THREADED FATEBy VilleniaWhat if the monster hunting you is the only one who remembers loving you?Hurry home, hurry home, little children, hurry home.If you don't go to sleep before the clock's chime beep, Vindhler will come and snatch you from your keep.It is the rhyme every child knows. The warning every mother whispers. The nightmare that follows those who dare remain awake after the final bell.But what happens when the monster in the rhyme is real?Vindhler has spent her existence running from a past she cannot remember and a fate she refuses to accept. Hunted by those who should have protected her, she finds herself standing at the edge of a cliff, with darkness at her back and nothingness waiting below. Her pursuers call her a monster. The world has already decided what she is.Then a voice reaches her through the void.I found you.Aelethar is only a village healer. Gentle, unremarkable, and far too familiar to a woman who has never met him—or so she believes. He possesses no grand title, commands no army, and understands nothing of the strange darkness that occasionally stirs around him. Yet there is something about him that even the oldest powers cannot explain.Their meeting should have been impossible. Their connection should have been forgotten.But some threads refuse to break.Beneath a blood-red moon, ancient forces awaken. A dance becomes a ritual. A forgotten song rises from Vindhler's lips, and crimson threads begin to unravel the truth buried beneath countless lifetimes. The village she knows, the souls she protects, and the terrifying Nothingness itself are bound to a secret far older than humanity.As memories return, Vindhler discovers that fate is not merely a path laid before her. It is a wheel, a prison, and perhaps a choice she has been making over and over again.Every time she remembers, the world changes.Every time she forgets, she loses him.And every time the threads pull them together, something ancient comes hunting.To save Aelethar, Vindhler may have to become the very monster the world fears. To keep him, she may have to tear apart the order that holds existence together.But if love is the thread connecting their souls, who gets to decide when it must be cut?Some stories are written by fate.Others are written by those brave enough to defy it.