The world had changed again.
Empires rose and fell like breath, heroes were carved into memory, and stories grew teeth. Dream walked among them all with his steady, human calm — a quiet observer shaping the night.
But tonight the Dreaming felt…wrong.
Not broken.
Not threatened.
Just heavy, as if something ancient tugged on the edges of his creation.
Dream followed the pull.
It led him to a place he had rarely visited: the Loom of Fate
And what he saw reawakened something he thought he would never feel again in this new life.
Pure. Unadulterated. Rage.
- x x x -
Minutes later at the Loom of Fate
The cavern of the Fates had never known fear.
Until now.
Dream didn't walk into the chamber—he descended, rippling with power he rarely allowed himself to feel, much less show. The air bowed under it. The Loom shuddered. The threads vibrated like strings touched by a player who knew the instrument better than its makers.
Clotho dropped her spindle.
Lachesis stumbled backward.
Atropos' scissors stilled mid-air.
He didn't look divine.
He looked furious.
Humanly, heartbreakingly furious.
"What," Dream said, voice shaking with barely restrained rage, "are you doing?"
He didn't wait for an answer.
"This girl," he snapped, grabbing a thread glowing faintly with fading hope. "Her life—her suffering—WHY?"
Lachesis swallowed. "Her pain harmonizes the greater pattern."
Dream laughed. A sharp, disbelieving sound.
"Pattern? Pattern? You're killing people for aesthetic symmetry?!"
The cavern trembled.
"You don't understand—" Clotho began.
"I understand perfectly," Dream snapped. "You call this destiny, but it's cruelty wrapped in embroidery."
He stepped toward the Loom.
The threads leaned toward him.
They recognized their older kin.
"I was patient," Dream continued, voice cracking with emotion. "I was gentle. I gave you centuries to be better. But every tragedy I mend, you replace with two more."
Atropos lifted her chin. "We do what must be done."
"No," Dream whispered. "You do what you choose. What you enjoy."
Atropos flinched.
Dream lifted his hand.
"Don't," Clotho breathed. "Dream, you cannot alter the Loom. It predates the Titans. It predates—"
"It predates you," Dream said softly. "Because it began with me."
Silence.
The Loom pulsed.
"You didn't weave the first threads," Dream continued. "The first stories shaped them. Every dream of what could be — every fear of what might be — wove the proto-thread long before any of you opened your eyes."
The cavern dimmed.
"The first story," Dream whispered, "was the world imagining itself. And I was there. Before the spindle. Before the shears. Before the first life was measured."
The Fates recoiled, realizing—
He wasn't threatening their system.
He was claiming his inheritance.
"Dream," Lachesis said carefully, "if you take control of the Loom, destiny will crumble. Your power is creation. Ours is order."
Dream closed his eyes.
"And I am tired of watching you enforce order that hurts people."
The threads surged toward him like a tide.
The Fates panicked.
"STOP," Atropos shouted. "You cannot cut us from the Loom! It will unmake everything!"
Dream opened his eyes.
They glowed — not with fire, but with meaning.
Raw, human, narrative meaning.
"I'm not here to unmake the Loom," he said. "I'm here to save it."
He lifted his hand.
The threads responded.
Every story ever told — every dream, every myth, every potential — wrapped around his wrist like a bracer of light. The Loom itself hummed a low, ancient note, like metal recognizing its true forge.
Clotho reached for her spindle—
It dissolved into motes of light.
Lachesis grabbed her rod—
It vanished like dust.
Atropos tried to raise her scissors—
They shattered.
The Fates screamed as the Loom withdrew its power from them.
"You cannot—" Atropos choked.
Dream answered with quiet finality:
"I can. Because stories don't belong to you. They never did."
The Loom glowed brightly, as if relieved.
"We are necessary," Lachesis begged. "Without us—"
"You were necessary," Dream said. "But your time is done."
He tapped the Loom with two fingers.
Reality shivered.
The Fates collapsed to their knees as their forms thinned, becoming translucent, powerless, echoes of their former selves.
Clotho whispered, shaking:
"What are we now?"
Dream looked at her with something like pity.
"Retired."
He turned to the Loom, laying both palms on it. The threads surged under his touch, reorganizing, rewriting, reshaping.
Not rigid fate.
Not cruel predestination.
Story.
Flexible. Fluid. Meaningful. Alive.
Dream's voice was soft as he spoke to the cosmos:
"No more tragedies written for symmetry. No more suffering for balance. From now on, destinies grow the way stories do — through choice, through struggle, through hope."
He lifted the thread of the doomed girl he had argued over earlier.
It pulsed once.
Changed.
Her life expanded, branching into possibilities instead of one bleak line.
"Not every story must end in sorrow," Dream whispered.
He stepped back.
The Loom glowed warmly, threads weaving themselves like a living narrative.
Behind him, the three former Fates stared, stunned, powerless.
"You… rewrote destiny," Atropos murmured.
"No," Dream corrected gently.
"I rewrote the rules."
And as he walked out of the cavern, threads bowing out of his way like grass before the wind, the universe realized something new:
For the first time in eternity, fate belonged to someone who actually cared
Title: Fate Changes Hands