The Oracle's house was nothing like I imagined. For some reason, I expected a crumbling temple, maybe with vines strangling its bones and incense smoke curling from half-broken chimneys.
But this one? It was clean. Elegant, even.
It sat perched near the edge of a wide meadow, the kind that swayed when the ocean winds rolled in. The breeze carried the salt of the nearby sea and gulls screamed overhead, but it was peaceful up here. The hill sloped gently, just enough to grant a full view of the aquamarine stretch beyond the cliffs and the endless blue beyond that.
The house itself was crafted from smoothed wood and pale sandstone, framed by flowering vines and sun-bleached wind chimes that sang in the wind. A small archway of knotted branches and seashells marked the entrance to her garden path.
It was beautiful. But it didn't feel ancient.
And then she walked out.
The Oracle.
She wasn't old. She wasn't cloaked in layers of shawls with cataract eyes or a voice like the creak of forgotten libraries. She was… maybe sixteen or seventeen, younger than I was when everything ended. Her dark curls were braided back, woven with tiny blue feathers, and her eyes were this startling gray. She wore a linen blouse cropped at the waist and a flowing skirt that fluttered with the breeze, barefoot. But she stood like someone who had been watching time long before it existed.
"Oracle!" My mother, Bena, greeted her with a warm tone, the kind she only used when speaking to people she respected deeply. "We've come. This is my daughter, Verdamona."
The girl looked at me and froze.
Not because of the horns—though, believe me, those always got the first stare—but because she recognized me like she'd seen me in a thousand dreams.
"Verdamona," she said slowly, as if tasting the name. Then, her expression shifted.
"I didn't think I'd actually see you," she whispered.
My mother looked between us, a little confused.
"Will you need much time?"
"Yes," the girl said immediately, her tone shifting back to formal. "I'll need the whole afternoon with her. You should go, Bena. There's still that shipment you needed to trade for, yes? Return by sundown."
Bena hesitated only slightly, then smiled, brushing my shoulder.
"I'll be back soon. Be good, Verda."
I nodded numbly.
"I will."
She left with the ease of someone who trusted everyone she met. That was her curse and her charm. And then it was just us two.
We stood in the meadow, the tall grasses whispering against our calves. I was still taking it in when she turned to me and asked:
"Verdamona… did that world end?"
"What?"
"The last time. Did it end?"
I opened my mouth to say no but the words caught in my throat, strangled by the weight of ash and crumbled cities and screaming skies. I looked away.
She knew.
"That's what I thought," she said gently, almost mournfully. "It's in your soul. You wear it like a ghost."
My voice was hoarse. "How do you know?"
She looked toward the sunlit sea.
"Because the God of Time sent you and me back."
"The God of what?"
"You might know him as the God of Runes," she added, tilting her head like it was obvious.
"The God of Runes is the God of Time? That... that doesn't even make sense."
"They have many names. And many domains. Time is his major divinity. Runes is just one of the smaller ones. Easier to understand for mortals. But make no mistake, he brought you and me back. He must've thought you were important enough to loop."
I staggered back, just a bit. My thoughts were unraveling faster than I could catch them. The God of Runes had the power to control time? Is that how he managed to send me back?
I found a tree nearby, one with a crooked trunk and thick roots, and sat beneath it. I needed something solid. Something that didn't shatter my understanding of everything every time I blinked.
She walked over and sat beside me, knees tucked to her chest.
"You don't have to say anything. But I'd like to listen."
I swallowed hard and stared out over the sea. The salt stung a little.
"It ended. The world. It… fell apart in pieces. One disaster at a time. And the final one, everything went black. I remember the sky ripping. I remember flames eating the continents. I remember being alone. Just for a moment. And then… I met her God of Runes... Time, who gave me another chance to save the world. And I decided to be born here."
She nodded slowly. "He doesn't save many. You're one of the few."
"Why did he regress you though?"
The Oracle didn't answer at first. She just leaned her head back against the tree bark, closed her eyes, and let the wind braid her curls again.
"Who knows?"
The Oracle didn't look at me when she said it. She just kept her gaze locked on the ocean, as though it were whispering the words to her.
"You're four years old but you can speak normally like this. You know why?"
I squinted up at her, still curled under the tree's crooked shade, the salt-stung wind blowing strands of my hair across my cheeks.
"Because of… regression?"
She nodded.
"The God of Time spoke to me before you were born in this life. He told me something strange. That I would become young again. That I would remember everything. And that I would meet someone who needed my strength, not the strength I had when I was old, but the strength I lost as a girl."
I blinked, absorbing the weight of it.
"So… you regressed too?"
"I did. Verdamona, I was the first person to escape North New Island after the Ashven Blood Rain."
"Wait. You were the first?"
If course I knew but I didn't want to sound suspicious, even though she knew a lot about me.
"Yes. But it came at a price. I made it off but when I passed the trial that let me leave, I lost my youth. I woke up old, barely able to walk without a cane. My body aged seventy years in one ritual night. So, in your last life, when you met me, I was nearing the end."
I was stunned. I remembered that woman. Frail, wise, half-blind but somehow seeing more than anyone else.
"That's why you were old," I whispered.
"Exactly. That's the price the Rune Weaver took from me," she said, folding her hands in her lap. "That's the only way off this island. The Trials of the Rune Weaver. You pass, you earn your thread that lets you walk beyond the sea's lock. But if you're not strong enough… the Weaver takes what you value most."
"So…" I trailed off, piecing it all together. "You're going to help me pass it?"
"This time, you already have the potential to pass without losing anything. You already did once. You were one of the Seven Heroes who survived the end of the world. The most adaptive of all of us."
That caught me off guard.
"Adaptive?"
"You didn't have a specialty like the others. Not the strongest, fastest or the smartest. But you adapted to anything. That's what made you dangerous. That's what makes you worth all this effort."
The sky above us was cloudless, an impossible blue stretching into infinity. I had no words. I had come here thinking this was just some spiritual ritual and ask for my divination. Instead, I'd stepped into a conspiracy written by gods.
She placed a hand on my small shoulder.
"Every decade, a ritual is done by the people of this island. Thirty children at the age of ten are selected. Thirty threads are spun for them by the island itself. And they are trained from ten until seventeen to prepare for the Thread Weaver's Trials."
"And I'll be one of them?"
"More than that. You'll be ready for it. Because your training doesn't start at ten like the others. It starts now."
I sat there, feeling the weight of her words like a crown on my forehead.
"Combat?"
"Combat, survival, resistance to being Tainted, emotion control, everything. I'm going to push you into someone who can surpass what you once were."
I couldn't help but stare at her, this girl-oracle whose hands had held the past and future at once.
"You… really think I can save the world again?"
Her voice softened to something almost sacred.
"This time, Verdamona, you won't just survive the end. You'll stop it."