The Merging Ceremony

C assandra

The eclipse rises. Twin moons crossing in perfect silence over the Runic sky. One yellow-gold, the other a dark crimson. A celestial omen that hasn’t occurred in three thousand years, last seen the day the Eternal Havok began. Now it marks our attempt to end it.

I stand alone in the preparation chamber. My gown is woven of elemental silk, dyed in the color of each realm. Green for Alluvium, silver for Runic, and black for Quietus. The fabric hums with power, enchanted to protect and amplify. My skin is bare beneath it, save for the markings.

Amara and Arabella painted them onto my arms, my throat, and my spine. They are spells, wards, and a legacy of all bloodlines before me.

Each one burned when they applied them, but I never screamed. Because this is who I’ve become. I’m not a girl or even a witch. I am a queen of three realms and the moment I walk into the merging circle, there will be no going back.

****

T he high sanctum is carved into the cliffs overlooking the wild sky.

Ancient magik pulses through every stone, singing a song all their own as they welcome us to this sacred site.

Runes glow along the edges of the merging circle, symbols from each realm woven into a pattern older than any known language.

Niko waits at the center. He is dressed in ceremonial armor, but there is no blade at his hip.

He doesn’t smile when I enter. Instead, he bows.

Something in me fractures, because this man, this warrior, chose me.

Not for a prophecy. And not for peace. But for me.

This journey may have started as a way to end the Eternal Havok but either of us could have walked away a long time ago.

We could have taken the easy way out and just let the chips fall where they may.

But we chose this, each other. We chose to fulfill a destiny neither of us was ever ready for.

I step into the circle and the magik locks around us with a shiver of the wind. Three elders, one from each realm, stand at the edge of the ring. Slowly, they begin chanting the incantation.

“Let the soul of Runic find its tether,” the Fae intones.

“Let the daughter of Alluvium bear the balance,” Arabella says.

“Let the night not claim the light,” murmurs the Quietus defector priestess Amara recruited on the last full moon.

Power floods the circle and we turn to face each other.

Niko reaches out, clasping my hands in his. “Cassandra of Alluvium, will you merge with me? Not as a bond, but as an equal? Will you be Queen not by fate but by choice?”

I clasp his hand tightly. “I will.” The moment the words fall from my lips, the ground trembles beneath our feet.

“I, Nikolas of Runic, bind my soul to yours,” he says. “In strength. In light. In love.”

“I, Cassandra of Alluvium,” I say, repeating his words, “bind my soul to yours. In power. In shadow. In truth.”

Our foreheads touch and the final rite begins. The runes around us erupt in flame. The air around us twists and a shock wave of magik shoots into the sky. Gold, green, and obsidian streaked with purple, all spiralling as one.

We fall to our knees, our hands clasped and our breaths ragged. The prophecy doesn’t whisper, it screams. In my bones I feel everything come to a standstill, the realms all paused, waiting to see what will happen next.

I feel it then, a double beat. Not my heartbeat and not Niko’s. But something new. It’s somehow distant but still present. Like something old magik had already begun to awaken inside me, and I pressed a hand to my belly without knowing why.

The sky shimmers and the earth groans. The merging is complete. Now, we need to focus on the war that is coming.

****

C ouncil of the High Coven, Cape Town

I stand at the center of the crystal dais, High Priestess Lenora, my knuckles white around my staff.

I’ve lived through three eclipses, a spell keeping me alive eternally, seen war flicker on the edges of prophecy like a snake poised to strike, but I never expected to see this.

Hell, I wasn’t even sure it would ever happen.

The realm cracked wide open the moment the ceremony concluded. A pulse of light and magik unlike anything any coven has ever known surged across Alluvium like a tidal wave. Wards flared and ancestorial spirits wept. And then ... silence. Deafening, unending silence.

But now, news has arrived. What we never thought possible has been confirmed.

Cassandra Ravenwood had ascended, not just as a Consort, not even as Queen of Runic. No, she had become the Threefold Queen.

“She was one of us,” I whisper, almost in disbelief. “Born in our soil, trained in our rites. And now the realms bow to her.”

“Or bend,” a younger priestess mutters. “Some say she stole that power.”

“Power like that can’t be stolen,” Arabella replies coldly, stepping into the chamber like she hasn’t been gone for months.

Murmurs break out. Half the room turned to her in awe, the other half with veiled contempt. “You knew,” I accuse.

“I suspected,” Arabella replies, her chin lifting in defiance. “And now we face a choice. The realms are bound and magik flows freely. We can resist it or we can evolve.”

The silence that follows is heavy with fear, uncertainty, and animosity.

An older warlock speaks from the shadows. “What does that make Alluvium now, if our High Priestess-in-waiting now rules all?”

Arabella’s eyes glitter. “It makes us part of something greater. Whether we like it or not.”