Page 77 of The Devil's Canvas

Nothing more. Nothing needed.

"Calliope Arden’s gift was passed to her daughter, but fate was intercepted. A hand reached where it should not have."

They don’t move. They don’t need to, because the accusation is already here, they’re looking at me. And I know what they’re going to say, but knowing it’s coming and hearing it are two different things.

"When you made your deal, Julian," the leader says, "you did not only take Ophelia’s emotions. You severed her connection to fate itself. You stripped the Weaver of her thread, and in doing so, you unbalanced the Loom."

I don’t move. I don’t breathe.

Owen drags a hand down his face, exhaling slowly. "So let me get this straight—she was supposed to control fate. Her mother dies, and she inherits the gift. But Julian swoops in, makes a deal, and—" He snaps his fingers. "Oops. It goes to Melanie instead."

Theron lets out a low whistle. "That actually explains way too much."

Selene murmurs, half to herself, "And explains why everything has felt… wrong. Why Hell itself is shifting."

I clench my jaw. "That still doesn’t explain why it’s happening now."

The Council regards me for a long, heavy moment before they speak.

"Because the Loom is trying to correct itself."

The temperature drops further, the fabric of reality pulls tight, an unseen force pressing against my chest. The lights flicker—not like a power surge. Not like a failure.

Something else. A pull.

A shift.

The air hums, crackling with something neither living nor dead. The cold isn’t just physical—it’s hollow, absent, like warmth itself has been stripped from the room.

The next flicker comes harder, brighter—blinding.

Shadows stretch unnaturally across the walls, curling toward something unseen—

A voice. Soft. Steady. Unshakable. "I was murdered."

The light vanishes, sucked inward, and in its place—

She stands.

Just beyond the reach of the flickering glow, golden hair cascading in wild waves, as if even fate itself could never keep hold of her. Her eyes—Ophelia’s eyes—lock onto mine. Bright and endless, filled with something that has already seen too much.

She is not quite here, yet not quite elsewhere. She’s lingering in that space between existence and memory.

Her dress flows as if caught in an unseen current, shifting around her like she’s never been bound to something as small as a body, as limited as time.

The Infernal Council does not move.

No one breathes.

Because Calliope Arden has returned to tell her story.

She is not angry. She is not afraid.

She just looks at me.

And in that expression—I see it.

She knows.

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