Fate Breakers

Prologue

Fate is beautiful and brutal.

Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos were beautiful in that brutal way.

Each of them had features as sharp as razors. They radiated with this Chaotic energy, a kind that made me shudder like nothing else had. Like calls to like, and these striking forces of nature were just like me.

We each were born from Chaos, the four of us. The four of us came from the space of the In Between, ripping through what once was, tearing the fabrics of space and time to make it anew. I could see it so vividly in their eyes. The way the power swirled through them. It was like watching supernovas go off again and again.

"I do not like your infatuation with them, Satyana," Rhev said from beside me. His face was clean, not decorated with war paint as it typically was. He looked so unlike the God of war I'd always known.

"I believe you are just mad because your meeting with Ares and Athena did not go as planned." More than that, it had been made into a disaster. Somehow, fighting began between the mortals on Eunoia. Apparently, one of Rhev's temples got taken over.

Rhev slid his dark eyes to me. Even without his dark paint, Rhev's appearance alone could send mortals and immortals alike running for cover. Well, never me. Rhev didn't scare me, because I knew what a soft core he had beneath. I never liked Rhev. I still do not.

"Do not forget how dangerous these Gods are," Rhev told me. "The sisters of fate have made it blatantly obvious they do not like what we do, and they do not care for who we are."

"How can they not when we have been cut from the same cloth, born from the same Chaos?"

"Our Chaos is not their Chaos, Satyana."

"The In Between is the tie between all worlds. It is indifferent, truly neutral, a force with no sentience. It is nothing, yet it is a force that is everything and means everything to those that interact with it, us Gods included." I turned away from Rhev, knowing full well how much it would anger him. I turned my attention back to those beautiful, dangerous deities. A giddy smile spread across my lips. "Whether they like it or not, that is the truth. It is the order of things. It is all a transfer of energy between life forms."

"You speak so surely," Rhev mocked. I could feel the burn of his glare along my skin. I let it burn.

"Why wouldn't I? It is my order of things, after all."

"You are not the only one who controls fate, Satyana."

To that, I'd laughed. Like a parent scolding a child, I shook my finger in the face of war and continued to laugh. "There is no controlling fate, Rhev. There is only guiding it."

Rhev scrunched his nose, lips pulled back in a snarl. "If that is your belief, then what is the purpose of you and the Moirai?"

I'd felt that familiar shiver up my spine, sending a tingle through each of my limbs. My eyes returned to the lethal Moirai. Atropos shifted her head, her dark eyes at last landing on me. Even at such a distance, I could see the clash of worlds in her eyes. I could see the end, and I could see the beginning, as they are one in the same.

"I do not know," I'd answered. "Is that not the most exciting thing? There are no mortals without us, yet we are nothing without them. So it begs the question, why life at all?"

"And what is your twisted answer to that?"

"Because why not?"

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Fate strings are not any one color. They are a collection of all colors. No one color lingers for long, often rippling in and out. One blink, and you can miss an entire sequence. I kept the strings floating free in the hall. Floating free in the light. One could run through the entanglement, leaving all the strings to billow and collide. They appeared in the hall wild, colorful, and free. To me, there was nothing more beautiful than that.