Rota Fortunae Wheel of Destiny — Morimens

On the day of her seventh birthday, her father rested a spinning wheel called "Moirae" upon her lap. It bore the name of three Goddesses of Fate long forsaken by prayer, yet the wheel itself was sleek and new, its copper axle gleaming with a metallic sheen, cold to the touch and heavy with silence. From that day forth, Arachne took up the wheel of fate-not as a choice, but as a sentence. For her unintended words always came true in time, and she could not turn away from the weight of such a burden. Day after day, she wove without respite, watching the threads of fate coil silently around the intricate wheel, weaving for the world the tremor of a first kiss, the neighing of warhorses, the first cry of a newborn, and the jagged epitaphs carved into stone. Among thousands of tangled filaments, she selected the "better" paths. She beckoned the dark tide of plague to ebb; she spared history from the consuming flames of war; she allowed civilizations to rebuild from the ruins... Yet, to sustain that web stretching across time and space, she also wove the strands leading to madness, betrayal, or eternal night. "What is truly better?" The silent wheel offered no answer. It only continued to spin. Virtue and vice, cradles and coffins-all flickered alternately along the same thread. Young as she was then, she did not yet know the shape of her own fate, yet at the end of countless threads, she had already glimpsed the world's end. "If the world cannot escape its ruin..." "No. I love this world." Arachne gazed upon the wheel, letting the unspoken thought dissolve into silence. "Then... what of my own fate?" She murmured to herself, with only hollow echoes wandering between the four walls. Countless civilizations rose and crumbled upon the web of fate. Pyramids slumbered beneath the sand; spacecraft streaked across seas of stars; languages changed like the turning of seasons; and the names of gods were interred in the dust of forgotten lexicons... And she sat there always, turning the wheel in her hands, watching humanity reenact its cycle of hope and devastation. Until, at last, a gentle voice that transcended the eternal prison pierced the silence of the ages. "Sister..." She finally withdrew her gaze from the apocalypse, looking down at Nefraea beside her. In those eyes, there was no judgment, no fear, only complete trust, like a blank sheet of paper awaiting the first stroke of ink. In that moment, Arachne finally understood: love and duty, hatred and ruin-all were the same in the eyes of fate. And so she gathered those memories she had once snipped and discarded-the pain, the regret, the loss that should have come but never did-and braided them into a single cord. Then, as the heaviest yet most tender of gifts, she tied it around Nefraea's wrist. "Our bond?" Arachne smiled. "It is fate." Arachne no longer needed to see her own fate clearly. For in the moment she picked up the wheel at age seven, she had already chosen the direction of her future. And the wheel of fate would go on turning. It would bear witness to the battle she was about to enter-a battle with no final curtain call.