Prologue: The Loom of Fate

In the space between seconds, in the timeless spires beyond the mortal coil, Kairos Fateweaver perched before one of the greatest artifacts of Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways: The Loom of Fate — that vast and living web spun not in silk, but in truths and lies, potentials and paradoxes. In its unfathomable weave were born stars, kingdoms, and the fates of mortal things great and small. Each thread a truth, or a lie, waiting to be pulled. Strings of every soul, every life, stretched across its polychromatic surface, woven into paths of glory, suffering, birth, death, and a thousand forgotten maybes.

Claws curling thoughtfully in empty air, Kairos studied the weave. The two heads of the Greater Daemon turned in unison. One stared into the crystallised window of the past, judging the paths of history, flickering and fading. The other regarded everything that was which did not exist, gaze burning with the ever-shifting flame of what was yet to be. Neither blinked. Two gazes, peering in opposite directions along the axis of Time itself.

"There…" said the future-headed voice, its tone like molten silver poured onto cracked glass.
"There?" echoed the past-facing twin, kaleidoscopic feathers rustling with faint suspicion.

From the infinite skein of the Loom, three threads glimmered subtly — not in brightness, but in rhythm. Reverberating subtly with the vicissitudes of fortune. Each pulsed with irregular cadence, like broken songs trying to harmonize and finding no chorus to join. One shimmered with unreadable glyphs, its pattern shifting with every glance, resisting the assuredness of place and time as though it wasn't truly here nor there. Another burned softly, composed and mournful, a crimson thread weeping fire in a steady, sombre drip, dependable and assured where the first was shifting and uncertain. The third coiled like a serpent of steel, tight with suppressed fury, vibrating with compressed power waiting to be unleashed. It was wound tight, threatening to snap and ruin the pattern all around it.

Kairos regarded the three threads, one head scouring their history and origin, the other envisaging their potential and the possibilities that lay in their future path.

"These threads are nothing. One who sees nothing, scorching her eyes with fire. One who speaks to nothing, adrift like a leaf. And one who does nothing, buried in useless scrolls. If these are meant to weave anything at all, it will only be a pattern of mediocrity," spoke the left head, snorting in contempt. Green eyes gazed into the past, unimpressed by what it saw. Yet, the right head chuckled, amber eyes seeing the pattern forming around these seemingly anonymous strings in the great pattern.
"You do not see the grandeur of their potential."

"They are not grand," murmured the past, scepticism rolling like a physical, multi-faceted hue across its neck-feathers.
"Not yet," hissed the future, assuredness in every polychromatic syllable.

Kairos lifted a single, curved talon, an avian grin playing in his eyes, and plucked at the first of the strings.

The thread bent at his touch, curling into new shapes that blurred its contours. Winds stirred around it, whispering half-told legends and forgotten names.
"A speaker of wind. She will learn that truth is mutable, if given breath."

He touched the second, the one that bled grieving droplets of fate. A line so straight and true it could have cut the very stars, a thread that refused to bend even under the touch of Kairos' claw. It only offered pain and viscera when touched, dripping pink fire instead of dye.
"A prophetess. She believes that destiny is fixed. But even the end of the book can be altered."

Lastly, his claw lingered on the adder-like thread. It coiled tighter at his nearness, almost hissing, a warning of fury and rage. Knowledge, unspent and without release, crackled along its length like trapped lightning, mingling with a fury that could burn worlds.
"A vessel of fury. Caged in ivory thought. She will act. And act. And act. And existence will tremble before her wrath."

Kairos' talons played in the air above the Loom, like a puppet-master testing the strings of the marionette, and the Loom keened softly, a gentle screech of possibilities grinding against one another. The three threads trembled in unison, sending ripples arcing across the surrounding pattern of reality.

"We are adrift in a storm of prophecy, and you would waste time on these pathetic sparks when what we need is fire. It approaches. You have felt it, that thing which should not be." The left head scowled, eyes narrowing as it studied the threads once more, yet finding nothing that set them apart, nothing that spoke of their greater purpose.
"I feel it more than I see it now. The Loom stutters. There is a place, somewhere, where the thread does not split, does not fray or knot. It... vanishes. Something unspun, and these three are drawn to that point."

Both heads paused and stared at one another. Or, past one another, failing to meet in the common ground of the present. The Loom hummed, a little too quietly, drawing their gazes once more.

"A flaw?" suggested the head that saw the past. The future head tilted, thoughtful, consideration discolouring the air around them.
"An absence. A choice not yet made, by someone who should not have had it."

Together, they once more turned to regard the three threads, carefully taking in their past and their future. One burned hotly with violet fire, angry and erratic. The second danced like upon a breeze, weaving and curving in a way that defied even the Loom's logic. The last one marched on, arrow-straight, leaving a path of agony and bleeding fate, tiny branches trying to break free.

"Then why choose these three?"
"Because they choose themselves."

"Even the blind girl?"
"Especially the blind girl."

A flicker stirred the Loom. The Daemon stared, as for a split second the threads knotted, overlapped... and skipped. An impossible motion in the pattern of reality. Something that wasn't meant to happen... and yet would.

"That wasn't-" the left head began, glaring at the Loom as though the past contradicted itself.
"It is. Its heartbeat is drawing closer," the right head confirmed, nodding sagely, concern colouring its tone in impossible hues.

"It does not belong. It has no prophecy," the head who sees the past muttered. The future head grinned, and chuckled.
"Yes. And I wonder, when the Loom stumbles... what will walk free?"

They stared at the three threads again, watching as they followed the pattern. For now.

"They will fracture. They will burn. They will betray." The right head spoke the words almost reverently.
"And still you gather them." The left head sighed. The right head grinned, amusedly.
"We cannot stop the pattern from fracturing. But perhaps... we can choose which hands hold the thread when it does."

The threads didn't just exist now — they unravelled both forward and back as Kairos watched them. Possibilities bloomed and withered in a breath, in a beat of his Daemonic heart. Betrayals, bonds, tragedy, power. They would serve. Or destroy him. Or each other. Or all of the above. Even with his exceptional sight, even with both past and future at his beck and call, he knew not what these three would be.

And still, Kairos smiled.

"These three," he said aloud, to the Loom, to the Warp, to the Changer of Ways himself.
"Let them rise. Let them break. Let them remake themselves, and me. The future has too long obeyed the past."

He plucked the chords.

The Loom sang and shuddered.

And far away, in a secluded Imperial monastery, a snow-swept Norscan encampment, and a candlelit Bretonnian court, three girls dreamed strange and fateful dreams.