Absolute Being: I Am Nothing Chapter 65

"You foolish, ignorant boy!" Morgana’s voice cracked, all her fear and grief boiling over into fury. "You don’t know anything! That’s the curse of these damned prophecies! The one it’s about is always the last to understand! The fate of everything is supposed to rest on your shoulders, and you’re not ready! You’re not even willing to listen! What was the point? What was the point of all of them dying—good people, brave people—just so I could reach you? You’re a disappointment. A disgrace to every sacrifice, to everything we’ve fought for!"

She was yelling now, the words tumbling out in a hot, painful rush, echoing slightly in the small cave.

Merlin waited until she ran out of breath, his face set in a stubborn frown. "Are you done?" he asked, his voice flat. "If you’re finished, I have a home to get back to."

He didn’t wait for an answer. He just turned and walked past her, towards the cave entrance that was now seamlessly disguised as solid rock. He placed a hand on it... and walked right through. The stone rippled like water for a split second, and then he was gone, leaving Morgana alone in the greenish gloom.

The fight drained out of her all at once. Her legs gave way and she slumped to the cold stone floor, a wave of utter despair crashing over her. The tears came then, silent and hot, streaking through the dust on her cheeks.

She had held it together for so long. Through the flight, the hiding, the constant fear. But now, in the quiet, it all flooded in.

Her mother’s face, smiling as she pressed the family amulet into Morgana’s hand before turning to face the raiders. Her father’s stern, proud nod as he led the rearguard, knowing he wouldn’t return. Her little sister’s hand slipping from hers in the panicked crowd. Richard... her Richard, pushing her into the hidden root cellar and sealing it from the outside, his last look one of fierce love, right before the shadows took him.

All of them. Every single life. A trail of blood and loss leading from the burning Silver Grove to this dank cave in Kandor. All for him. All for the Star-Born Son, the Catalyst.

And he had just... walked away.

"I failed," she whispered to the empty cave, her voice breaking. "I’m so sorry, Mom. Dad. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make him see. Richard... I’ve doomed the world you died for. There’s nothing left. Nothing I can do."

She buried her face in her hands, the sobs shaking her shoulders. She was the High Priestess, the last keeper of the old ways, and she was utterly, completely defeated. The weight of her grief was a physical thing, pressing her down into the dark.

As she cried, the world seemed to fall away. The chill of the stone faded. The sound of her own weeping grew distant.

She found herself standing in a familiar, sun-dappled clearing. The air smelled of pine and sacred incense. The Silver Grove. But not as it was now, burned and desecrated. As it was in her childhood. Whole. Peaceful.

A man stood by the ancient standing stone, his back to her. He wore the simple grey robes of the High Priest.

"Father?" The word left her lips as a choked gasp.

He turned. It was him. His eyes, the same steady grey as her own, held a deep, gentle sadness. "Morgana. My fierce, brilliant girl. You carry so much."

"It’s all gone wrong," she cried, the child in her voice surfacing. "He’s just a boy. A stubborn, ordinary boy. The prophecy is a lie. Everyone died for nothing."

Her father smiled, a sad, knowing smile. "Prophecies are not instructions, daughter. They are possibilities. Warnings and hopes written in starlight. They speak of potential, not certainty. The ’Star-Born Son’ is not a weapon to be delivered. He is a choice that has yet to be made."

"But how do I make him choose?" she pleaded. "He doesn’t care. He walked away!"

"Did he?" her father asked softly.

The vision of the Grove began to shimmer, to fade back into the darkness of the cave. Her father’s voice seemed to echo from all around her. "Look not at the boy who refuses the crown, Morgana. Look at the path he walks. Look at the doors he opens..."

The clearing vanished. She was back on the cold floor, her tears cooling on her skin. The epiphany hit her not with a shout, but with a silent, stunning clarity.

She froze.

The seal.

She had sealed the cave entrance. A Ward of Stone and Silence, a high-level guardian spell. It didn’t just hide the opening; it physically barred passage, transmuting air into solid granite. To dispel it required a specific counter-chant, a release of the magical bonds she had woven.

She had not chanted the release.

Merlin had not asked for the chant.

He had simply... walked through it.

As if it wasn’t even there. As if her magic, the refined, potent craft of a High Priestess trained from birth, was nothing more than a curtain he could push aside.

What kind of magic...?

Her mind raced. Not brute force dispelling—that would have caused a backlash, a shattering of stone. He hadn’t broken the ward. He had... ignored it. Overridden it. The stone had parted for him.

Magic in Kandor, in all the mortal cities, was elemental. Fireballs, gusts of wind, hardening earth. Complex illusion and warding were the domain of the Grove and a few other ancient orders. To so casually nullify a High Priestess’s ward wasn’t just advanced. It was impossible. It spoke of a relationship with magic that was intrinsic, fundamental. Not using power, but commanding the reality behind it.

’He would possess a connection to magic unlike any before him—not just the ability to cast, but to command it, to speak its true name.’

The prophecy’s words echoed in her mind with new, terrifying meaning.

He wasn’t a disappointment.

He was the real thing.

And he had just wandered, completely unaware of his own power, out into a city crawling with the Dark Lord’s scouts.

"Oh, no," Morgana breathed, scrambling to her feet, all her despair burnt away by a surge of pure, frantic urgency. "No, no, no."

She rushed to the entrance, her hands flying through the familiar gestures, speaking the release chant in a hurried whisper. The stone shimmered and dissolved back into empty air.

She stared out into the dark alley, her heart pounding.

The boy was the prophecy. And she had just let the world’s only hope walk straight into the lion’s den, armed with nothing but a bad attitude and power he didn’t know he had.

"Merlin!" she hissed into the night, and took off running.