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The Fates were furious.

Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos had one sacred duty: to ensure the threads of life remained untangled, orderly, and unaltered. For millennia, they had spun, measured, and severed with precision, their work dictating the destinies of mortals, immortals, and even the gods themselves. To deviate from their plans was unthinkable. Yet now, in their timeless chamber, surrounded by endless threads of gold, a single strand defied their authority.

Clotho, the Spinner, leaned over her spinning wheel, her fingers trembling as she worked. "Something's wrong," she muttered, her voice laced with unease. The thread she had just begun to spin shimmered with an unsettling, unpredictable light. It was not golden like the others. No, this thread pulsed and shifted, its colors cycling wildly—blues and reds, greens and silvers, a chaotic dance of hues that made her dizzy to watch. It moved on its own, twisting and weaving without her touch.

Lachesis, the Apportioner, who had been inspecting the lines she was meant to measure, turned sharply at Clotho's words. "What do you mean something's wrong?" she asked, her voice taut with impatience. Her eyes fell on the rebellious thread, and her lips thinned. "That's... impossible."

Atropos, the Inflexible, sat nearby with her shears poised in her hand, ready to cut the threads when their time came. "Let me see it," she snapped, her tone sharp and unyielding as ever. She rose from her seat and crossed the room, her dark robes trailing behind her like a storm cloud. Her eyes narrowed at the rebellious thread. "What is this nonsense?"

"It's spinning itself!" Clotho exclaimed, her voice rising with frustration. "I've never seen anything like it. It refuses to follow my hands. Look!" She gestured wildly as the thread continued to wind itself around the spindle, moving as if possessed by some unseen force. "It's—alive. It's... out of control."

Lachesis stepped closer, her measuring rod clutched tightly in her hand. "Give it to me," she demanded, snatching the thread from Clotho's hands. She drew the rod across its length, trying to gauge its proper span, but the thread resisted her efforts. It slithered through her grasp like a living thing, coiling and darting away before wrapping itself around other threads, tangling and altering them.

"It's corrupting the others!" Lachesis hissed. "This... this isn't right. Every thread has a purpose, a length, a path! This one—" She stopped, her voice faltering as she stared helplessly at the wild thread. "It has no direction. It's rewriting everything it touches."

Atropos stepped forward, her shears gleaming in the dim light of the chamber. "Then we cut it," she said grimly. Her tone left no room for debate. "We sever it before it does more damage."

Clotho and Lachesis exchanged uncertain glances but stepped aside. Atropos raised her shears, the blades shining with divine authority, and brought them down on the thread.

SNAP.

Nothing happened.

The thread remained whole, untouched by the shears' bite. Atropos's face darkened, her icy composure cracking as she raised the shears again. She struck once, twice, three times—each blow more furious than the last—but the thread refused to yield. It shimmered mockingly, twisting away from her blades as if laughing at her.

"This is... impossible," Atropos growled, her voice shaking with uncharacteristic rage. "Nothing escapes the cut. Nothing!"

Clotho watched, her hands wringing nervously. "It's as if... it's protected," she whispered, almost to herself. "Something is shielding it. Something powerful."

"Or someone," Lachesis said darkly, her eyes narrowing. She released the thread, letting it writhe freely in the air, its chaotic movements weaving through the golden tapestry around them. "Whoever this thread belongs to, they are beyond our jurisdiction. They don't follow our rules."

Atropos turned on her sisters, her expression thunderous. "This is your fault," she snarled, pointing an accusatory finger at Clotho. "You spun it!"

Clotho recoiled, her eyes wide with indignation. "I did nothing wrong! I spun it as I've spun every thread since the dawn of time. It—" She faltered, glancing at the erratic thread. "It wasn't supposed to be like this."

"And you," Atropos said, rounding on Lachesis, "you should have measured it properly. If you had, we would've stopped this before it began."

Lachesis bristled. "Don't blame me for your failure to cut it! My rod can't measure what has no set length, no set future. This thread is... chaos. It's unnatural!"

Their argument escalated, voices rising and overlapping as the thread continued to twist and weave through the room, tangling with the threads of others. Each connection sent ripples through the golden tapestry, altering lives, changing destinies, and unraveling carefully laid plans. The Fates, so used to their omnipotence, could only watch in helpless fury as their work was undone before their eyes.

"Enough!" Clotho finally shouted, slamming her hands down on her spinning wheel. "Blaming each other won't fix this. We need to find out who this thread belongs to and stop them."

"But how?" Lachesis asked, her voice tinged with desperation. "It doesn't follow our rules. We can't measure it, we can't cut it, and we can't control it. Whoever they are, they're beyond us."

Atropos clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms with enough force to draw thin lines of ichor. "Then we find them," she said, her voice low and dangerous. "No one escapes Fate. Not gods, not mortals, not monsters. Whoever this person is, they've made a grave mistake by defying us. We will track them down, and when we do..." She lifted her shears, her eyes gleaming with cold, deadly resolve. "We will end them."

The sisters fell silent, their anger thick in the air like a storm cloud. They stared at the rogue thread, now weaving itself further into the tapestry, defying their every law. It twisted and danced, unwelcome and unyielding, tainting the order they had maintained since time immemorial. For the first time, the Fates—beings who governed the lives and deaths of all things—felt powerless. It was a feeling they would not tolerate.

"We keep this between us," Clotho said finally, her voice trembling with barely restrained fury. Her fingers gripped the edge of her spinning wheel so tightly the wood creaked. "No one must know."

Lachesis turned to her sister, her brow furrowed. "Do you think we could contain this if word got out?" Her gaze darted back to the thread as it looped itself through the golden strands of other lives. "If the gods, the monsters, or even mortals found out that someone had escaped our control..." She hesitated, as if speaking the thought aloud would make it real. "The very idea would spread like wildfire. They'd see it as proof that Fate can be rewritten. That it can be defied."

"Exactly," Clotho said. "Our authority would be questioned. Our work unraveled. Every fool with enough ambition or desperation would try to twist their destiny to their liking. Wars would be waged over it. Chaos would spread. And we would lose everything." She shook her head, her voice hardening. "No. This thread is an aberration, nothing more. We fix it, quietly and quickly, before it disrupts any further."

Atropos sheathed her gleaming shears at her side, her lips curling into a grim smile. "Then we agree. We find the owner of this thread. We cut them down before they can disrupt the order of things. And we leave no trace."

"And if we fail?" Lachesis asked softly, her voice almost drowned by the hum of the spinning wheel.

Clotho's face darkened. "We won't fail."

The three sisters turned their focus back to the thread, watching as it slithered through the tapestry, entwining itself with other threads, rewriting fates in its wake. Already, subtle ripples were spreading, lives shifting in ways they couldn't predict. It was infuriating, frightening. But they were the Fates. They had kept the cosmos in balance since the dawn of time. They would not let a single rogue thread undo them.

"Clotho," Atropos said sharply, "can you trace its origin?"

Clotho shook her head, her jaw clenched. "It's unlike anything I've ever spun. It doesn't behave like a normal thread. It doesn't begin where it should. It's as if it simply... appeared." She hesitated, then added reluctantly, "Something—someone—is protecting it. Shielding it from us."

Lachesis cursed under her breath. "If someone is interfering, then this isn't just a rogue thread. It's deliberate. Someone wants to undermine us."

"And they will regret it," Atropos said darkly. "We've dealt with rebels before. Titans, gods, mortals—they've all tried to escape us, and they've all failed."

"But this isn't like before," Lachesis countered. "This isn't a mortal trying to outrun death or a god defying our timeline. This is different. This thread doesn't just evade us—it changes the very fabric of the tapestry. Every thread it touches bends to it, altering fates we've already set. If we don't act soon, it could undo centuries of work."

Clotho took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. "We can't afford to panic. We find the thread's owner, and we end this. Quietly. No one else can know. If word spreads..."

"It won't," Atropos interrupted, her voice firm. "We'll deal with this. Permanently."

The sisters nodded in grim agreement. In all their immortal existence, they had never faced anything like this. But the Fates did not bow to fear. They would find the owner of this thread, this rogue force that dared to defy them, and they would restore order.

Somewhere far beyond their chamber, beneath a sky heavy with stars, a young figure walked alone through the wilderness, unaware of the chaos their existence had unleashed. Each step they took rippled through the cosmos, tugging at threads they could not see. They were free, unbound by the rules that governed all others.

The Fates would come for them. But they were unlike anything the sisters had ever faced. The hunt had begun, and the balance of the universe hung in the balance.

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And so, the Hunt begins!