Silent Gods

It was at that moment that Cassandra's voice rang out from the bedroom, summoned by the thunder that had shaken the windows of the house.

"Rhea?! What's happening?" Her voice was tense, alarmed, the sound of the bed creaking as she tried to push herself up against the pillows, the crutch abandoned beside the

bed, her bandaged leg keeping her imprisoned. "Rhea!"

Rhea turned toward the inside of the house, her face still pale, her hand gripping the doorframe to keep from falling.

"Cass, don't move. Stay where you are." Her voice came out louder than intended, an attempt to keep control of a situation that was already slipping away. "There are two...

women. At the door. They say they know you."

"What?" The sound of the bed creaking louder, then the noise of something falling to the floor — the crutch, perhaps, or the remote. "What women? Rhea, let me see—"

"You can't get up, Cass." Rhea turned toward Thora and Eir, a mix of terror and determination in her eyes. "Stay here. Wait."

But it was already too late. From upstairs, Cassandra had made it to the hallway with difficulty, leaning against the wall, the crutch in one hand, the other gripping the banister

with a force that whitened her knuckles. Her face was contorted with pain and effort, but her gaze was sharp, alert — the Director emerging even from beneath the covers of a convalescent bed.

She stopped at the top of the stairs, her breath labored, her eyes settling on the two figures on the landing.

"Eir."

"Cassandra." Eir's face opened into a genuine, almost moved relief, as her emerald-green eyes swept over the Director, over the crutch, over the still-bandaged leg. "It's still

you. Recognizable, despite everything that has happened since then."

"What are you doing here?" Cassandra's voice trembled, but not with fear — with a premonition that she already knew, with painful certainty, what was about to come. The

weight of that question was already an answer.

Thora stepped forward, and the sky above them grew darker still, a shadow gathering as if the world itself were holding its breath.

"The Norns must speak with you, Cassandra Hale. We have not come to bring you more visions. We have come to bring you before them."

Cassandra gripped the crutch, her knuckles white, the weight of her body bearing down entirely on her good leg.

"I can't walk."

"You won't have to walk." Thora's voice was firm, but not without a strange gentleness. "The passage will take you where you need to go, whatever your physical condition. The

Norns know you are injured. That is why we have come."

Rhea spun toward Cassandra, climbing the first steps to look her in the eyes, terror painted on her face, but also something else — an anger that was already rising, already

making its way through the fear.

"Cass, what does this mean? Who are the Norns? Why are they here?"

"Rhea, now is not the time—"

"Wrong." Rhea's voice grew sharper, louder, as if fear itself were transforming into something else. "It is exactly the time."

Thora observed the exchange with eyes that seemed to see through both of them, beyond the words, beyond the bodies, to something deeper. Then she turned to Cassandra,

her voice lowering until it became almost private, ignoring Rhea's presence for an instant.

"Before all of this begins, the Norns wish to know one thing, Cassandra Hale. Do you want this woman to see what you are about to see? To know, together with you, the weight

of the choice that will be placed before you? The weight of the imminent future?"

Time, on the stairs, seemed to stop.

Cassandra looked at Rhea at the bottom of the stairs. Her terrified face. Her eyes silently begging her to say yes. But also the anger already furrowing her brow, her mouth

tightening into a hard line, her hands trembling not only with fear but with something more burning.

And Cassandra felt her heart break an instant before she even opened her mouth.

"No." The word came out hoarse, almost strangled. "I want her to stay out."

The silence that followed was absolute. Even the wind seemed to hold still.

Then Rhea exploded.

"What?!" Her voice came out like a lash, so loud that Cassandra stepped back on the stair, the crutch striking the step with a dry sound. "You're telling me that two goddesses

have appeared at our door to take you God knows where, and I'm supposed to stay here? To do what? To wait for you to come back? To hope you come back?"

"Rhea, please—"

"Don't 'please' me, Cass." Rhea didn't raise her voice — she lowered it, and that sudden, icy calm was worse than any scream. "You just shut me out of something that

concerns your life — our life — in front of two strangers who make the sky tremble with a single glance, and you don't even have the decency to look at me while you do it."

"I'm protecting you."

"You're excluding me!" Rhea's shout was so sudden that even Thora started. "It's always the same story with you, Cass. Always. You decide what I can handle, what I deserve

to know, what's best for me, as if I were a child to protect from the world instead of a woman who chose to stand by your side. Like you've always done with Ksen. Always."

"That's not true—"

"It's not true?" Rhea laughed. "Then tell me what's different, Cass. Tell me why I can't come with you. Why I can't know what's happening?"

"Rhea, you don't understand—"

"I don't understand?" Rhea took a step forward, climbing a step, and Cassandra, for the first time, truly saw her — not the Rhea who brought her coffee in bed, who set the tray

on her lap, who dried her tears. But the Rhea who had spent years at her side. The Rhea who, perhaps, in that moment, was saying everything she had never said.

"Then explain it to me, Cassandra. Explain why I have to stay here, in this house, worrying, wondering if you'll come back, if you'll be okay, if someone will protect you. Explain

why my being here every single day isn't enough to be admitted into that part of your life."

The silence that followed was broken only by the thunder that rumbled even closer, and by Eir's voice, moved, almost pained.

"Cassandra... perhaps it's right that she—"

"No." Cassandra's voice came out firmer than she felt, but she couldn't hide the tremor running through her fingers on the crutch. "I want her to stay out. I don't want her to see

what awaits me. I don't want her to be forced to carry a weight that doesn't belong to her, that she never asked to carry."

Rhea looked at her for a long moment, her eyes filling with something that was no longer just tears — it was a deeper wound, more ancient, that perhaps had been waiting for that moment to surface.

"Then you haven't understood anything." Rhea's voice cracked, and for an instant Cassandra saw the anger give way to pure, naked, defenseless pain.

"You haven't understood that I chose this weight the day I chose you. That there is no part of your life from which I want to be excluded, not even the one that scares me. But if

it's easier for you to believe that I'm too fragile to bear it, then maybe it's better this way. Maybe it's better that I find out now what kind of place I truly occupy in your life."

"Rhea—"

"Go, Cassandra." Rhea's voice was flat, empty, worse than any scream. "Go with them. Come back if you can. But don't ask me to wait for you with a smile while you decide for

me what I should or shouldn't know. Because this time I won't. This time, when you come back — if you come back — I might not be here."

The sentence fell between them like a stone.

The pain that crossed Cassandra's face was so deep that for a moment she seemed to forget the pain in her leg, to forget everything except those words.

"Rhea, please—"

But Eir placed a gentle hand on Thora's shoulder, a silent signal, and the air around Cassandra began to ripple, the choice already made, irrevocable.

"I'm sorry." It was the last thing Cassandra managed to say, her gaze fixed on Rhea — on that face she had never seen so closed, so distant, so wounded — before the world

around her dissolved into a white, absolute light.

There was no transition. There was no darkness.

Cassandra found herself, simply, elsewhere.

And behind her, at the bottom of the stairs, Rhea stood motionless, watching the point where she had disappeared, the rain beginning to fall, the first heavy drops crashing

against the asphalt and against her face without her making any move to step aside, her eyes fixed on the void, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

"Bitch." The whisper escaped through her teeth, laden with all the pain that words had failed to contain. "Cowardly bitch. God, I hate you."

---

An endless void surrounded her, not black but a pearly gray, without walls, without visible boundaries, as if she were inside the instant before the creation of anything. Thora

and Eir were at her side, both gazing toward the center of that void, where something enormous, ancient beyond any human measure, was slowly taking shape.

The three Norns stood before her.

Not seated. Not standing. Simply present, in a way that defied every law of physics and human perception. Their faces were motionless, devoid of expression, their eyes sealed

with threads of black silk, sewn through their eyelids with a precision that took one's breath away.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"Where am I?" asked Cassandra, her voice trembling despite every effort to keep it steady.

"Your destiny has become entwined with our design more than you know." Skuld, the youngest, had a sharper voice, almost childlike, but devoid of any trace of innocence. "And

because the divine loom needs you to see what is happening."

"I don't understand." Cassandra clasped her hands, feeling the weight of her own body in that weightless void. "What am I supposed to see?"

"This is your thread." Verdandi's voice was deep, almost musical, but devoid of warmth. "Every life is a thread on this loom, Cassandra Hale. Every choice, every heartbeat, every breath is a knot that tightens or loosens."

"This is Rhea's thread." Urd's voice was without judgment, only a truth that weighed like stone. "The woman who lives with you, who cares for you, who loves you in her silence.

Her destiny is tied to yours by knots that do not loosen easily."

"This is Ksenia's thread — your wife." Skuld made it float beside the other two.

Cassandra looked at the three threads floating before her, intertwined as they had always been, as she had always hoped they would be.

"And so?" she asked. "Why have you shown me this?"

"Because the loom is in danger." Verdandi indicated the center of the great warp, and Cassandra followed her gesture. There, in the middle of the design of millions of threads,

a stain of a dark, pulsing red was slowly spreading like ink spilled on white fabric. "The contamination is spreading. The goddess being dismantled, piece by piece, is leaving

traces of herself at every point where her code is touched. Every stolen fragment, every drop of divine blood spilled, is reflected here."

Cassandra looked at the stain that continued to spread, and felt the blood run cold in her veins.

"Freyja."

"Yes." Urd's voice was a sigh. "Her essence, torn apart and recombined, is infecting the loom. If the process continues, the reborn goddess will be a threat not only to the mortal world, but to every thread of this design."

"And what can I do?" Cassandra's voice trembled. "I'm trapped in a bed with a hole in my leg, and you're asking me to fight a goddess?"

"No one is asking you to fight with your hands." Urd looked at her with sewn eyes that still seemed to see through her. "We are asking you to choose."

The air around Cassandra grew denser, almost solid, and the three Norns, for the first time, spoke in unison — three voices merging into one, like a chord that vibrated through Cassandra's bones.

"A war is coming, Cassandra Hale. A bloody war, that will not be fought with ordinary weapons. The goddess being rebuilt in a human body will not simply be a threat to the

mortal world — she will be a threat to every thread of this loom. Every life she touches will be broken. Every story that crosses her path will be erased."

"And what can I do against all this?" Cassandra felt panic rising in her throat, but her voice, miraculously, remained steady. "I am a woman, not a goddess. I have no powers, I have no—"

"You have a choice." Urd's voice interrupted her, and the loom before them trembled for an instant — not a physical tremor, but something deeper, as if the entire fabric of reality

had held its breath. "You have a choice, Cassandra Hale. And only you can make it."

The silence that followed was not empty. It was charged, dense, like the air before a lightning strike — and Cassandra felt it pressing against her skin, against her bones, as if

the weight of every single life ever woven on that loom had suddenly concentrated on her, and only on her.

"You can choose to face the threat alongside the gods." Urd's voice carried no judgment. It carried only truth, and truth, at that moment, weighed more than any sentence. "But if

you do, one of these two threads will be severed in the course of the battle. Ksenia, or Rhea. One of them will die. And now you will have to decide which one."

The void tightened around Cassandra like a fist.

She could no longer breathe. The air — if it could still be called air in that timeless place — seemed to have grown dense as water, and her heart hammered against her ribs

with a violence that almost hurt physically, a caged animal slamming against the bars looking for an escape that did not exist.

The red thread and the blue thread floated before her eyes, suspended in the gray void, intertwined with each other as they had always been — as she had always,

desperately, hoped they would remain, never daring to ask what would happen if that weave were to one day come undone. Now she looked at them, and she couldn't stop

looking at them, because she knew, with a certainty that froze her veins, that one of them — sooner or later — would stop shining.