The Harrower's Hall and hidden library archives, glamoured church ruin, Cumbria
The ruin didn't look like much from the road.
Half a nave and a crumbling steeple, swallowed by ivy and the long hush of forgetfulness. Wildflowers grew between the stones like offerings no one remembered placing. Crows nested where hymns had once risen. Any traveler would pass it by without pause.
But Grey stepped off the path and laid her hand on the boundary stone—the flat slab half-sunken into soil, etched faintly with a spiral that caught the rain.
The glamour sighed.
The ruin straightened. The moss parted. And the world blinked.
Once disguised as decay, the church revealed itself as a gothic skeleton of grandeur: narrow and solemn, with spired arches curling like ribs toward the sky. Its stone walls were weathered black and silvered by lichen, each block carved with symbols too old for language.
The stained-glass windows—cracked but not broken—glowed with low amber light from within, depicting gods no longer worshipped, their faces softened by centuries of wind. Ivy still clung to the bones of the building, but it moved subtly with purpose now, spiraling up the flying buttresses like green threads in a loom.
The bell tower stood whole, though no bell had rung in a hundred years, and beneath the rose window above the doors, a circle of protective runes flickered faintly, warding against what should not enter—or escape.
Inside, the Harrower's library breathed in candlelight and velvet dust. Rows of shelves, carved directly into the stone walls, shimmered with the age of hundreds of unnamed winters. Books hung from hooks like windchimes. Scrolls slumbered in hollowed stumps of oak. Iron sigils glowed faintly in alcoves, warmed by memory and protection both.
The other Harrowers were conspicuously absent—either out walking threads, holed up at school, or fulfilling whatever vaguely academic day jobs kept them fed when they weren't here. It left the space feeling quieter than usual, solemn in a way Grey both appreciated and resented. Too much silence meant too much room for thoughts.
Maerlowe stood near the altar, back to Grey, coat slung over a ladder rung. Rain had soaked the edges of his sleeves, and his long fingers were smudged with charcoal.
"Close the ward," Maerlowe said without turning. His voice was as dry as his ink.
Grey reached back to the threshold and touched the air where the spiral floated. The glamour sealed behind her with a shiver.
Of course it shivered. If she were a magical barrier, she'd flinch when someone like her walked through too. The glamour sealed behind her with a shiver.
"Any reason you didn't sleep last night?" Grey asked, stepping deeper into the sanctuary.
"Several," Maerlowe muttered. "Mostly unwelcome."
A tapestry was laid across the altar—white linen covered in looping marks. Some were drawn in charcoal, others embroidered in silver thread. It resembled a weaving draft, but the shapes made Grey's vision blur when she stared too long.
Maerlowe waved toward it. "Same pattern. Four soul disruptions in two weeks. All different locations. All unrelated deaths. But every time, the transition tangled—paused, twisted, stilled—and then vanished. No residual echo. No rest."
Grey frowned, brow furrowing in that way that always made Maerlowe start listing contingency plans. "You think it's intentional?" she asked, already bracing for the answer like it might be lobbed at her forehead.
"I think," Maerlowe said, retrieving a red ribbon from his pocket, "it's familiar."
He placed the ribbon on the cloth. It slid into a perfect spiral.
"The Threadmother's weave," he whispered. "Or something like it."
Grey's spine tightened.
"You're reaching," Grey said quietly. "You don't know it's her."
"I don't," Maerlowe agreed. "But the Book does."
He turned and crossed to the far wall, where a heavy wooden lectern rested in a shallow depression lined with ash. The Book of Telling lay open, its pages inked in a hundred hands. Its spine was bone. Its covers shifted faintly when touched—almost breathing.
Grey kept a respectful distance. Mostly because Maerlowe had once caught her trying to poke the Book with a spoon to see if it would react like pudding. Wickham's influence, naturally—he'd bet her three coppers and a bottle of illicit plum brandy that it would wiggle. It hadn't, but it had hissed. Grey had never moved so fast in her life.
Maerlowe ran one hand above the page. "It wrote this two days ago. Unprompted."
He stepped aside so Grey could read.
In spring, the pattern shall open.
The Child of the Thread shall walk through sorrow.
One shall unwrite, one shall undo, one shall sleep.
Beware the gold that blooms without scent.
Grey folded her arms, shifting her weight with the theatrical suspicion of someone about to accuse a cat of witchcraft. She could practically hear Wickham in her head now, drawling: 'If you can't mock prophecy, darling, you'll never survive it.'
"That sounds like you wrote it after drinking Wickham's pocket mead."
Maerlowe snorted. "Thank you for your respect."
"I mean it. 'Beware the gold that blooms without scent?'' Her eyes rolled so hard she felt something strain. "That could be poetry, prophecy, or poison."
"It could also be warning you." His voice held a judgmental note.
Grey looked again. The ink shimmered slightly—not quite dry she noted when touching it with a fingertip. Not quite real. It looked unnervingly like it wanted to be read aloud, like it knew secrets and wouldn't hesitate to gossip if given half a chance.
Wickham would probably try to flirt with it. Or challenge it to a riddle contest. Maybe both.
"Do you believe in it?" she asked.
Maerlowe's answer was slow. "I believe the Book listens. And sometimes, it remembers forward."
The rain deepened. It whispered down the stained-glass gaps like breath over a mirror.
Grey felt it then. A hush between seconds.
Something pulled at her—not with teeth or chains, but with warmth. A thread of gold, sliding unseen through the library, wrapping around her chest with impossible gentleness.
She turned. At the far edge of the sanctuary, above a long-dead window, a single petal floated down.
Not a leaf. Nor flower.
Gold.
Soft as silk.
It touched the floor and vanished into smoke.
Grey's mouth was dry.
"Something wrong?" Maerlowe asked, glancing up.
She didn't answer.
Her first instinct was to deny it—because what kind of normal girl saw spectral petals and got a hug from unseen forces like some weird fairy godparent? But her mouth was too dry, and the library too still.
She stepped to the window. There was no breeze. No tree overhead. No golden blooms in sight. Only mist curling across the graveyard and the faint tremor of something watching—not cruelly, but knowingly.
She turned back to the Book. It had closed itself.
Maerlowe hadn't moved.
Grey forced a breath. "I think something's waking."
"I think," Maerlowe replied, "it already has."