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  Location: The In-Between

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  Divine Overseers—beings beyond mortal comprehension. All-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful. Yet even they would eventually succumb to the bane of all sapient life: boredom.

  A mighty sigh reverberated through the halls of the Bright Theatre. The Daemons, once immersed in their work, hesitated. The endless click-clacking of typewriter keys ceased as a dark and ancient shadow stirred atop its elevated dais.

  The Shadow, Master and Director of the Bright Theatre, stood solemnly above them. His star-like eyes scanned the faceless masks of his workers, watching as they shifted uncomfortably beneath his unseen gaze. They could not perceive him—he had ensured that much—yet his presence pressed upon them, vast and inescapable.

  "What works hast thou produced for mine eyes?" he sighed, as if his job were some great, inescapable burden.

  In an instant, a fresh stack of papers materialized in his grasp, covered head to toe in dark shifting runes.

  A strangled gasp escaped a Daemon as she stumbled forward, thrown off balance by the sudden disappearance of the weighted papers she had been holding. Her fingers twitched instinctively toward the empty space where they had been. Those pages were her pride and joy—decades of fate-crafting, chronicling the life of a peculiar mortal. Though magnificent, they were unfinished.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  And now, they lay in the Director’s hands.

  The Shadow scanned the pages, disinterest evident in his gaze. He was about halfway through the stack when he suddenly stopped to stare at the Daemon, piercing through her soul with his starry orbs. The Daemon was suddenly glad she could not see the expression—or lack thereof—that he was currently making.

  For a long stretch of time, there was only silence between them. Then, at last, The Shadow spoke.

  "Thy runes are hollow, lacking the depth of a well-wrought verse." His voice, while quiet, carried a silent disappointment. He made a motion, and the esoteric language imprinted on the pages began to morph, revealing the very bones of her script. "Wouldst Thou pen fate in such crude scrawl? Lo, thy structure wavers, thy phrasing doth stumble, and thy form is an insult to the tongue of the cosmos."

  The Daemon swallowed hard, fighting back a response. 'Of course you think it's crude!' She protested mentally, 'You perfected the damn thing!'

  The Shadow ignored her outburst, instead he peered intently at a certain section of the script, its framework having caught his eye. For a moment he was silent. Then, he hummed.

  "Yet... what madness is this?" He prodded the section with his bonelike fingers revealing a set of golden runes held together by shimmering strings. “A mingling of fates most strange, a conjoining of threads unspun. This fusion of destinies… 'tis unorthodox, yet enthralling.”

  The Daemon dared not breathe.

  The Shadow exhaled softly and slammed the stack shut. His earlier boredom had been replaced by a strange vivacity, which the Daemon could feel through their tentative mental connection. "Flawed, yet possessed of a certain... genius." His starlit gaze bore into her, unreadable. "Thou shalt refine this."

  It was not a request.