dwell on that and instead she channeled the Glyphs of Sight and Fate, weaving their mana with practiced ease in and around her eyes. The absence of one of them didn’t matter for this.

With her sight ready, she sent a tendril of pure mana and triggered the enchantment of the seat. The engravings of the wooden bench flared to life, and they pulled on the essence accumulated by the flowers. Concentrating it. Focusing it. Then Aisa joined her Intent to the spell forming and connected it to the enhancement she had weaved around her eyes.

The currents of Fate slammed into her mind like a banshee’s wail.

The burden was meant to be handled by three sisters, not by just one. The foreign mana raged into her body and mind, making her twitch and groan. At some point, she tasted iron, but thankfully she would be the only one affected. The environment itself as well as the seat were built to handle the magic she was now channeling.

She tightened her grip on the spell, and through her own Authority over the Glyph of Fate, she fought back and pulled herself up. She needed to ride the wave, not be battered by it.

A few moments later–which could have easily been seconds or hours–Aisa finally stabilized her control over the spell.

In her mind’s eye, she saw herself. Or, more accurately, her own representation in Fate. To herself, her string seemed…frayed. It felt frayed, even though she knew she was still a goddess, and her string was neigh-unbreakable. She anchored her vision to her string, then propelled herself forward up the river of Fate.

Future encounters. Events she may or may not witness. Some trivial, and some world changing. Deaths, births, second chances flew past her. But… as she went further and further up the river, and as the future grew too uncertain, where the images became fuzzy and less frequent, she found the spot. A couple of decades ahead. Maybe three. Maybe five.

Aisa reached the moment in time she and her sisters had found all those centuries ago. The one the Calamities had used against them.

A chasm stretched in front of her sight. A sinkhole that swallowed the river of Fate soundlessly. A gash in reality with edges that kept twitching forward and backward. Sometimes moving up or down in time, but always present. Always inevitable.

The Chasm.

Aisa’s heart hammered in her chest, and a bead of cold sweat made her shiver as she reeled her sight back from the edge. She always got the uncanny feeling that something was peering back at her.

She couldn’t deny it out of hand. But she couldn’t prove it either. And that wasn’t what she was here for.

Aisa began her search. Some wrongly assumed that destinies and prophecies were unchangeable. Inexorable. A common thought among mortals.

But that was not the case. Her late sister, Clotho–her heart ached–used to create new opportunities out of the past. New options and routes out of every fate and prophecy. New threads.

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And Lachesis, the Seamstress, would patch these threads into existence. Nudge the grief-stricken boy’s pickaxe toward a forgotten relic, creating a chance where they might pick it up and bring justice to the tyrant that had his family murdered. Make the soldier take a right turn when he would have taken a left and have him witness something that would change him forever–for better or worse.

Then Aisa would look ahead and see how the tapestry of Fate adapted to these new alterations.

The three of them had thwarted untold catastrophes before they could even gain traction.

Aisa was the last one left. The one who sees. Who used to see. And now she was half-blind, stumbling her way through the weave of Fate, trying to figure out a path away from the chasm.

A flicker at the edge of her sight. There.

She latched on to the string of Fate. Another being that was probably not even born yet and whose string she might never find again. Or it could be an object. Or an institution. But now was not the time to figure out its nature or origin. Not when she might lose it at any moment.

She began following the thread back, trying to find where it began. The closer to the present it was, the more she needed to figure out its origin.

Because that would mean, whatever it was, it had a direct link to the cataclysm that had been taunting her for centuries.

She always felt like a spider when she did this. She was standing in the center of the web, the end of everything. But then a ripple–a vibration would reach her leg. From a vague direction. Then she would drag herself toward it.

She wondered if this was what caused the jitteriness of Fate lately. She thought about it for a moment as the possibilities flew around her. Unlikely.

The odds of her finding the cause on the first try were so remote it wasn’t even worth considering.

The thread will probably disappear at any moment. Cut-off because one event or another changed, affecting everything that came after it. The series of events would crumble down like a house of cards with its foundation taken out.

She had seen it happen too often.

Though… time kept going by, and the thread was still firmly grasped by the spell.

Her frown grew deeper. Her heart beat loudly in her ear.

Her soul ached from the strain. But she ignored it.

She had only traced such a thread six times–seven, counting this one–since they first discovered the Chasm. The third time had led to the largest massacre of gods in recorded history.

It’s still not breaking.

She was getting close to the source of the fluctuation. Her Glyph of Fate told her that this wasn’t a far off future. This was close.

Her nails dug into her palm.

Aisa called more on the Glyph of Sight as she studied the string. Fate resisted the intrusion, but her Authority slowly chipped at it, and images and impressions flickered into her sight. The thread wasn’t about a specific person, but about a series of events. There were multiple people connected to this thread. Factions even.

What is this?

She was near the start of the thread, and her mind reeled. Was this the cause of the fluctuation in Fate? Why hasn’t she seen this before?

The start of the events were a bit foggy, but she could make out at least two locations. Almost all factions of the Theos were involved and she could even see–alarmingly–some threads that led elsewhere. But three–no, four spots stood out.

Phalens. Tinecea. Jehuty. Skeggen

More cities popped into her mind, but the first four were real-er. Which meant that the series of events will most certainly begin in those cities.

They might deviate immediately after. They might never connect again to the chasm of Fate in the future, but this… this was important.

Why these cities? Think. Remember–

Then her mind froze. The Trials.

The chain of possibilities was coming from the Trials. She couldn’t see individual events or even the individuals that were in the Trials. They were still too… insignificant. Their strings too thin to discern from everything else.

These Trials had a connection to the Chasm.

Now that she knew it had to do with the Trials, she tried looking forward in time. She searched for any more details she could find, up and down the river. Aisa scoured the flow of Fate for hours until the enchantments of the chair died down.

The spell unraveled, and she was back.

She sat still for a moment before she leaned forward and retched.

Her vision swam. Her mouth was dry, and pain throbbed in her eye and through her brain.

She groaned as she leaned backward. A wave of her hand brought back her cards, and when she saw them, she used one of them.

The painkiller draught popped in the air in front of her, and she uncorked it, then downed the whole thing. As soon as the liquid touched her tongue, she felt the magic flare and spread into her body.

The pain receded, but it didn’t fully disappear. Just enough for her to close her eyes and assess the damage.

She winced. It might take a few months to heal, but she’ll be fine.

When the world stopped spinning, she opened her eye. She turned, ready to relay her findings to her sisters out of habit–

–then she remembered. And she noticed how quiet the space had become.

Aisa sighed. This was why she didn’t like being here. As much as she loved this place, she couldn’t be here for long. The presence of her late sisters was too heavy. And sometimes, she would just forget that they were gone.

She hung her head. As much as she loathed getting in touch with any other gods, she had to tell them. This was too important to keep to herself, even if she might be wrong. Even if she was being lured into another trap.

She flared her aura. A second later, she heard the metallic steps as they landed a dozen feet to her left.

“Rustom.”

“Lady Aisa.” He eyed her for a moment. “Do you require any assistance?”

She shook her head. “I’ll be fine.” She glanced up at the masked figure. It wore the usual blue and gold trimmed robes, and it was a smaller form than the usual Agents one could find elsewhere, being a custodian-model. But she knew this one wasn’t a regular custodian Agent. She could see the obscene reserves of mana it had under the fiendishly complex enchantments that made this vessel, hidden under its robes and exoskeleton.

All at the disposal of the intelligence animating this machine.

She suppressed a shiver and pushed down on her paranoia. Maybe her siblings had trusted this thing because they couldn’t really see it for what it was. Maybe she was being paranoid. But who could blame her?

The Automaton was beyond even herself.

She shook her head. The spell must have done some real damage if fear could influence her thoughts this much.

Her sisters trusted the Automaton, and that should be enough for her. Clotho and Lachesis had better judgment than she ever would.

She looked up to the Agent. “I see they refused your request again.”

The Agent paused, and the metallic-blue light coming from the mask’s eye slits softened. It chuckled. “The vote is due in a couple of hours, but I’m not expecting them to agree.”

The laugh sounded really human. Too human. She found it disturbing, but she didn’t show any of it. “It’s not as if you needed their permission to act.”

Rustom nodded. “They don’t have your sight, mistress. And of course, whenever any of them notices something, they extract concessions. At this point, I don’t believe that any of the Council members are unaware. They’re just waiting for the right opportunity to make their request.”

She shook her head, then sighed. “The Trials. It’s connected. To the Chasm.”

The Automaton froze. The eyes flared, and Aisa saw an almost imperceptible signal leave. Probably to pass on the information to the rest of the Agents.

She always suspected that the Agents isolated in Inner Realms couldn’t communicate with the main body, but she never got confirmation.

And Rustom never wanted to answer.

It bowed. “Thank you, mistress. I will do my utmost to empower this new crop of Champions. And watch them closely.”

She nodded and closed her eye again. She will need to meditate for a while to fix the damage caused by her vision of the future.

The Agent floated away–to tend to her Inner Realm as was his wont to do–and Aisa opened her eye for a moment. The busts stood regally ahead of her, and she decided to go somewhere else for her meditation.

Someplace where the memory of blindingly leading her sisters to their death wouldn’t be twisting the knife of guilt in her chest.

Where the cackle of that thing wouldn’t be ringing in her ears.