Morgana’s footsteps echoed through the desolate corridors of the prince’s palace as she scanned the shadows.
Softly, almost hesitantly, she called out:
“Mordred, Your Majesty… Nimue!”
Silence swallowed her words, letting them rebound in a lonely, aching ripple. No answer came—only the hollow ring of her own voice, fragile and forlorn.
Excalibur gave a sharp click of his tongue.
—Do you really think shouting their names will summon them? There’s not a soul here—not even a single buzzing insect!
“I just… thought it was worth a try,”
She murmured, cheeks warming with mild embarrassment. She shot him a quick, half-hearted glare before pressing onward, her steps measured and deliberate through the empty hall.
This place she had visited only once before, during her days as a maidservant.
The memories stirred faintly as her fingers brushed the bare walls where paintings had once hung. She spoke to Excalibur often, partly to reassure herself that his presence still lingered, strong and undimmed, within the blade.
“Even back then, I thought the palace felt strangely empty… Is it because the prince spent so long away at the Academy? Does he feel nothing of home here?”
—You said the prince was young, didn’t you? This place is so stark and lifeless. I can’t imagine what pleasure he finds in it. In our master’s chamber, that creature Man-geum keeps gnawing on jewels and wreaking havoc day after day.
“Man-geum has always been… insatiably curious,”
Morgana replied, a faint smile touching her lips.
Lately the little beast had taken to living almost entirely in her own rooms.
After the terrifying abduction in Avalon, she avoided bringing it anywhere crowded with people.
Yet even from afar, the distinctive pop-pop of its footsteps gave its location away.
Strangest of all, no matter how distant it wandered, it seemed to sense their calls and appear—drawn by some inexplicable bond.
Recently it had grown fond of the teleportation stone Kellive had given them, toying endlessly with jeweled eggs like precious playthings, rolling them about the chamber from dawn till dusk.
Excalibur, cursed with the ability to understand every word the creature uttered, found the constant chatter exhausting.
—That damn beast speaks to me every single day. It’s driving me to the brink of madness.
Yes… and when you lie beside my bed at night, I know the feeling all too well.
The intimate truth burned in her throat, too raw and dangerous to speak aloud.
Morgana swallowed it down, forcing a soft, composed smile to mask the sudden, aching rush of emotion.
When she had first surveyed the prince’s palace to locate the missing paintings, she had noticed the D-shaped corridor ended in staircases at both sides, leading to the upper floors. But at the time Mordred had been away from Britain, and there had been no reason to ascend. She had paid them no mind.
Now, everything felt different.
The air itself seemed heavier, charged with unspoken possibility, as though the empty halls were holding their breath… waiting.
“Mordred’s chambers are on the second floor, right? Let’s head there first.”
Nimue couldn’t have simply vanished into thin air. She had to be somewhere in this palace—and the most logical place to begin searching was the prince’s private rooms.
Yet no matter how long they walked, the corridor refused to end.
Morgana halted for the fourth time after rounding yet another identical corner. Her pulse quickened, a faint prickle of unease crawling up her spine.
“Something’s wrong.”
—You’re telling me.
She lifted a hand and pointed back toward the stretch of wall they had passed at the very beginning—the one spot still marked by the faint, telltale holes where a painting had once hung.
“We definitely came through here earlier. Even if every hallway looks frustratingly alike, this is the only place with those nail marks in the plaster.”
A proper D-shaped corridor should never have forced them to turn four consecutive corners in endless succession. That defied basic geometry.
Her fingers tightened around Excalibur’s hilt until the leather creaked. Voice low, almost a whisper, she spoke the truth aloud.
“The corridor is looping.”
The master of this prince’s palace clearly did not welcome her presence.
This felt deliberate—like someone buying time, stalling her, keeping her trapped in circles while they… did what, exactly?
The thought sent a slow, unwelcome heat curling low in her belly, equal parts irritation and something dangerously close to anticipation.
Morgana swept her gaze across the nearest door and shoved it open without ceremony.
A simple storage closet. Brooms, buckets, folded linens. Nothing more.
She let the door swing shut and continued, voice steady even as her heart beat a little too fast.
“This is the same kind of trick we ran into when we were looking for Man-geum, remember?”
A barrier spell designed to keep intruders out—or in.
It reminded her painfully of the road to the Fisher King’s manor—the same disorienting repetition, the same creeping sense of being toyed with.
The only difference was that one had been masked by an illusion of money trees in full, glittering bloom.
This one offered no such pretty lie—just an infinite, maddening repetition of the same cold stone passage.
Excalibur’s tone was grudgingly impressed.
—Back then, too… A work of this scale has to be anchored to something. A medium. A focal point.
“What is it?”
Morgana asked, unable to keep a thread of hope from threading through her words. She glanced sideways at the sword, half expecting him to actually know.
But Excalibur’s reply was as blunt and unhelpful as ever.
—How the hell should I know? The whole damn place is humming with magic. You want me to pick out the single thread in this tapestry?
Morgana let out a short, dry laugh despite herself.
The sheer audacity of him—after all these centuries—still managed to spark something warm and exasperated in her chest.
“Of course. That’s exactly what I should expect from you, Excal. At least I’d still recognize you even if someone swapped your soul out for another one.”
She moved methodically down the hall, pushing open door after door.
Guest chambers, mostly. Sparse and impersonal. A neatly made bed. A modest bookshelf. A small table. A single chair.
Nothing that spoke of habitation, nothing that whispered of secrets.
And yet every empty room seemed to press closer, the silence thicker, heavier—as though the palace itself were listening. Watching. Waiting for her next move.
Somewhere above them, Mordred was surely aware she was here.
The realization settled like a slow, delicious shiver against her skin.
He knew.
And still he let her wander these looping halls.
Almost… as if he wanted her to find him.
Morgana pushed open yet another door, the motion almost mechanical now.
Inside—the same spare bed, the same modest bookshelf, the same small table, and lone chair.
Every room mirrored the last so perfectly that, without constant vigilance, she could no longer tell whether she had already stepped through this exact threshold moments ago.
She scanned the shelves anyway, running her fingertips along the spines of unremarkable volumes—generic histories, etiquette manuals, treatises on heraldry.
Nothing distinctive. Nothing that whispered a clue.
With a quiet exhale, she stepped back into the corridor and resumed her methodical patrol, opening every door that would yield.
If it had a handle and it turned, she looked inside. No exceptions.
‘If Mordred is using this looping maze to buy time… that means he needs time. Desperately.’
The realization settled like velvet over steel in her chest. Whatever he was doing—whatever secret he guarded on the floor above—she had to escape this enchanted snare before he finished.
‘How did we break the last one?’ she thought, mind racing back to the Fisher King’s road.
‘The money-tree illusion… we had to reject the temptation. Refuse the glittering lie.’
But here there was nothing to tempt her. No golden fruit, no shimmering promise.
Only cold stone, endless repetition, and the low, constant thrum of magic vibrating through the walls.
And Excalibur. Just the two of them, alone in this sterile, echoing silence.
A dangerous little idea flickered to life.
Perhaps… the spell required interaction. A spark. Something personal. Something only she could give.
Morgana slowed her steps. She cast a sidelong glance down at the sword hanging at her hip—its hilt warm from her constant grip, familiar in a way that made her heart stutter.
“Excal.”
—What? I was looking inside the rooms too, you know. Honestly!
She let a heartbeat pass. Then, voice softer than silk, almost teasing, she murmured:
“…Do you love me?”
The corridor went deathly still.
The already frigid air seemed to crystallize around them. Even the faint echo of her footsteps died.
Long seconds stretched taut.
Finally Excalibur spoke, voice unnaturally formal, edged with something that might have been indignation—or panic.
—Hah… Master. I am well aware of how devastatingly handsome, charismatic, and refined I am. But you are you, and I am the great Excalibur.
Morgana’s lips curved despite herself—half amusement, half mortification.
“Forget it. Never mind. I take it back. I was just… testing whether something personal might disrupt the spell. That’s all.”
—Oh, of course. You’d like to retreat behind that excuse, wouldn’t you? I see right through you. Hah… Truly, being this magnificent is a curse.
Gods above.
She clenched her jaw so hard her teeth ached.
Of all the times for his insufferable vanity to flare brightest—right when she had handed him the perfect weapon. She had just fed the legend’s ego beyond anything this petty illusion could hope to contain.
And yet… beneath the exasperation, beneath the sting of embarrassment, a traitorous warmth lingered.
Because even as he preened and deflected, he hadn’t quite answered.
Not really.
And in the heavy, listening silence of the looping corridor, that unspoken refusal felt more intimate—and more dangerous—than any declaration ever could.
Morgana pressed her palm flat against the nearest wall, feeling the pulse of magic throb faintly against her skin like a second heartbeat.
Somewhere above them, Mordred waited.
And here she stood—trapped, aching, and far too aware of the man whose presence she could almost taste on the air, even through layers of stone and sorcery.
She closed her eyes for a single breath.
Then she straightened, fingers tightening once more around Excalibur’s hilt.
“Come on,”
She whispered—to the sword, to herself, to the invisible prince listening from on high.
“Let’s find a way to break this before I say something else I’ll regret.”
Morgana’s fingers trembled with the effort not to hurl Excalibur—hilt-first—against the nearest wall.
Instead, she channeled the molten frustration into the next door, shoving it open with more force than necessary.
The corridor had already looped back to the familiar stretch of wall scarred by old nail holes.
Another identical guest chamber yawned before her: the same bed, the same empty shelves, the same lonely chair waiting like a forgotten promise.
She exhaled sharply, already reaching to pull the door shut again—
—and froze.
Her gaze snapped back to the bookshelf.
There.
A single crimson volume sat dead center on the middle shelf.
But… it hadn’t been there before.
In the first pass through this room, it had rested higher, near the top. Now it occupied the exact heart of the shelf.
Pulse spiking, Morgana spun on her heel and strode to the neighboring door. She flung it open.
Same room.
Same arrangement.
Except the red book had slid lower—precisely centered once more.
She moved faster now, heart hammering against her ribs. Next door. The book rested at the very bottom shelf.
Next. Tucked into the shadowed leftmost corner as a secret someone had tried—and failed—to hide.
Each time the room reset perfectly… except for that one defiant splash of scarlet.
Morgana stepped inside the latest iteration, boots ringing against the stone. She reached for the book without hesitation.
The instant her fingertips brushed the spine—
Crack—
Black sparks erupted in vicious arcs, snapping through the air like live wires.
The surrounding volumes shuddered, then tumbled from the shelves in a soft avalanche, thudding to the floor around her feet.
In the center of the fallen heap, the red leather-bound book—untitled, unmarked—continued to spit dark electricity, a low, angry hiss filling the silence.
“This is it,” she breathed.
“The anchor.”
Her voice came out softer than she intended, almost reverent.
The rest of the looping corridor was nothing more than clever duplication—an endless echo of already-existing space. But every spell of this magnitude required one true thing.
One irreplaceable fragment of reality to tether the illusion and keep it from unraveling.
It could be a place.
It could be an object.
This… was the object.
Morgana crouched slowly, heedless of the sparks dancing inches from her skin. The book pulsed in time with her heartbeat—or perhaps it was the other way around.
She could feel him through it.
Not in any tangible way, not words or touch, but in the unmistakable pressure of awareness.
Mordred knew she had found it. He had to. Somewhere above these maddening halls, in rooms she had yet to reach, he was watching—waiting—perhaps even smiling that slow, dangerous smile that always made her stomach twist with equal parts fury and longing.
Her fingers hovered just above the cover.
One touch.
One decision.
Break the anchor… and the spell would collapse.
Break it… and the path to him would finally open.
Or perhaps—some treacherous part of her whispered—he had left this single, telling imperfection on purpose.
A breadcrumb.
A dare.
Come and find me, Morgana.
The air between them—stone, magic, distance, and all—suddenly felt paper-thin.
She closed her eyes for one long, unsteady breath, the scent of old leather and ozone curling into her lungs.
Then she opened them again, gaze fierce, lips parting on a quiet, almost tender exhale.
“Fine,” she murmured—to the book, to the palace, to the man whose presence saturated every shadowed inch of this place.
“You win this round.”
Her hand closed around the spine.
The black sparks flared brighter, hungrier.
And somewhere far above, she could have sworn she felt the answering quickening of another heartbeat—racing to meet hers.
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