After the altercation between us, the heated words, the anger—the destruction of the tower—I gathered what mattered—texts, artifacts, the ring Nimue had given me—and walked through the gates one last time. Guards saw me pass. None tried to stop me. Even then, Arthur's knights feared what I might do if provoked.
The Standing Stones hummed as I approached them, as though welcoming me home. As they were constructed from my own blood, they recognized me and allowed me to cross through them.
I took my first breath of Annwyn's air and vowed that this would now be my domicile. My haven. My home.
Here, in the otherworld, power ran deep and ancient. Not the sanitized, controlled magic Arthur allowed his court, but the raw stuff of creation itself. Wild. Hungry. Alive.
I built my fortress in the Twilight Valleys, where reality bent and time moved differently. Refugees came—practitioners fleeing Arthur's purges, others displaced, anyone who remembered what magic truly meant. They needed a leader. I became one.
But leadership wasn't enough.
I needed to find Arthur's replacement. Someone who could inherit the Dragonmark without becoming the monster Arthur was becoming. Someone with strength enough to contain the beast, wisdom enough to control it, power enough to rule.Someone strong enough to take the Dragonmark from him. Someone who could bear that terrible weight.
I had thought that person could have been Corvin of Blackhollow. But my visions told me otherwise.
Corvin could not take the dragon—he wasn't strong enough. He would break under its influence, just as Arthur was breaking.
No, there was another coming. Someone who could take the dragon. Someone who was strong enough.
Someone with water magic, not fire.
And then, one night, my visions revealed exactly who this replacement would be.
A girl with white hair and violet eyes.My daughter.The child Nimue had hidden from me, protected with spells so old and deep that even I couldn't break them.
Guinevere.
Guinevere carried water magic in her blood—Nimue's gift. But she also carried my blood, making her one of the strongest beings the realm would ever know. She could become a balancing force to Arthur's destructive flames. Where the dragon devoured, water could contain. Where fire raged, tides could calm. Not only that, but she was born of both worlds: LogresandAnnwyn. Daughter to a woman of primordial magic and a man who walked between reality and dream. She belonged nowhere, which meant she could belong everywhere.
She is the tide between two realms. What better vessel than the one who already walks the line?
Arthur tried to dominate the dragon through sheer will, crushing it beneath layers of control and fear. That approach was failing. I watched it crack further every day.
But Guinevere? Her magic was flow, not force. She didn't need to suppress the beast—she couldbindit,sootheit, reshape its nature through balance rather than brutality. Water wore down stone. Given time, tides reshaped entire coastlines.
She could carry the mark without being consumed by it.
More than that, she remained uncorrupted by power. Arthur showed all the signs of becoming Uther: controlling, paranoid, violent in his certainty.
Perhaps she could do what neither Uther nor Arthur could—burn without burning others.
Yes, she was the answer. The way forward. But there existed one problem: where was she?
Each of my scrying attempts to locate her had ended in mist and shadow. Every divination spell twisted away from Guinevere's location.
Nimue had made certain I couldn't find her.
But Guinevere was out there. Somewhere.
Old magic whispered of her existence. Dreams revealed fragments—a laugh, a gesture, the way she tilted her head when thinking. She had my power. Nimue's grace.
If the dragon must live, let it live inside someone worthy.
I spent months crafting the spell. Not a tracking charm—those Nimue would deflect. Not a summons—those could be refused. Instead, I wove something subtler: a call that would resonate in Guinevere's blood, a pull she wouldn't understand but couldn't ignore. It would draw her north, toward the Standing Stones, toward me.
Toward her destiny.
The ritual required blood, starlight, and words in a language dead before Camelot rose.
