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The Weight of a Prophecy

C assandra

They said I would be powerful. They didn’t say I would feel haunted.

I sit alone in the royal garden, barefoot with my knees hugged to my chest, surrounded by glowing flowers that pulse with gentle magik.

The world here is too alive. And I can’t escape the way the magik follows me now.

It’s in every leaf that turns toward me, every gust of wind that shifts direction when I breathe.

Runic is watching me. And something else is watching through it.

I close my eyes, trying to slow my breathing, and the scent of the garden fades into something older. The memory surges unbidden, like magik finally uncoiling.

I was sixteen the first time I met her. The Oracle.

It was after my initiation ceremony, when the coven elders thought I was asleep. Arabella woke me in the middle of the night, her eyes strangely distant.

“She’s called for you,” she’d whispered.

Arabella took me through the root-path beneath the mountain chapel, into a part of the coven grounds I didn’t know existed. There, in a circular stone chamber with no windows, a woman waited.

She wasn’t old and that shocked me. Her skin was dark and smooth, her eyes cloudy but ageless. Her body was draped in vines and bones that clinked softly as she moved.

She didn’t speak at first. She just stared at me with those silver, sightless eyes.

Then she said, “You’re the one they will all lie to.”

I blinked. “What?”

“They’ll say you were meant for one realm,” she continued like I hadn’t just spoken, “but you are a child of three. You bleed with Alluvium, you breathe with Runic, and your soul was touched by Quietus before you ever drew your first breath.”

I backed away. “That’s not possible.”

She tilted her head, as if listening to something I couldn’t hear. “You’ll fall in love with a king, and you’ll become a queen. But you will never be just his. The realms will want you, curse you, praise you ... or burn you.”

I wanted to run. I remember that clearly. I wanted to scream, to tell Arabella we had to leave, to curse at her for brining me here. But then the Oracle took my hand, and I saw it. The eclipse. The fire. The blood. A blade made of shadow and a child with eyes like stars.

“You’ll change everything,” she whispered. “But only if you choose to do so. You are not fate’s servant, Cassandra. You are its sword.”

I woke in my bed the next morning, unsure if it had even been real. But now I know it was.

Niko says I might be tethered to all three realms—Alluvium, Runic, and Quietus. But I don’t know what that makes me. A bridge? A queen? Or a weapon?

The prophecy never promised peace. That’s what scares me most. It promised balance. And balance always comes with a price. Sacrifice is always needed to achieve what we want most.

I touch the center of my chest where my magik now coils like a second heartbeat. It doesn’t hum anymore. It throbs. Like it’s growing or waiting, except I’m not sure for what.

“Cassandra.”

I flinch at the voice. It’s soft, familiar, and wholly unexpected.

Arabella.

The elder witch from my coven steps out from between two willow trees, her pale hair catching the sunlight, her expression unreadable.

“I thought you were back in Alluvium,” I whisper.

“I came through a hidden gate,” she says. “I felt the rupture the moment your soul linked to this realm. To all the realms.”

She kneels beside me, brushing a strand of hair from my face like a mother would, something my own mother never did.

“You were never just a High Priestess in waiting,” she says. “You were a key.”

“A key to what?” My voice trembles.

“To unlocking the power that binds worlds,” she whispers. “But, child, you have to choose what kind of door you open.”

I shake my head. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I didn’t ask for any of this.”

“I know.” Her face is solemn. “How does the old adage go ... something about greatness being thrust upon us.”

I chuckle. “I know what you mean. It doesn’t offer any comfort, though.”

She presses something into my palm. It’s a stone, rough around the edges and glowing faintly. There are Fae runes, coven glyphs, and something darker etched into one jagged side.

“This came from the Oracle,” she says. “It’s a trinity shard. You’ll know when to use it.”

I close my hand around it and feel all three magiks surge through me. Runic feels light, Quietus feels like twisting shadows, and Alluvium has a wild pulse of freedom. My nose starts bleeding, and I wipe at it with my sleeve.

Arabella cups my cheek. “You must learn to control it before it controls you.”

“But how?”

“You stop waiting to be given power,” she says, rising. “And you start owning it. The shard isn’t just power,” Arabella murmured as she turned to go. “It’s a key. And perhaps a promise.”

I frown. “A promise of what?”

She smiled without answering. “That remains to be seen.”

I stare at her for long, tense moments, not knowing what I am supposed to say or how she expects me to react. All I know is that she knows more than she is telling me.

“What do you know?” I ask, my gaze connecting with hers. “I don’t have all the information, do I?”

“Have you ever heard the full prophecy?” she asks softly.

“No,” I reply with a shake of my head. “I only have the bits and pieces I gathered from Niko.”

“Here,” she says, pulling an old grimoire from inside a large bag she is carrying. She flips it open and turns the old pages before she finds what she is looking for and hands the grimoire to me.

“When blood and bone are severed from land,

A witch of wandering soul shall stand.

Born beneath the weeping moon,

Forged in grief and cast too soon.

She walks in shadow, bound by none,

Yet tethered to what must be done.

Her power comes in trinity,

Of earth, of light, of calamity.

One realm shall fear her,

One shall seek her,

One shall bleed for her.

If crowned before the moons align,

The realms will bend, not break the line.

But if her soul is severed first,

The realms shall drown beneath the cursed.

She may bind the realms or burn them down,

Ascend as Queen or steal the crown.

The choice is hers, but not alone,

For even queens must choose a throne.”

A shiver runs up my spine as I read the passage three times. How the hell am I supposed to live through this?