Shadow Slave: Fateweaver
Chapter 1: The Inconstant Thread
The silence was the first thing that registered. After weeks submerged in the cacophony of the Dream Realm—the shrieking winds, the grinding stone, the endless, unspoken dialogue of destiny—the clinical hush of the containment facility was deafening. It was sterile, white, and suffocatingly sane.
Subject 07-88, internally still known as Liam, lay perfectly still on the cot. His body ached, but the pain was distant, secondary to the spiritual exhaustion that permeated his soul. His First Nightmare was over. He had survived. The Citadel of Ash was real, the Nightmares were real, and the System was real. And now, he was one of the Awakened.
He opened his eyes. The white ceiling was just white. But his new reality meant nothing was just anything anymore.
A faint, ghostly shimmer layered itself over the plaster above him. It wasn't the ceiling itself, but the residual possibility of the ceiling. If a pipe burst, if a monster breached the perimeter, if the structure failed in an unforeseen disaster, the ceiling would splinter and crack in a thousand different ways. His power, his new Aspect, showed him all those possibilities simultaneously, like transparent, overlaid images.
It was maddening. He had earned his Flaw, and it was a direct mirror of the Visionary Pathway's initial pitfalls.
A middle-aged man in a crisp uniform sat in a chair by the cot, holding a datapad. Counselor Valerius. Liam knew the type from the novels—the System Administrators, the first point of contact between the newly Awakened and the brutal world waiting for them.
"Feeling better, 07-88?" Valerius asked, his voice smooth, professional, and slightly patronizing.
Liam blinked, the effort feeling monumental. "Define 'better'."
Valerius chuckled, a dry sound. "Good. Humour is a positive sign of psychological stability, considering your… unique circumstance." He tapped the datapad. "Let's go over your results. I've seen some strange things in my career, but nothing quite like this. They flagged your Aspect as a Class-A anomaly, highest priority."
Liam waited, forcing himself to ignore the flickering, phantom outline of the chair—a version where it was a metal bucket, a version where it was a crumbling throne, a version where it was merely a pile of ash.
"Your stats," Valerius continued, reading from the screen. "They are low, bordering on critical for a successful Awakening, especially given the severity of your Nightmare. Strength, Agility, Endurance… all rated F. Soul Core is at E, barely functional. Your Aspect Ability must be the only reason you survived at all."
Liam nodded internally. His physical body was a civilian's, useless in a fight. His survival hinged entirely on the power that now haunted his perception.
"Your Aspect is designated Fateweaver." Valerius paused, raising a gray eyebrow. "It's a conceptual Aspect, focused entirely on precognition and reality alteration. It is, to put it mildly, terrifying."
Liam felt a chill that had nothing to do with the room temperature. Terrifying, indeed. In the Lord of the Mysteries universe, the Visionary Pathway was feared precisely because it dealt with the underlying logic of the universe, bypassing physical reality.
"Your primary ability," Valerius continued, "is Aura of Prophecy. The preliminary analysis shows it allows you to observe, with varying degrees of clarity, the immediate probable futures surrounding a target. You are, in essence, a walking oracle."
Liam confirmed this. The visions were what allowed him to dodge ambushes, bypass traps, and choose the one path through the chaos that didn't end in his immediate death.
"Now, for the issue," Valerius sighed, leaning forward. "Your Flaw. Every Aspect has one. Yours is tied intrinsically to your ability, and it's severe. It's called The Inconstant Thread."
Liam could have recited the description himself, but he needed to hear the official confirmation.
"The Inconstant Thread means you cannot switch off the Aura of Prophecy. Ever. You are constantly perceiving multiple, probable realities layered over the singular, actual reality. This leads to perpetual mental stress, exhaustion, and, most critically, confusion between what is and what could be. The Nightmare Spell is punishing you for playing with fate by making you doubt reality itself."
Valerius looked directly at him. "We saw the strain on your core. Every time you consciously use your ability, you risk spiritual damage, and the symptoms will manifest as intense disorientation, headaches, and, potentially, losing your grip on linear time and space."
Liam finally spoke, his voice dry. "I noticed."
"We've administered basic stabilizers, but they won't stop it. You will live the rest of your life perceiving the world not as a straight line, but as a web of flickering, contradictory threads. The only way to survive The Inconstant Thread is to develop rigorous mental discipline and, above all, never act on a perceived reality that hasn't been fully resolved."
The warning was exactly what he expected. Act on a half-formed vision, and he risks phasing himself into a non-existent reality, or worse, becoming a mere possibility himself.
"The other consequence," Valerius added, his voice dropping slightly, "is that while we can track your Aspect in the System, we cannot predict your actions. Your path is perpetually obscured by the sheer volume of possibilities you generate. This makes you both incredibly valuable and inherently untrustworthy. Understand, 07-88, we will be watching you very closely."
Liam met the counselor's gaze, focusing intensely until the flickering outlines of Valerius settled, for a brief, glorious second, into one cohesive form.
"Understood," Liam said, a calculated simplicity in his voice. He had survived the First Nightmare, a brutal test of combat, purely by running, hiding, and interpreting the complex dance of probability. Now, the real nightmare began: living with the power that saved him, the divine, terrible gift of the Fateweaver. He had traded his shadow for foresight, and the price was his sanity.
"I have logged your Aspect, Flaw, and abilities," Valerius concluded, standing up. "You will undergo basic integration training for the next two weeks before deployment to the Forgotten Shore. Try to rest. You'll need it."
As Valerius left, the door hissed shut, and the silence returned. Liam shifted his focus to the wall beside the bed. In one reality, it was just paint. In another, a massive, rusted nail was about to shear off and fly directly at his eye.
He sighed, a long, weary exhalation. A couple of hundred chapters? He thought, bitterly. Yeah, that sounds about right. Survival isn't about fighting the monsters; it's about not going completely insane before I even meet them. He closed his eyes, hoping to find a single, solid reality in the temporary oblivion of sleep.
He didn't. The visions followed him, a thousand different dreams, all happening at once. The Inconstant Thread had fully woven itself into his soul.