The needle slipped.
Not fell—slipped, as if something unseen had nudged Selene's fingers aside.
She inhaled sharply and steadied her hand, the candlelight trembling across the royal workroom. Around her, the other seamstresses worked in silence, heads bowed, needles rising and falling in perfect rhythm. Too perfect. Selene had noticed it since the second day: no coughs, no murmured complaints, no whispered jokes to pass the long hours. Just fabric, thread, and the soft shh, shh of stitching.
And sometimes—
Whispers.
Selene told herself it was the wind.
She drew the needle through the cloth again. The gown beneath her hands was unlike anything she had ever sewn. The fabric was pale as moonlight, cool to the touch, its surface etched with patterns that shifted when she wasn't looking directly at them. Royal cloth, the mistress of stitches had called it. Woven long ago. Reserved for coronations, weddings… and funerals of kings.
Cross the pattern, Selene reminded herself.
It was the first rule her mother had taught her: never follow a pattern blindly. Cloth lies. Hands must think.
Across the room, Master Ilyra paced slowly, her footsteps soft against the stone floor. Her eyes lingered too long on each seamstress, as if counting not stitches, but breaths.
Selene's scar—thin, white, hidden beneath her sleeve—tingled faintly.
She ignored it.
By nightfall, the whispers grew louder.
Selene heard her name.
She looked up.
The seamstress beside her—Liora—had stopped sewing. Her needle hovered above the cloth, unmoving. Her eyes were open, but unfocused, glassy like still water.
"Liora?" Selene whispered.
No response.
The candle flames bent inward, leaning toward the gown at the center of the room. The royal cloth pulsed once, slow and deep, like a heartbeat.
Selene's breath caught.
She remembered the stories. The ones the older women stopped telling halfway through. The four seamstresses before her. How their names were removed from records. How their stitches never unraveled, even after they were gone.
Their souls were attached to the cloth, the rumors said.
A thread tugged.
Not in Selene's hands.
From the gown.
She felt it then—an invisible pull at her chest, gentle but insistent, like a hand testing a door that wasn't fully locked. Panic flared, sharp and cold.
"No," she whispered, dropping her needle.
The moment metal hit stone, the room froze.
Every seamstress lifted her head at once.
Their mouths opened.
And they spoke together.
"Finish the pattern."
Selene staggered back, heart hammering. The royal cloth began to glow, its woven lines aligning, locking into place like a spell reaching its final word.
Her mother's voice echoed in her memory, urgent now.
The curse lives in repetition. Break the line. Cross the pattern.
Selene grabbed her needle again—but not the silver one provided.
She reached for her own.
Old. Plain. Crooked from years of use.
She flipped the fabric edge and drove the needle against the intended stitch, crossing the glowing lines at a harsh angle. The cloth shrieked—a sound felt more than heard.
The seamstresses screamed.
The light shattered.
Selene fell to her knees as the whispers erupted into furious noise, threads lashing wildly, the gown convulsing as if alive. She clutched the fabric and spoke the words she had never dared say aloud before—words passed down in her family, broken, forbidden.
"By hand, by blood, by breath undone—What was bound shall now be none."
The room went dark.
When Selene opened her eyes, the candles burned normally. The seamstresses lay unconscious around her, breathing. The gown lay still—beautiful, unfinished, silent.
Master Ilyra was gone.
Selene looked at the crossed stitches in her hands, heart racing.
The curse was not gone.
But for the first time, it had been hurt.
And now it knew her name.