Calla's POV
I grab the floating spell words with my bare hands.
The fire doesn't burn—it sinks into my skin like ice water, and suddenly I know every word, every gesture, every drop of blood the ritual requires. The knowledge fills my head so fast I gasp.
The Reaper Prince moves toward me with terrifying speed.
"Don't," his voice cuts through the air like a blade. "Touch that spell and I'll end you before you speak the first word."
But I'm already moving. I snatch the black book from the floor and press it against my chest, backing toward Papa's bed. The first creature—the one that broke through the window—is still there, watching with hungry silver eyes.
"Calla, what are you—" Papa tries to speak, but his voice is too weak.
I don't answer. I'm reading the spell, my lips moving silently, learning the words that will cut his thread from Death's grip.
Eraxis stops three feet away from me. Up close, he's even more terrifying. He towers over me—at least six and a half feet tall—and his presence presses down on me like a physical weight. Those mercury eyes bore into mine, and I see something in them that scares me more than his threats.
Recognition.
"You're already awakened," he says, and there's something almost like surprise in his cold voice. "The suppression broke the moment you touched that book. Your magic is flowing freely now."
"Good," I say, even though my voice shakes. "Then I'm strong enough to do this."
His jaw clenches. "You have no idea what you're dealing with. That spell doesn't just steal time—it tears a hole in reality itself. Every thread in the Loom will feel it. Every Reaper in existence will know exactly where you are and what you've done."
"I don't care!"
"You should." He takes another step closer. I can feel the cold radiating off him—not normal cold, but the cold of deep space, of places where nothing lives. "Because the penalty for time theft is absolute. Your soul will be scattered across the Void. You won't just die—you'll cease to exist. Every memory of you, every moment you lived, erased from every timeline."
Behind him, the creature at the window giggles. "The Prince is trying to save you, little Guardian. How sweet. He's gone soft."
Eraxis doesn't turn around, but his voice drops to a deadly whisper. "Silence, Morven. Or I'll remember that you broke protocol by entering the mortal realm without authorization."
The creature—Morven—stops giggling immediately.
I look at Papa. His thread is barely there now, just a thin strand of gold being strangled by black corruption. He's looking at me with desperate, terrified eyes.
He doesn't want me to do this. He'd rather die than watch me sacrifice myself.
But he's my father. He's the only person who ever loved me. He taught me that magic isn't about power—it's about love. That doing the right thing matters more than doing the easy thing.
Well, saving him is the right thing. Even if it damns me.
I meet Eraxis's eyes. "I'm going to perform this spell. You can kill me after, torture me, scatter my soul across eternity—I don't care. But I'm saving my father first."
Something flickers across his perfect, terrible face. An emotion I can't quite read. "Why? He's one mortal among billions. His thread was destined to end tonight. Why break cosmic law for one insignificant life?"
The question makes me so angry I almost spit at him. "Because he's not insignificant to me! Because he's my father and he matters and I refuse to let him go without fighting!" Tears burn my eyes but I don't let them fall. "You're Death. You probably can't understand what it's like to love someone so much that you'd burn the world down to save them. But that's what love is. And I'd rather be damned for loving too much than live forever having loved too little."
Silence.
Eraxis stares at me like I just spoke in a language he forgot existed. His expression shifts—just for a second—and I see something crack in those cold mercury eyes. Something that looks almost like pain.
"I understand more than you know," he says quietly.
Then his hand shoots out and grabs my wrist. His fingers are ice-cold, strong as iron chains. "But understanding doesn't change the law. Step away from the dying thread, Calla Thorne. This is your last warning."
I look down at his hand on my wrist. Then I smile—a wild, reckless smile that probably makes me look crazy.
"No."
And I cut my palm with my teeth.
Blood floods my mouth—copper and salt and magic. I spit it onto the spell page I'm still clutching. The moment my blood touches the ancient words, they ignite with golden fire.
Eraxis's eyes go wide. "Don't—"
But I'm already speaking the spell, the words pouring out of me in a language I've never learned but somehow know perfectly. The Old Tongue—the language the universe was written in.
Power explodes through me.
My magic, suppressed for twenty-four years, finally breaks free completely. It feels like being struck by lightning and drowned in starlight simultaneously. I see everything—every thread in the Loom, every soul in the village, every heartbeat for miles around.
And I see Papa's thread, black with corruption, ready to snap.
I reach for it with my magic—not with my hands, but with something deeper. My Guardian power, inherited from ancestors who protected the Loom itself.
The thread responds to my touch like a lost child finding its mother.
"Stop this!" Eraxis's voice is desperate now, not angry. "You don't understand what you're doing! That corruption isn't natural—someone poisoned his thread deliberately! This is a trap!"
His words penetrate the spell-haze in my mind. "What?"
"Look closer!" He forces me to look at Papa's thread with my newly awakened sight. "That's curse-rot. Someone manufactured his death to force you to awaken. You're being manipulated!"
He's right. Now that I'm looking with full Guardian vision, I can see it—the black rot isn't random decay. It's deliberate. Calculated. Someone infected Papa's thread two years ago and let it slowly kill him, knowing eventually I'd get desperate enough to break cosmic law.
This was always a trap. And I walked right into it.
But it doesn't matter.
"I know," I tell Eraxis. "And I'm doing it anyway."
I speak the final words of the spell and cut Papa's thread from the Loom of Time itself.
Reality screams.
The sound is like every bell in existence ringing at once. The cottage walls crack. Windows shatter. Morven shrieks and vanishes. Even Eraxis staggers backward, his expression horrified.
Papa's dying thread—black with corruption, frayed to almost nothing—suddenly detaches from the cosmic Loom and reattaches to my own thread. Gold and black spiral together, and I feel his life force flowing into mine, sustained by my magic instead of natural law.
He gasps. Color returns to his face. His eyes clear.
"Calla," he whispers. "What did you do?"
But I can't answer. The pain is unbearable. It feels like I'm being unmade and remade simultaneously. Every cell in my body is screaming. My thread is glowing so bright it lights up the entire cottage.
And everywhere—in every realm, every dimension, every corner of reality—Time Reapers feel the violation I just committed.
They're coming. Hundreds of them. Thousands.
I look at Eraxis through waves of agony. He's staring at me with an expression I can't read—fury and horror and something else. Something that looks almost like admiration.
"You magnificent fool," he whispers.
Then the air tears open and three more Reapers materialize in my cottage. They're all tall, all beautiful, all radiating that same death-cold.
The leader is a man with dark hair and a charming smile that doesn't reach his eyes.
"Eraxis," he says cheerfully. "Step aside. We'll handle the criminal."
Eraxis doesn't move. He's standing between me and the other Reapers, his massive frame blocking their path to me.
"No," he says.
The dark-haired Reaper's smile widens. "Excuse me?"
"I said no, Theron." Eraxis's voice is deadly quiet. "This witch is mine."
And then he does something that changes everything.
He cuts his own palm with a blade made of shadow, grabs my bleeding hand, and speaks words in the Old Tongue that make reality shudder for the second time tonight.
A chain of pure silver light erupts between us, binding our threads together.
Theron's smile vanishes. "What have you done?"
"I've invoked the Law of Bound Judgment," Eraxis says coldly, staring directly at me even as he speaks to Theron. "This witch is now under my direct authority. If she's guilty, I'll execute her myself after a full investigation. If anyone else touches her, they violate the sanctity of a Reaper Prince's claim."
Through the new bond between us, I feel his emotions pouring into me—and they're not what I expected.
He's not angry.
He's terrified.
Not of me. For me.