Chapter Fifteen: The Owl’s Thread

Nyeredzi walked through the dreamscape as though it were her own home. Her bare feet made no sound, her spirit-form a glimmering echo of her waking self. Here, she was not blind — here, her eyes shone like twin moons, casting pale light that cut through illusion and fear alike.

The Maposito had spun a web — a trap not of walls or chains, but of belief. They were beings of nothingness, feeding on what others believed to be true. Every fear the Bloodbound Circle carried, every doubt, every guilt — these were the materials of the prison the Maposito wove.

Nyeredzi understood. And so she unstitched.

She found Kael first, standing on a plain made of bones, his own reflection stalking him like a lion made of shadow and blood. His white hair was streaked with red, his hands already curled into claws. Nyeredzi stepped beside him, her fingers brushing his shoulder.

"You are not this," she said, her voice a whisper and a command.

The reflection faltered. Kael turned to her, his golden eyes flickering between fear and recognition.

"They want you to believe," Nyeredzi said softly. "Because if you believe it, you become it."

Kael's jaw clenched. "But it's in me."

"It is part of you," Nyeredzi agreed. "But it is not all of you."

She raised her hand, her spirit-light flooding the plain, washing the bones in silver until they softened into sand. The shadow-lion faded, and Kael stood in its place — whole, but not unmarked.

"One thread undone," Nyeredzi whispered.

She found Tafara next, caught in a forest made of eyes — each leaf a gaze, each root a hand reaching. His daggers were gone, and his laughter — the one thing that kept him whole — was caught in his throat. Nyeredzi cupped his face in her hands.

"Tricksters cannot be bound," she whispered. "Unless they believe the trick."

The forest sighed, dissolving into mist, leaving only Tafara standing beside her, wide-eyed but breathing.

One by one, she unraveled them all — Dendera from a wall that closed tighter with every doubt, Ranga from flames that ate their own tails, Liora from a mirror that showed her all the faces she could have been but wasn't.

Until only the Maposito remained.

They stood at the edge of the dream, their white robes shifting like liquid, their hands raised not in threat but in silent confusion.

"How?" one asked — the first sound they had made, a voice like wind through bone.

"You forgot something," Nyeredzi said softly.

The owl totem flared within her, wings spreading behind her spirit-form, her eyes no longer moons but black voids with stars burning deep inside. Her voice was no longer just her own — it was the whisper of every ancestor, every seer, every spirit that had ever walked beside the Bloodbound.

"You forgot the watchers."

The Maposito recoiled.

"We do not fight," Nyeredzi said. "We see. And what is seen can be unmade."

She raised her hands, her spirit-light folding into threads, weaving the dream itself around the Maposito, binding them not in chains, but in truth — the truth of their own emptiness. They had no totems, no ancestors, no roots. And without belief, they were nothing.

The dream folded in on them, and the Maposito dissolved — not into dust, but into silence.

Nyeredzi opened her eyes.

The Bloodbound Circle stood beside her, awake, whole, the dream shattered around them. The Maposito were gone, their white robes nothing more than ash on the wind.

Kael stared at her, awe and something close to fear in his eyes. "What did you do?"

Nyeredzi's half-blind gaze met his. "I showed them what they really were."

Liora swallowed. "And what was that?"

Nyeredzi turned to the rising dawn. "Nothing."