Grey was dreaming.
It was a dream of glass and silk and the sound of weeping.
She wandered through a labyrinth made of mirrors, each pane warping her reflection into something not quite herself. One showed her robed in starlight, silver filigree curling over indigo velvet, a staff of polished onyx in hand, and eyes distant with wisdom as if weighed by prophecy. Another wore ragged black robes, her reflection gaunt and hollow-eyed, a cruel crown of wire biting into her brow as if punishment for some great betrayal.
A third bore scars down both arms, blood dripping steadily from her palms as though she'd offered them willingly to some unseen altar. Her clothes were humble—wool and linen, dark with soot—but her expression was beatific, serene in sacrifice. Then came one laughing in firelight, clad in crimson silks embroidered with golden birds, wine-stained and dangerous, mouth curled in a smile too sharp to be kind.
Another stood in chains, wrapped in threadbare grey, eyes downcast and lips sewn shut with silver thread. Still another knelt in prayer amid falling ash, her garments scorched, a single blue thread wound around her wrist like a shackle or a promise.
Each reflection whispered—but none in words. Just sensation. Longing. Dread. Wonder. And something like mourning. And beneath it all the unmistakable hum of power.
She turned corner after corner, each twist of the labyrinth heightening the pressure behind her ribs. The reflections kept shifting—sometimes showing versions of her she didn't understand, sometimes twisting into shapes she couldn't bear to look at. Confusion churned in her gut, a slow-spinning panic masked as awe. She reached out to touch one of the mirrors, but her fingers met only cool glass and a stranger's eyes staring back.
"What am I supposed to be?" she whispered, voice catching in the heavy stillness.
None of the reflections answered. But they watched her—some with sorrow, others with scorn.
The labyrinth grew darker, its corners sharper. Grey's breath fogged the mirrored walls. Her heartbeat felt distant, as though echoing from somewhere deeper in the maze. All she could do was keep walking.
At the heart of the maze, she found her.
A woman woven of silk, her form ever-shifting—one moment delicate as gossamer, the next glimmering with a tensile strength like spider-thread spun beneath moonlight. Her skin shimmered like mother-of-pearl, not quite solid, not quite light. Her hair flowed behind her in a slow cascade, strands of pale filament threaded with stars, whispering with their own breath. Her face was an impossible blend of opposites—youthful and ancient, maternal and unknowable, as though time itself had stitched her from memory and grief.
She sat before a loom carved from whitewood and bone, its frame wrapped in faded ribbons of past offerings. The loom groaned softly as it worked, each thread tugging with tension that seemed to stretch into eternity. The threads she spun gleamed with a spectrum no eye could name, and yet the warp beneath her hands frayed and bled.
Red seeped between the cords—not dye, but blood—hers, perhaps, or that of what had been sacrificed long ago. Still, she did not stop weaving. Her fingers moved with solemn urgency, binding frayed fates into patterns that refused to hold.
She looked up as Grey approached.
"Choose wisely, my daughter," she said, and held out a spool of endless thread that glowed with every colour of twilight. As Grey reached for it, the thread shimmered and dissolved—not vanishing, but sinking into her skin like sunlight absorbed by water. She gasped as a warmth bloomed beneath her palm, a knowing without knowledge, as if a pattern had been marked upon her, hidden yet irrevocable. The spool was gone. But its weight remained.
Grey woke with a strangled breath, the scent of rain and roses clinging to her sheets like the ghosts of dead flowers. She sat up, cheeks damp and heart hammering, disoriented and shivering though the room was warm. The dream clung to her—not like memory, but like prophecy.
Suddenly, she desperately needed air.
She kicked off the bedcovers in a clumsy tangle and scrambled to her feet, almost tripping on the floor. The dream still clung to her skin, woven into the tremble of her limbs. She tugged on a sweater—one of Alaric's, soft and too big at the shoulders—and fumbled for her slippers. Her pyjama trousers were twisted and wrinkled, and her hair stuck up in wild tufts like a thicket of black brambles. Smudges shadowed her eyes, not quite exhaustion, not quite tears, but something deeper—something raw. She rubbed at her face with the heel of her hand, trying to pull herself back to the world. It didn't work. The scent of spun silk and roses still hovered at the edges of her senses.
Dishevelled and breathless, she stepped out into the hallway.
She left her room quietly, still reeling from the dream, fingers twitching with remembered thread and the echo of her mother's voice reverberating in her bones. The corridors beyond her door seemed too silent, too still, and she found herself craving the grounding of company—of a voice that wasn't stitched from prophecy or fate. She needed something real to quiet the unreality that still clung to her like gauze.
She ran her hand down the banister, descended the staircase, steadying her breath. The flicker of candlelight in the sconces cast long shadows on the stone, and the wind outside scratched faintly against the leaded glass windows like something asking to be let in.
She padded quietly across the ancient floor, drawn by a familiar presence in the hall ahead.
The Hall at night was all hush and creak. Wind whispered through the windows, and the old stones of the floor held echoes like a breath held too long. She wandered without direction, until she heard footsteps ahead—measured, soft.
He was standing by a tall window, silhouetted against the moonlight. He didn't turn when Grey approached, choosing to remain half-hidden in shadow.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
"Couldn't sleep?" Grey asked eventually.
Alaric nodded once, a bitter curve to his mouth. "Too much memory," he murmured. "And the wrong kind. I forget the things I ache to hold onto—and remember everything I wish I could leave buried. It's a cruel trick of time, to cling to sorrow and let joy slip away."
Grey moved to stand beside him. Rain traced silver trails down the glass casting ghostly shadows. Alaric turned slowly, and for a moment his eyes darkened—not with shadow, but with something possessive, hungry, stunned. His gaze travelled down the length of Grey's frame, pausing at the sweater that hung from her shoulders: his own, unmistakably. Grey saw the moment register, saw the flare of heat banked behind the Fae's golden eyes.
Grey flushed, acutely aware of the smudges beneath her eyes and the mess of her hair, of how dishevelled and uncertain she must look. And yet Alaric's expression held no mockery—only slow, measured admiration, like someone seeing the sunrise after a long night.
The air seemed to still between them. Grey felt the moment stretch, tighten, a pull just shy of gravity. Then Alaric looked away—just slightly—and the spell broke. But the warmth lingered.
"You remember all of them?" she asked, trying to relieve the awkwardness. "Everyone you've ever met?"
"I try to," Alaric said. His voice was soft, hoarse. "But names blur. Faces fade. I hold on to scents. Songs. The way someone laughed. But even those unravel, eventually."
He glanced at her. "That's the true curse of time. Not watching the world change, but watching memory fail."
Grey touched his hand, gently. Alaric let her.
They walked, together, toward the library.
The doors creaked open to a room dimly lit by a single candelabra. The Book of Telling rested on its dais. Its pages shifted in the draft, whispering to themselves.
As they approached, the book stilled. An entry opened: a candle, still burning, beside a name half-erased by time. The script was old—inked in looping, faded quill—and titled Epping Forest, 1723. It detailed a haunting deep in the ancient woodland, a soul caught between forgetting and being forgotten. The Harrower dispatched to attend wrote of a curious candle that would not extinguish, no matter the wind or weather. The fire burned low, but constant, its wax never pooling. The final entry mentioned the Harrower taking the candle back to the Hall for safekeeping.
Grey's eyes lifted, slowly, to the single candleholder resting quietly on the sill of the library's leaded window. It flickered gently, as it always had. She blinked—she couldn't remember ever lighting it. Couldn't remember it ever being out. It had always been there. Steady. Persistent. Unnoticed.
Alaric followed her gaze. His breath caught. "That's mine," he said slowly. "I lit that... gods, I don't even know how long ago."
"Who was it for?" Grey asked.
Alaric didn't answer.
The flame flickered. The name continued to fade.
Horror dawned across Alaric's face, sharp and breathless. His golden eyes, usually so steady, flickered with something close to panic. "I don't remember," he choked out, voice cracking around the edges. He looked almost panicked. "I lit it to remember, and I don't... I don't know who it was for."
He reached for the windowsill, as if touching the brass holder might shake loose a fragment of the past, but his fingers hovered above it, trembling.
His voice broke again. "What kind of monster forgets someone they swore never to forget?"
He turned his face away, jaw tight with unshed grief, as if ashamed of the emptiness where memory should live. It wasn't just the candle that flickered—it was his certainty, his purpose, the thread of his past unraveling one strand at a time.
Grey reached for him. Not to comfort, exactly, but to anchor. To witness.
In the Book below the fading name, new ink bloomed.
Threadkeeper. One who will remember.
Grey exhaled.
"I think," she whispered, "that's supposed to be me."
Alaric didn't speak.
But his hand tightened in Grey's, and together they watched the candle burn.
"By silver flame and thread unspun,
He lit the wick when hope was done.
A vow in wax, a soul to bind—
The Fae who lit it leaves none behind."
– Old English folk rhyme