Waking the loom…
No ads in the hall — just threads, souls and the shears
Play Moirai: The Thread of Fate — a free thread-cutting physics puzzle
Play Moirai: The Thread of Fate free. A Greek-myth pendulum puzzle: cut the threads at the turning of the arc and let every soul fall into its rune-matched vessel. 30 chapters, four acts, blades, briars, knotted threads and an endless Unraveling.
Moirai: The Thread of Fate is a free browser pendulum timing puzzle built on the Greek myth of the three Fates. Clotho spins the thread of a life, Lachesis measures it, and Atropos cuts it. But Atropos has begun to cut early, and every soul she frees falls into the dark instead of crossing to the fields of asphodel. You are her last apprentice. You have the shears, thirty threads, and one priestess to save.
The whole game is one decision, repeated: when. A soul hangs from a nail and swings on an honest pendulum arc; its rune-marked vessel waits at the far end of that arc. Cut while the soul is falling short and it is lost in the dark; cut after it has turned and it swings past the cup. Cut at the turning, above the mouth, and the soul drops cleanly into the vessel that carries its rune. Nothing is random, nothing is scripted: the arc you see is the arc the physics will follow.
How to play
- Read the arc. Every soul and vessel carries one of five runes — dawn, blood, tide, dusk, moss — each with its own shape as well as its colour.
- Cut at the turning. Tap a thread, or drag across several, at the instant the soul turns above the mouth of its vessel.
- Cut knots twice. A knotted thread only frays on the first cut; the second severs it.
- Mind the hammock. Souls on two threads swing when you cut one; take the second at the new turning.
- Slow the measure. Space, or the hourglass, thickens time to a third for three seconds. Three per chapter.
- Keep the rune true. A soul that falls into the wrong vessel is lost, not saved.
The rules, exactly
| Thing | Rule | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Thread | Tap or drag across it | Severed; the soul swings free |
| Knotted thread | Two cuts | First frays, second severs |
| Hammock soul | Two threads | Cutting one starts a new arc |
| Rune vessel | Same rune, open mouth | Saved — one soul per vessel |
| Wrong vessel | Different rune | Lost, and the cup stays empty |
| Briar | Touch while falling | Lost |
| Turning blade | Touch while falling | Lost |
| Bellows wind | Pushes hanging souls | Arc timing shifts |
| Sliding nail | Anchor moves | Arc timing shifts |
| Slow measure | Space / hourglass, 3 per chapter | 0.34× time for 3 seconds |
| Stars | At or under par / 1.5× par | 3 / 2 / 1 star |
The four acts of the loom
| Act | Chapters | Where you are | What changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| I · The Spinning Room | 1–8 | Clotho's wheel | One thread, one breath; then hammocks and knots |
| II · The Hall of Measures | 9–16 | Lachesis' long tables | Bellows wind, crowded vessels, briars |
| III · The Garden of Forgetting | 17–24 | The garden below | Turning blades, four souls at once |
| IV · The Throne of Atropos | 25–30 | The bottom of the world | Everything at once; the last thread is Ianthe |
Why every chapter can be finished
Every chapter is generated from a fixed seed and stepped at a fixed one-hundred-and-twentieth of a second, with no random numbers while you play. A reference solver scans every cut instant for every soul, and a seed is kept only if the solver can win it at four different world widths — 760, 1000, 1600 and 2400 units — so the same room is fair on a phone and on a widescreen. The solver's measured time plus a human reaction allowance becomes the par printed in the brief. The tightest window in the campaign is about nine hundredths of a second, and it only appears in the last act.
Strategy that actually works
- Watch one full swing before you cut. The period tells you when the turn comes; guessing does not.
- Cut on the turn, not on the approach. The soul is slowest above the mouth — that is the whole trick.
- Order the room. In multi-soul chapters, cut the soul whose arc crosses a blade first, while the blade is elsewhere.
- Save the measure for the tight ones. Three slow measures will not fix a wrong order, but they will fix a nervous hand.
- Use the runes, not the colours. Shapes survive bad screens and colour-blind eyes; the glyph is the truth.
Technical notes
Everything is generated: no image is loaded by the game, no audio file is played, no third-party script runs. Threads, souls, vessels, blades, briars and the loom itself are Canvas 2D drawn from the same state the simulation steps, and every pluck, bell and chord is synthesised with the Web Audio API. The simulation is deterministic — a fixed seed, a fixed 1/120-second step, position-based pendulum constraints — which is what makes the solver's par times honest. Progress, stars and the best Unraveling wave live in your own browser under moirai.save.v1. Nothing is uploaded, because there is no server.
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Moirai: The Thread of Fate — frequently asked questions
What is Moirai: The Thread of Fate?
It is a free browser physics puzzle built on the Greek myth of the three Fates. Clotho spins the thread of a life, Lachesis measures it, and Atropos cuts it. Atropos has begun cutting early, so the souls she frees fall into the dark instead of crossing to the fields of asphodel. You are her last apprentice: you hold the shears, and across thirty chapters in four acts you cut each thread at the right instant so that its soul drops into the vessel bearing the same rune. The last thread belongs to Ianthe, the priestess who was kind to you.
How do you play it?
Tap a thread, or drag your finger across several, to sever it; on desktop the mouse does the same. A soul hangs from its nail and swings on a real pendulum arc, and its vessel waits at the far end of that arc. Cut too early and the soul falls short into the dark; cut too late and it swings past its cup. The moment to cut is when the soul turns above the mouth of the vessel that carries its rune. Every soul and every vessel is marked with one of five runes, each with its own shape as well as its colour, so matching never depends on colour alone.
Why do some threads need two cuts?
A knotted thread is a life that was measured twice: the first cut only frays it, and the second severs it. Some souls also hang from two threads in a hammock instead of one. Cut one thread and the soul begins to swing; cut the second at the turning of the new arc and it drops. Later chapters combine knots, hammocks, briars, turning blades, bellows wind and sliding nails in the same room.
What is the slow measure?
Press Space, or the hourglass in the HUD, and time thickens to roughly a third of its speed for three seconds. Each chapter grants three measures, and a restart refills them. It does not move a soul or change an arc; it only gives you longer to see the turn and place the cut. The bar under the timer shows how much of the measure is left.
How are the stars and the par time worked out?
Every chapter carries a par printed in its brief. A reference solver plays the chapter with exactly the rules you get, and the par is its measured time plus a human reaction allowance. Finish at or under par and you earn three stars; up to one and a half times par earns two; any win earns one. Stars and unlocked chapters are stored in your own browser, and the chapter map shows the best result for each one.
Is every chapter really solvable?
Yes, and it is measured rather than promised. Each chapter is built from a fixed seed on a fixed one-hundred-and-twentieth-of-a-second timestep with no random numbers during play, so it behaves identically on every device. The solver scans every cut instant for every soul and keeps only layouts it can win at four different world widths, from a narrow phone to a wide desktop. The narrowest accepted timing window in the campaign is about nine hundredths of a second, and that is in chapter twenty-eight.
What is The Unraveling, and does it work on a phone?
The Unraveling is the endless mode: each wave builds a new room, runs the solver on it before you see it, and adds another soul, another knot or another blade. One lost soul ends the run, and your best wave is kept in your browser. The whole game is a single HTML5 page with no download, no account and no payment: every thread, soul, vessel, blade and briar is drawn with Canvas 2D, and every sound is synthesised with the Web Audio API. Touch and mouse both work, and it runs down to a 320-pixel screen in portrait or landscape.