The desk lamp flickered just as the door shut behind him. Five figures turned in unison—he was the last to arrive, but the reason they were all here.

  “Is it urgent, Damien?” the old man asked, though he already knew the answer.

  Damien Locke nodded and shrugged off his coat. It was soaked through, the smell of rain still clinging to the wool. His black hair was damp and his expression sharp.

  “She’s too close,” he said. “If we don’t move tonight, we won’t get another chance.”

  “Killing her will raise questions,” said the woman in the corner, barely visible in the shadows. Her voice was steady, but cold.

  The room smelled faintly of burnt herbs and old wood. On the walls, faint chalk sigils pulsed softly, like dying embers. Everything about the space felt temporary—borrowed.

  “We’ve had this conversation,” muttered the man across from her—a large, broad-shouldered figure who looked like he belonged in a biker gang, not a hidden cabal. “She’s holed up like a feral dog, and her power’s nearly at Bonebinder level.”

  “That’s why it has to be now,” Damien said. He reached into his coat and drew out a broken strand of prayer beads—frayed, ancient, and humming with dormant energy.

  Gasps rippled through the room. The woman pushed her chair back; even the old man stiffened.

  “I won’t ask where you got those,” he said at last.

  “Good,” Damien replied. “But they’ll do the job.”

  “The Threads of Fate don’t just kill,” the woman whispered. “They choose. They *curse*.”

  “I know the cost,” Damien said. “I’ll take it. We just need to make sure the backlash lands elsewhere—some random soul. We'll find them later.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The heavyset man shook his head. “You’re playing roulette with someone else’s life.”

  “And if we wait,” Damien snapped, “she’ll take ten more.”

  A beat of silence.

  Then, from the fifth chair, a man who had said nothing until now spoke up.

  “How long?”

  “Less than a day,” Damien said. “Maybe hours.”

  The fifth man stood. Calm, quiet, commanding. “Then we act tonight. Anyone unwilling—leave now. But don’t expect us to forgive you if you do.”

  Nobody moved.

  “Good,” he said. “Join hands. It begins now.”

  Scene 2: The Offering

  The chamber had no windows, only stone walls and a low-beamed ceiling. Dozens of melted candle stubs cast uneven shadows across the floor.

  The circle was drawn in ash, though no fire had burned in the room.

  Six hands—five flesh and one something *else*—linked above the center. The artifact lay in a shallow wooden bowl, old as time, nestled in salt and nettles.

  Damien’s voice was steady. He’d practiced this. Spoken it in dreams.

  “She who binds herself to fate,

  Shall face its severed thread.

  By name unspoken, by path unseen,

  Let the curse fall where it may.”

  A pulse rippled through the room. Not wind—*pressure*. The air thickened, then contracted like a held breath.

  The beads shifted. One rolled.

  And in that moment, something unseen slipped from the world of the living and into the bowl. A presence. A spark. A name, maybe.

  They all felt it. Like a drop of ink in clear water—sudden, irreversible.

  “It’s done,” Damien said.

  “God help whoever it found,” the woman muttered.

  “God won’t,” said the old man. “That’s the point.”

  No one spoke after that.

  They left the room one by one. Not quickly, not slowly. As if walking away from a funeral—quiet, certain, unspoken.

  Only Damien lingered, eyes locked on the bowl.

  He didn’t smile. But something uncoiled in his shoulders, like tension finally loosed from a drawn bow. And somewhere far from that room, a ripple in the world had already begun.