Chapter 16: Loomfall – When the Threads Refuse to Behave
In the space beyond time, where no god dared tread without permission, the Loom of Fate shuddered.
And Clotho screamed.
"NOT AGAIN!"
The youngest of the Moirai flailed as a string—a bright, molten-red thread—snapped free from her spinning distaff and shot across the room, wrapping itself around the astral representation of a different thread, this one braided in gold and silver, coiled like a snake.
Lachesis stumbled backward, tangling herself in three different timelines, her measuring staff clattering to the marble floor with an undignified clunk. "I just cleaned that one! That's Prince Liu's destiny! He's not even Greek!"
"It's crossing pantheons again!" Clotho shouted, already trying to reel the thread back. It flickered like lightning and sparked where it touched her fingers.
Atropos—the oldest, calmest, and sharpest of the three—stood silently at the far end of the room, her scissors trembling in her hand. Her eyes, clouded and ancient, focused solely on one thread.
One thread that burned with divine potential.
One thread that refused to obey.
"Lionel," she whispered.
"YES, LIONEL!" Clotho snapped, slamming the burning red thread against the loom like she was trying to punish it. "Every day it's something new! Yesterday his fate looped back into itself! I SPUN THAT. I REMEMBER SPINNING THAT. THAT IS ILLEGAL!"
Lachesis was pacing now, adjusting glasses that didn't actually exist in the material world. "He was supposed to be background noise. He wasn't even born with a marked destiny! He was a blank placeholder! Ares wasn't even watching him!"
Atropos still said nothing.
But her scissors had lowered.
She wasn't cutting his thread.
She couldn't.
It wouldn't let her.
Clotho gave up trying to detangle the mess and slumped against the Loom. "I'm not paid enough for this."
"You're literally beyond payment," Lachesis said.
"EXACTLY."
There was a long silence.
And then Clotho, with all the rage of a burned-out bureaucrat, shouted to the ceiling: "SOMEONE IS TAMPERING WITH FATE!"
The loom hummed again. Sparks danced across its frame. The red thread—the Lionel-thread—shivered like it had just heard its name called in a school roll call and was deeply disappointed to exist.
Lachesis waved a hand and summoned a timeline scroll. It unrolled in front of them like a waterfall of images and sound. "Okay. Let's go over this again."
The scroll flickered with memory. A demigod child, unknown, born of Ares and a mortal. Twin to Clarisse. Unmarked, no prophecy, no dreams, no omens. His string had been unassuming. A straight line. No knots. No frays. Just a normal, slightly unhinged child of war.
Until the incident.
Clotho winced. "The Kratos game."
The scroll stopped on an image. A PlayStation 2. A controller. A boy staring at the screen, eyes wide, watching the God of War lay waste to Olympus in pixels.
"He saw that," Lachesis said, "and believed it was possible."
"And now he's trying to become that," Clotho muttered.
The thread jerked again. Somewhere on the material plane, Lionel was probably doing crunches while screaming "BOY!" to himself.
Atropos finally spoke. Her voice was low, old as the concept of endings itself. "His desire is... pure."
Lachesis scoffed. "His desire is stupid."
"But real," Atropos countered. "He seeks strength without prophecy. Honor without guidance. Purpose without permission."
"That's poetic, but he broke the Norse threads last week." Clotho said frustratedly.
"We need help," Lachesis muttered. "We can't keep up with this chaos."
Clotho snapped her fingers. "Pull up the inter-pantheon channels."
A shimmering veil appeared before them, forming a golden circle. Threads connected across dimensions. Time. Myth. Beyond the Greek realm.
Three new faces appeared.
A woman with raven-black hair and cold eyes: Skuld, one of the Norns of Norse myth.
A man in desert robes, his skin the shade of polished sand, a scroll of hieroglyphs floating behind him: Shai, Egyptian fateweaver.
And a third being—featureless, glowing—unknown. A far-eastern weaver, silent, but watching.
"Why have you summoned us?" Skuld said coldly. "We are not messengers of Olympus."
Lachesis stepped forward. "Do any of you have threads behaving… autonomously?"
Shai raised an eyebrow. "One of my scribes tried to write a future yesterday and his quill exploded. A name kept appearing on all scrolls. 'Lionel.'"
Clotho groaned. "Same here! He's not even Egyptian!"
Skuld folded her arms. "He tripped one of our Ragnarok accelerators."
Atropos spoke, her voice vibrating through the connection. "He is not in any prophecy. But the threads move for him."
The foreign weaver gave a slow, deliberate nod.
Then, without speaking, pointed.
To Olympus.
The throne room of the gods was rarely silent.
Even now, Zeus was berating Apollo for turning one of his temples into a music lounge. Hera was re-arranging the seating chart. Dionysus was napping. Again.
Then the doors burst open.
Boom.
All three Moirai stormed in.
Loom light trailing behind them, their eyes glowing with the fury of metaphysical burnout.
Zeus blinked. "Oh no."
Clotho threw a bundle of flaming threads onto the floor. They twisted and flared like angry snakes. "We need to talk about your grandson."
Hera raised an eyebrow. "Which one?"
"Ares stupid son!" Clotho screeched.
Ares, lounging on his throne in red leather and shades, paused.
"…Lionel?"
"YES, LIONEL!" Lachesis snapped. "Your child is breaking fate all of the time!"
Ares smirked. "That's my boy."
Zeus rubbed his temples. "Ares. What did you do?"
"Nothing!" Ares raised his hands. "I just showed up, knocked out a minotaur, told the kids I was their dad, and left! I didn't even give the boy a sword!"
Clotho threw a lightning-thread at him. "Then why is he gaining divinity on the deck of a ghost ship in the Sea of Monsters?!"
Ares paused. Adjusted his shades. "...Wait, for real?"
Atropos stepped forward. Her voice silenced even the murmurs of the other gods.
"He has made a path. Not one we wrote. Not one that can be read."
Hera rose. "Impossible."
Atropos lifted her scissors. "Try to cut his thread."
She flicked them down.
The golden scissors sparked—then bent.
Gasps echoed through the hall.
Hermes dropped his goblet. Artemis sat up straighter. Poseidon looked mildly concerned. That alone was terrifying.
Ares finally sat forward. For the first time, he actually looked serious.
"You're telling me… he's walking outside the weave?"
Clotho nodded. "And it's not because of prophecy. Or chaos. Or even luck."
Lachesis added, "It's because he believes. In strength. In purpose. In becoming more."
Zeus rose, thunder curling in his beard. "Then you will go to him, Ares. And fix this."
Ares smirked. "What, you afraid of a little war?"
Hera snapped, "We're afraid of a demigod rewriting the rules of Olympian power because you thought it would be cute to be an absent father again."
The gods murmured. Ares stood slowly. His aura flared red. War. Fire. Chaos.
And something else.
Pride.
"…Guess I better see what my kid's been up to."
And far away, on a ghost ship drifting through ancient waters, Lionel sneezed.
Then did another set of crunches