Unravelling
Category A: Third Place (2025) Monash Short Story Writing Competition
Author: Quin Ang
Dew retreats into the heart of the castle, flaxen hair trailing behind him. How much blood has already been spilled in these sacred halls, under the marble pillars that held up the heavens? How much more would be spilled?
Dew carefully sidesteps a dark patch on the crimson carpet. If it was anyone else, they’d dismiss the bloodstains as just a badly dyed part of velvet.
For a fraction of a second, Dew pauses in front of crazed hazel eyes in a mirror at the end of a hallway. He’s a mess: his hair has fallen out of its plait and tears litter his heavy navy coat. Red blossoms on his left side, and as if on cue, he clutches the area in an attempt to stifle the pain.
His skin is taut, as if something is pulling it, and there’s a too-familiar tightness to his chest. Dew hisses; four centuries of Unravelling and he still wasn’t used to the feeling of being about to Unravel.
Dew blinks, attempting to clear the fog settling over his mind – damn Unravelling – and his pace quickens. He needs more time. He needs Charys to be safe.
Why is it that out of all the worlds he’s visited, this is the only one he could actually call home?
Dew’s feet carry him to a room of grandiose opulence: soft silk sheets on huge canopy beds, ancient leather-bound books perched upon intricately crafted bookshelves, vibrant paintings in golden frames lining one of the room’s four walls. A figure draped in equally expensive fabrics stands in the centre of the room, azure eyes glassy; he absentmindedly tilts his head towards the creak of the door, a strand of brown unravelling from his slicked hair.
For the first time, Dew forgoes the formalities. “Charys, you have to leave.”
“To where?” Charys croaks. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.”
“Damn the stupid uprising. There are friends who care about you, who want you to live.”
“But what is a king without its people?”
Dew hears the faint thrum of footsteps in the hallway, but it’s unfamiliar – not the heavy footsteps of the soldiers who usually patrol the castle; they would be fighting off the revolution, far from this room, unless–
It’s almost instinctive when Dew positions himself against the door. His body feels weightless; there is no strength in his desperate attempt to keep the door closed. An electric shock runs through him, as if ants are crawling up his spine; he watches in horror as the strands of his own body start to pull apart into golden threads.
“Dew, it’s okay.”
Dew’s eyes meet Charys’. He sees in them the pity, the knowing.
(Dew has never hated his curse more.)
Charys leans out the window, face glowing ethereal under the gaze of the moon. Dew screams, desperate, but no sound comes out: he has no mouth. It’s started – strands separate from his body, dissolving into dust.
He Unravels.