Here is Chapter 3 of Love with the
The sky above the forest brightened with the first hints of dawn, painting the clouds in hues of lavender and gold. Elara stood beneath the boughs of an ancient cedar, the Loom-seed cradled in her hands, still pulsing faintly with warmth. She had not slept. Sleep felt like a distant concept now, like something that belonged to a different version of herself—one who still believed she was only human.
Caelum had said little since the battle with the Scorned. He walked several paces ahead, silent but watchful, every step deliberate. She had begun to sense the energy around him, a quiet hum that vibrated through the earth like the low pluck of a harp string. Divine, yes—but something restrained too. She wondered what it cost him to remain in the mortal realm.
"Where are we going?" she asked, breaking the silence at last.
Caelum glanced over his shoulder. "To the Hall of Threads. It lies between realms, hidden from both mortals and gods. There, the Loom may be safely guarded, and your training can begin."
Elara tightened her grip on the seed. "Training in what? Magic?"
He slowed his pace until they walked side by side. "Not magic as your people know it. What flows through you is called essentia—the raw force of creation. Every divine soul wields it differently. For some, it becomes light. For others, flame. Your form of it… we'll discover together."
The path turned to stone beneath their feet—smooth and pale, veined with silver. As they passed under a stone arch formed by intertwining roots, Elara felt a subtle shift, like a veil being lifted. The air turned heavier, thicker, yet every breath came clearer.
They had stepped beyond the mortal realm.
A vast cavern stretched out before them, but it was no mere hollow of earth. It pulsed with light from unseen sources, and the walls shimmered like woven silk, their surface alive with moving images—faces, places, events both ancient and yet to come. The Hall of Threads was not a place. It was a living tapestry.
Elara stopped in awe. "This is…"
"Every thread of fate," Caelum said beside her, "weaves through this hall. Some are short and bright, others long and shadowed. Every choice, every death, every love and betrayal—it's all here."
She stepped forward slowly, drawn to a glowing thread that shimmered violet. As she brushed her fingers near it, an image surged into her mind—two lovers embracing beneath falling snow, tears on their cheeks, joy and grief tangled as one.
"Whose thread is this?" she whispered.
"Yours."
Elara recoiled slightly. "That was me? But… I haven't lived that yet."
Caelum's expression softened. "The tapestry is not bound by time as we understand it. All that may come, all that might have been—it's recorded. But a thread may fray. A thread may break. Nothing is set until the pattern is complete."
The enormity of it overwhelmed her. Her life was not a singular path, but a thousand possibilities woven into a pattern too vast for mortal minds. Somewhere, in one of those threads, she had found love—terrible and beautiful. Somewhere, she had lost it.
"Then how do I know which path is right?"
Caelum turned to her, placing his hand gently over hers. "You don't. You follow the thread that sings to your heart."
His touch steadied her more than she expected. She looked up at him, and for a moment, the Hall of Threads faded. All she saw was him. Not divine. Not distant. Just Caelum.
"I'm afraid," she admitted.
He nodded. "Good. Only fools walk toward fate without fear."
He stepped back, motioning to a raised platform at the center of the hall. Upon it stood three marble pillars, each carved with ancient sigils. Between them hovered a sphere of silver light—slowly rotating, casting moving shadows across the floor.
"This is the Weave's heart," Caelum said. "Place the Loom-seed inside."
Elara hesitated, then climbed the steps. As she reached the pedestal, the Loom-seed grew warm in her hands, vibrating gently like a heartbeat. She extended her arms and let it float from her palms. The sphere pulsed, absorbing the seed like a drop into a pond. Lines of light spread across the chamber—a web, connecting everything.
Caelum stepped up beside her. "It's begun."
"What has?"
"The reweaving of the pact. The gods bound fate long ago in order to keep chaos at bay. But time, even for gods, erodes all things. The balance has cracked. You are the new thread—one not of law or dominion, but of love, mortality, choice."
Elara felt her chest tighten. "And if I fail?"
"The tapestry unravels," Caelum said simply. "Mortals, gods—everything becomes dust and discord."
Silence settled between them like snowfall.
He turned to her again. "Your training begins now."
Over the next few days—though time passed strangely in the Hall—Elara began to understand the vastness of what she'd stepped into.
Caelum taught her to listen. Not with her ears, but with her essence. Beneath the quiet of the hall, she could sense the pulse of threads nearby—joy, sorrow, rage, desire. Emotions wove into the fabric of fate as surely as decisions did. She could touch a thread and feel the lives connected to it, the hopes wrapped around its edges.
She also learned to channel her own essentia. It began with simple exercises—lighting a candle with thought, lifting a stone without touching it. But Caelum pushed her further.
"Essentia responds to truth," he told her one day. "Not control. You cannot force it. You become it."
Frustrated, Elara sat in the center of a woven circle, breath labored from a failed attempt to shape a protective ward. "You make it look easy."
"It's not," Caelum said, kneeling beside her. "You're trying to become something you think I want you to be. That's not power. That's performance."
She blinked at him. "Then what is it?"
"It's choosing to be fully yourself," he said softly. "Even when the world demands you become something else."
His words struck deeper than she expected. All her life, she'd tried to fit—into her mother's quiet world, into the village's expectations. Now, for the first time, she was being asked not to shrink… but to expand.
That night, lying beneath a canopy of moving starlight, she whispered the truth aloud.
"I'm scared I'm not enough."
And the threads around her responded. Not with words, but with warmth. With connection. The next morning, her ward held perfectly.
—
On the fifth day—or what she believed to be the fifth—she and Caelum sat at the edge of the hall, watching as newly connected threads glowed with soft pulses of light. Some burned gold. Others flickered, uncertain.
Caelum said nothing, only watched. There was a weight behind his eyes again, the kind that had settled over him after mentioning the Scorned.
"You've seen the tapestry unravel before, haven't you?" she asked quietly.
He hesitated. Then nodded. "Long ago. Before even the gods divided their dominions. There was another weaver. Her name was Lysari. Like you, she bore mortal and divine blood."
"What happened to her?"
"She tried to weave love into a world of war. But her heart was torn—between a god who demanded loyalty and a man who offered freedom. She chose the mortal. The gods struck her down."
Elara swallowed. "That's awful."
"She became the first martyr of the Weave," Caelum said. "Her sacrifice is what allowed the old pacts to be forged. But the gods never forgave her. They do not forget betrayal easily."
"Do you think I'll end the same way?" she asked.
He turned to her slowly. "No. Because you won't be alone."
Elara felt the space between them narrow, not with distance, but with something unspoken. She saw it then, the flicker in his eyes—not just duty, not just care. Something deeper. And it terrified her in a way the Scorned never had.
"Caelum," she said, barely more than a breath, "you're not supposed to fall for me, are you?"
His gaze dropped. "I was forbidden from it before you were even born."
"Then why does it feel like you already have?"
He looked at her again, and this time, there was no hiding in his eyes. Only aching truth. "Because I have."
Her heart stilled.
No prophecy had prepared her for this. No thread she had seen in the pool had shown the softness in his voice when he said it. Or the fear that mirrored her own.
She reached for his hand slowly. He didn't stop her.
Their fingers intertwined, and for a moment, the hall shimmered—not in warning, but in blessing.
Maybe the tapestry was watching.
Maybe it approved.
Maybe, just maybe, it was weaving something new.
— End of Chapter 3