"No curds and whey, no laughter bright...just empty halls and shattered night."
The nursery was silent now.
No giggles. No hums. No little voice reciting rhymes in a sing-song whisper.
Just the sound of wind dragging across the floorboards like a breath too tired to leave.
At the center sat a single stool...carved from oak, polished by time. A silver spoon lay bent in a porcelain bowl, curds long dried to mold. A velvet ribbon fluttered beside it, tied once around a braid now scattered by memory.
And above it, spinning so gently it seemed to float...hung the web.
Golden threads, luminous as starlight and strong as sorrow, spread across the beams like veins in heaven's vault. Each strand shimmered with the echo of a lullaby, but no voice remained to sing it.
Not since 'she' vanished.
Before the Fall
Her name was Maribelle, though no one called her that anymore. They only knew her by rhyme.
Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey...
A line sung by children with glee, never asking who she truly was or what she truly feared.
She had once been a noble girl, daughter of Lady Astrelia of the Glen..famed for weaving the finest lace in the kingdom, lace so intricate it could ensnare moonlight.
Maribelle had inherited more than her mother's silk touch. She had inherited the gift.
The gift of thread-speaking.
She heard the voices in every thread. Silks whispered secrets. Ribbons hummed lullabies. Cobwebs crooned warnings.
She learned to braid her hair to silence the voices. She tied ribbons around her wrists to ward them off. But the world, in its bright and noisy cruelty, never noticed how much she bled behind her eyes.
She smiled.
She sat.
She sipped curds and whey like a proper girl, hiding the truth beneath pink bonnets and petticoats.
Until 'he' came.
The Spider
He didn't arrive in a carriage or crawl from a well. He came as a shadow, stretching from a crack in the nursery wall. He wore no crown, no form at first...only a voice spun in silk.
"You sit so still, little dream," he purred.
Maribelle froze, spoon mid-air.
"I've watched you listen," the voice continued. "You hear the things they pretend are pretend."
"I don't want to hear them," she whispered.
"But you do. And that means you belong to us."
From the shadow, legs unfolded...long and jointed like violin bows. The form wove itself together from soot and silk: a spider the size of a man, with eyes like polished jet and fangs that dripped silver.
He lowered himself from the ceiling, descending with a grace that defied weight.
"I am Arachion," he said. "First of the Threadbound. Keeper of Broken Fates."
She wanted to scream, but her throat held the sound like a cage holds a bird.
He extended a leg, and a thread of gold spun from its tip.
"This is the thread of truth," he said. "Touch it, and you will *see.*"
"No," she whispered.
But she did.
The Vision
The thread curled around her fingers like a kiss.
And in an instant, the world unraveled.
She saw the nursery dissolve into rot. The rhyme chanted by children twisted into a dirge. She saw her mother's hands bound in chains of lace, her mouth sewn shut. She saw herself...older, colder, seated eternally on her stool, bones wrapped in gold, her smile unbreaking.
She saw every story fray into horror.
She saw the Kingdom fall.
She saw the Thirteenth Hour.
When she tore her hand away, the skin burned with the shape of a web.
"What... was that?" she gasped.
"The truth beneath the lie," Arachion said. "The dream has ended. We are waking."
"You're a monster."
"No more than the kings who crowned your cradle with a rhyme."
He offered a hand...not as comfort, but as invitation.
"Come, Miss Mourning," he whispered. "The nursery is closed. The tale is ready to change."
The Becoming
She didn't remember leaving the nursery.
She didn't remember walking the halls or whispering to the dolls or spinning thread from nothing.
But the world remembered her.
Doors locked on their own when she passed. Mirrors refused to reflect her. Spiders crawled toward her with reverence, offering their webs like offerings at an altar.
She was no longer Maribelle.
She was "Miss Mourning."
Her petticoats turned gray.
Her hair curled like smoke.
Her voice became a lullaby no one wanted to hear.
She spun her web across the Fairytale Kingdom...not to trap, but to 'reveal.'
Every golden thread she wove showed someone their hidden truth.
The prince who betrayed Cinderella was found sobbing on his throne, tangled in memories of the love he never gave.
The woodsman who boasted of saving Red Riding Hood woke with his axe buried in a dream he couldn't wake from.
Even the Piper found her threads...notes in his song turning to sobs between each breath.
The Final Thread
But the world fears what it does not wish to see.
And so they came for her.
The Loreweavers, the Storykeepers, the righteous scribes of false endings.
They came with blades of silver and ink-black fire. They brought cages spun of iron lullabies and prayers too old to hold meaning.
She did not fight them.
She only whispered:
"I know what you are."
Then she vanished.
Some say she crawled into the walls of the nursery and weaves still, her thread drifting through the cracks of old books and lullabies.
Others say she walks the dreams of children who lie...twisting their rhymes until they choke on truth.
But one thing is certain.
The nursery remains untouched. No one dares enter. The curds have gone sour. The bowl collects dust. And the thread still glows, gold, faint, eternal.
If you listen very closely, you might hear it sing:
"She sat alone in faded light,
A child of silk, a heart so white.
But shadows crept where none could see,
And whispered tales of treachery..."
The rhyme never ends now.
It loops.
It frays.
It pulls.
And in the center of it all is "Miss MourningA girl who saw too much.
A girl who trusted a spider.
A girl who now sits in the cracks between stories.
End of Chapter 2
Next Chapter 3:The Queen of Glass (The Fall of Cinderella)