He slumped to the ground beneath the crooked pear tree, vaguely aware, through the haze that wrapped his thoughts of his hands trembling on his cane, of his father’s footsteps, of the reflexive hiss as the older man realized what was happening…

And Adrian Reed did.

If this was death, it felt extremely strange. Was death supposed to tingle?

Adrian blinked, straightening. Did people retain their powers after death? They must — he was still seeing the pale threads that underwove the universe, those sharp, cold fibers that had bent so readily at his touch, allowing him to shape the universe to his will…

Of course, he’d paid in blood. Those threads were never meant to be held by mortal hands, and the webwork of fine scars covering his hands was mute testament to the price he’d paid for his ability.

Reflexively, Adrian glanced down at those hands, expecting to see the dulled, dead gray fog that the bloodless shades — one of which he now was — were largely composed of.

Instead, he saw pale threads.

It was then that Adrian really looked at his surroundings.

He wasn’t in the Underworld.

He wasn’t in any of the Upperworlds.

He was in the Bottomless Void, the place that looked empty to all but him.

He was standing inside the World-Tapestry.

…no.

He was the tapestry.

‘How…?’

The thought had barely entered Adrian’s mind when the answer came to him, shivering along the pale strands that surrounded/formed him.

‘Blood. My blood. Not spilled by any typical definition of the term — but paid to Fate anyway … through death …

‘And, of course, the price for wielding Fate’s strands is always blood. Paying the ultimate — the whole — price buys Fate itself…’

Adrian smirked. His father would flip out…