The sun was a bruised disc of amber behind the clouds as Mira and her companions descended into the Ravine of Broken Tomes—an ancient trench carved between the jagged ridges of Mount Quartha. Legends claimed the ravine was once the library of the Gods, until a divine disagreement over grammar had leveled it. Now it was a yawning scar, where fragments of stone tablets and magical papyrus littered the landscape like fossilized thoughts.
Reeko stumbled on a slab marked "TO WHOMST IT MAY CONCERN," while Pipla got into a heated debate with a moss-covered statue of an owl who claimed to be "a very disappointed librarian."
Mira led the way cautiously, silver Die tucked tightly in her satchel. The air here shimmered with threads of possibility—time warped at the edges, memories fluttered like moths in corners of vision, and the present felt... thin.
"Anyone else feel like we're walking through someone else's dream?" Mira muttered.
"Definitely not mine," said Jory. "Mine would have more pastries. And fewer verbs whispering about betrayal."
Mira paused at a crossroads of broken stone arches. The path ahead split three ways—each direction veiled in mist, each with its own impossible echo: laughter, weeping, music. Her fingers brushed the Die instinctively.
"I want to roll," she whispered. "For insight."
The others stopped. Even Reeko quieted his tambourine.
Mira knelt, unwrapping the Die and casting them gently across the cracked stone.
They gleamed silver for a heartbeat, then flickered with inner starlight as they clattered to a stop.
17
The Die glowed. Mira blinked. In that moment, she wasn't standing in the ravine anymore.
She stood in a tower. Not the tower—Sunspike was rooted and wild. This was cold. Sleek. Built of mirrors and memory.
Across from her stood a figure. Clad in layered robes of black and silver, skin dusky with a celestial shimmer. Their eyes were pale violet, unreadable yet familiar.
"You're not supposed to be here yet," the figure said, voice like a melody half-remembered. "But the Die are impatient."
Mira 's mouth was dry. "Who are you?"
"A vision. An echo. A Fatebinder like you." They stepped forward, a slender hand resting on a staff that shimmered between forms—first wood, then bone, then light. "My name is Imara. And though I walked a different tale, our stories converge now."
Imara stood with the calm gravity of someone who had walked through lifetimes. Her long, ash-silver hair was braided with threads of violet and gold, trailing down the back of a travel-worn cloak stitched with star-symbols. Her eyes, an unsettling shade of opal, shimmered faintly like frost catching moonlight—timeless and unreadable. She wore leather armor lacquered in midnight blue, etched with strange glyphs that pulsed gently when she moved. A twin to Mira's staff rested across her back, though older, its wood gnarled and darker, humming with restrained power. She radiated the presence of someone both deeply familiar and entirely other.
The vision shifted. They were on a battlefield—scorching winds, shattered stars in the sky above, a sea of shadows clawing toward a silver-lit wall.
Imara stood beside a circle of warriors—some wounded, some glowing with arcane might. "You must know," she said, her voice urgent. "The Die do not only shape fate. They remember it. All our worlds... layered like pages in a book. What happens to one, bleeds into the margins of another."
Mira opened her mouth to ask something—anything—but the image dissolved like smoke.
She was back in the ravine, the Die silent.
"You alright?" Pipla asked, poking her gently.
"I saw someone," Mira said, slowly. "Another Fatebinder. She called herself Imara. She said… our stories are linked."
Reeko raised an eyebrow. "Like… multiversal fate-exposition crossover kind of linked?"
"Something like that."
They chose the right-hand path—the one with music in the mist. It felt right, and the Die didn't object.
As they walked, Mira noticed changes in the world's fabric. The wind sometimes carried words instead of sounds. Rocks cast shadows that pointed the wrong way. And more than once, her satchel grew briefly heavier—then lighter—like the Die were reacting to time itself.
They passed a monument that hadn't been there a second before. An obsidian arch bearing three symbols: a flame, a chain, and a spiral. Beneath it, in runes she should not have been able to read, it said:
"All threads tighten. Prepare to be unwoven."
Jory licked the arch. "Tastes like foreshadowing."
The mist thickened. The path widened into a circle of cracked marble And in the center stood Imara.
No vision. No dream. Real.
Mira froze. The others followed suit, hands drifting to weapons—half in awe, half in caution.
Imara turned, and this time Mira could see the fatigue in her eyes. "I came ahead," she said. "The threads allowed me this... brief crossing."
"You're from a different world?" Mira asked.
Imara nodded. "One where Velcrath fell early. Where the Die shattered. Where I was the only one left to hold the spiral closed."
Silence. Heavy. Charged.
"I don't have long," Imara continued. "But you must know three things. First: Velcrath grows bold. He has tasted your world's vulnerability and prepares to strike."
"Yeah, I've noticed," Mira muttered. "He's not subtle."
"Second," Imara said, stepping closer, "you must find the Mirror Grove. The roots there reflect truth and lie alike. Your Die will resonate with it—learn from it."
"And third?" Mira asked.
Imara touched her own satchel, drawing forth a single obsidian die. It shimmered like a stormcloud in moonlight.
"You are not the only one who rolls. Velcrath has found his own vessel—a corrupted Fatebinder, drawn from another book. She will come for you soon."
Mira 's stomach dropped.
Then Imara smiled faintly. "But don't worry. I'll see you again. In the final chapter."
With a sound like a page turning, Imara vanished.
The marble circle cracked beneath their feet.
The mist screamed and from the woods around them, shadows began to stir.
The Threads that Fray
Shadows lunged from the mist like coiled predators, each moving with the grace of something half-remembered. Mira had no time to scream, not even to roll her Die. A shadow reached for her, fingers like ink in water—and was intercepted by Pipla's axe in a flash of silver.
"Get behind me!" the Halfling roared.
Jory rolled to the side, vanishing into the fog with a gleeful, "Ooooh, shadow-tag!"
Reeko screamed—not out of fear, but to hit a high G note—and strummed an urgent rhythm on his lute. The sound vibrated through the ground like a tuning fork, and the mist recoiled, wavering.
Mira gripped her satchel, fingers trembling, then pulled the Die free.
"Alright," she whispered. "One roll."
She cupped them in both hands. "I request… a roll for Protection."
The Die pulsed with a silvery glow. She cast them onto the broken marble ground.
14
The Die shimmered. The mist hissed.
A circle of glowing symbols bloomed around the party's feet, each mark carved in starlight and humming with energy. A barrier, invisible but strong, flared into place like the memory of a guardian spell.
The shadows slammed against it. Screeched. Reeled.
"Nice roll!" Reeko yelled, grinning. "I give it a 14 out of 20!"
"It was a 14," Mira shouted back, ducking as a shadow's claw rebounded off the barrier with a sharp bang.
Pipla snarled and raised her axe. "Should we chop or run?"
"Neither," said a voice.
Jory emerged from the fog, cradling a small, glowing skull like it was a newborn kitten. "I found their anchor. Someone's feeding them from the veil."
Mira narrowed her eyes. "Like a summoner?"
"Worse," Jory said. "Like a storyteller who thinks shadows are metaphors and we're overdue for tragedy."
Another claw struck the barrier.
Cracks appeared.
"Time to go!" Reeko sang, grabbing Mira by the arm.
They bolted. The marble ring collapsed behind them in a roar of glass and whispers. The path ahead lit briefly with imara's fading magic—just enough for their feet to find purchase.
The fog thinned slowly, reluctantly, like a theatre curtain dragged from the stage.
Eventually, they stumbled into a clearing where moonlight dared to touch the ground.
Mira collapsed to her knees, breath ragged. Her hands still clutched the Die like lifelines.
"I hate mist," she groaned. "I used to think it was atmospheric. Now it's just an evil soup."
Reeko sat beside her, strumming a soothing chord. "Hey. That spell-barrier? Not bad for a bank worker."
Pipla grunted. "I vote we find this Mirror Grove and set fire to it. Just in case."
Jory dropped the skull into a pouch and pulled out a map he claimed was sketched by a dreaming goat. "If this is right, the Grove lies two valleys south, near the Glassroot Pools."
"Did Imara say what we'd find there?" Mira asked.
Jory shrugged. "Truth and lies. And roots. That's basically all of politics and plumbing."
As they camped beneath a canopy of whispering leaves, Mira rolled the Die once more—this time just in her palm, absentmindedly.
The memory of Imara lingered. Her calm certainty. Her warning about Velcrath's vessel.
Another Fatebinder, corrupted.
She looked at her Die. The silver swirls, once comforting, now held a weight she hadn't quite acknowledged before. Was she still the same woman who'd stumbled through a portal in London?
She lay down beside the crackling fire, staring at the stars that blinked like curious eyes.
The world was shifting. Threads were tightening. And somewhere out there, someone was rolling their own cursed Die.
They reached the Glassroot Pools by midday. The landscape here was bizarre: trees with bark like mirrors, flowers that bloomed backward, water that flowed sideways. Reflections flickered where there were no pools—echoes of moments that hadn't happened yet.
"This place smells like future anxiety," said Reeko.
"Don't lick anything," Pipla warned.
Jory was already licking a fern. "Too late."
They found the Mirror Grove tucked between two leaning oaks that hadn't yet decided which way to fall. A stone arch—natural, worn, and humming with power—marked the entrance. As they crossed it, the air changed. Not colder. Not warmer. Just... aware.
The Grove itself was small—a circle of crystalline trees with roots that vanished into pools of liquid memory. The trees bore no fruit, no leaves, but shimmered as though made of frozen starlight.
At the center stood a pedestal with no inscription. The moment Mira stepped into the ring, the Die in her satchel twitched.
"This is it," she said quietly.
She approached the pedestal, Die in hand. The others stood back, tense.
Mira placed the Die onto the stone.
Nothing happened.
Then everything happened.
The Grove pulsed.
Light flared—not from above, but from within the trees.
The roots glowed. The pools reflected not their faces, but their truths.
Reeko gasped. "I'm a fraud," he whispered. "I never passed Bard School. I just watched all six seasons of Minstrel Academy."
Pipla stared into a root-pool and saw herself at age ten, standing alone while other Halflings ran from her. "Too loud," they'd said. "Too much."
Jory's reflection was… different. Dozens of versions of himself, wearing different masks. Some laughing. Some crying. One—very old—just staring.
And Mira saw herself, Not once, Not twice But fractured.
In one reflection, she stayed in London. Grew bitter. Married to Eli but adrift.
In another, she never found the Die. Died in the woods near Sunspike.
In a third, she was… older. Wiser. Standing atop a broken tower, surrounded by allies—her current ones, and more she hadn't met yet.
In every version, she held the Die.
But in only one… she held them tightly.
The pedestal flared.
The Die lifted into the air and spun, rapidly.
Then—
Natural 20!
Light poured from them.
The Grove responded.
The roots surged upward, wrapping around the Die like reverent fingers. Symbols danced in the air—runes Mira couldn't read but understood nonetheless.
The Die were changing, Not in shape, but in depth, Knowledge flowed into Mira —not just facts, but possibilities. The Mirror Grove had accepted her. She was no longer a temporary bearer. She was now a Warden of Weaves, Her bond to the Die was sealed. When it ended, she dropped to her knees. The others ran to her.
"I'm okay," she gasped, tears on her cheeks. "I think I saw every version of me that could have been."
Reeko helped her up. "You didn't go mad. That's a win."
"What now?" Pipla asked.
Mira closed her hand around the Die. They pulsed gently—warmer than before. Heavier with meaning.
"We find the Shard of Echoes. And we prepare. Velcrath's vessel is coming."
Jory tilted his head. "And if we fail?"
Mira smiled grimly. "Then someone else rolls the Die."