Cinder, The Funeral Weaver

  The air here reeks of ancient cobwebs and rotting damp. My legs brace against the throne of bones, each creak beneath my weight a reminder—nothing has been comfortable since that day.

  Shadows writhe in the corners. My devotees lurk in silence, their countless eyes glinting like cancerous growths in the candlelight. Fear has long since severed their tongues.

  — Another night, another debt. How long until the Nest demands payment? Something stirs in the depths below us. Something older than memory. —

  A little spider crawls toward me, cws scraping stone. In its mandibles: a scroll of silk, stained with rust-brown blood—reports from the eastern tunnels. I snatch it, unrolling the parchment with a flick of my wrist.

  — Rebellion. Again. —

  Predictable. The weak cling to hope like flies to a shattered web. But I—I trade in controlled chaos, a scourge so absolute it devours even the unknown. How does one halt the inevitable? How does one strangle death itself?

  The daggers—fangs of my oldest devotee— catch the light, mirroring my warped reflection.

  — Let the Blind Weavers spin their fates in the Mask Bazaar. —

  My voice is windborne ash.

  — Show them the cost of biting their queen’s hand. —

  The little spider bows, dissolving into the gloom.

  Alone.

  Almost.

  Something shifts within the cocoon behind me. Not mine. Not obedient.

  My threads tense.

  — Spy? Assassin? Or merely another fool? —

  No matter. The shadows of the Deep Nest are mine—and tonight, they hunger.

  ---

  The Joker

  [Oxygen is a luxury here. The tunnels swim with methane, thick enough to choke the unworthy. How funny—I haven’t needed to breathe in centuries.]

  [The beasts around me hunt, fuck, die. Pointless. I colpse, ughter tearing through my chest like a parasite. Memories of a Requiem flood my veins—]

  [—Hahaha—HAHAHA! AAAAGH!—]

  [The devotee takes the bait. Its mask splits open, bdes glinting. Let it come. Let it try.

  My threads surge. They slither up its face, pierce its eyes, burrow into its brain. I don’t mimic—I colonize.

  Flesh surrenders. The corpse twitches as my strings puppet its spine. Cordyceps to an ant.

  The Weaver will never smell the rot beneath her own nest.

  I slip into the Ashborn Vilge, a ghost in a dead man’s skin. The local weaver circles her own beast, oblivious that I’m already inside.]

  ---

  Cinder, The Funeral Weaver

  I know that sound—desperate steps, stunted legs that mark the ground with a characteristic tic tic. It’s them. They approach.

  I move to meet the darkness. The cocoons hang static around me, united like veins of a single body functioning under one mind.

  An insect writhes inside its cocoon, a rva fighting to break free. Above, the Blind Spinners dangle from the cavern ceiling, their threads suspending silk-wrapped bodies that still twitch.

  I spit on the ground in disgust.

  — Weak old men who long for a Nest too calm. When did your exoskeletons grow so frail? The Nest changed, and we changed with it. Stop preaching false glory. Stop worshipping the Bell Weavers who abandoned us. Stop clinging to the purity of the Daughter of Three Bloods. Red should only be the color of blood—her dress is too vish for the hell we inhabit now. —

  My voice rasps like stone grinding against stone—the voice of someone who’s breathed ash and dust for lifetimes. These words are sentences carved in silk glyphs. Traitors deserve death.

  — Let the Red Queen return... —

  One voice dares to whisper it. Others echo.

  — SILENCE! — My gnds convulse, venom dripping from my fangs. — She is DEAD. Her efforts are nothing but aimless silk—no flexibility, no adhesive, just liquid staining the ground without purpose. —

  — Long liv-—

  A crunch. Bones slide through flesh. Then… silence.

  I sigh, swallowing the poison reflexively. It burns my throat like the aftertaste of disappointment.

  — Kill the rest. Mutite their limbs. Let their blood paint the Vilge entrances. —

  I pluck two eyes from the arachnid’s mask—they squirm like funeral worms fleeing a corpse—and crush them between my skeletal fingers, searching for truth in their crystalline remains. What were you plotting?

  In the distance, a weaver inspects her mounted devotee. My gnds tremble again. But the Blind Spinners speak first:

  — Queen... Beast... Mother... What was the Red Queen, in the end? —

  My hairs rise. The mention of her isn’t hatred—it’s something else. The cataclysm changed the Nest, and with it, us.

  — Stories written in blood... — hisses another spinner. — Bones thin as feathers. The traitors’ fates are sealed, Ash Weaver. —

  Their voices harmonize—each sylble, each hissed S, a relic of what we once were. No, not weavers. Beasts. Beasts with consciousness. We rule not for prestige or riches, but to survive. To protect our own. To wield power.

  The Nest has changed. Most have reverted to their primal selves. Rebuilding is slow. Threads remain untied. Silk lies damp.

  ---

  The Joker.

  [Ah, grudge—as primitive as they are.]

  [But hatred breeds distraction—their fatal fw. As the crowd debates retribution, I slink toward a silk reel. My threads slither through the corpse’s eye sockets, weaving into the fibers unnoticed.]

  [The body drops. A wet thud cuts through the murmurs.]

  — Did she kill her own devotee? —

  — A protest! —

  The revolt ignites instantly. Prejudice is a sharper weapon than any bde—and the innocent weaver, now framed, reaps what Cinder has sown.]

  ---