Two Graves

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.

Camelot never learned this.

It began with a mother’s death. Ygraine Pendragon, gone before the tale began, but never truly absent. Her death was the first wound, the first grave.

Uther had begged for a child and paid for it with her life. He blamed magic. Blamed Nimueh.

Blamed anything but himself.

And so the second grave was dug not in flesh, but in law: a kingdom built on fear, a son raised in muted halls, a future poisoned before it could bloom.

Years passed. The wound festered.

Then Nimueh returned—priestess of the Old Religion, braided in grief and fury. She had warned Uther. She had named the price. But grief made her cruel, and cruelty made her forget the shape of mercy.

The warlock drew upon his power. His first kill. His first hollow stillness.

He did not speak of it. Not to Gaius. Not to himself. Her grave was literal. The second was his—another secret buried, another weight pressed into the spine of a boy who would never be allowed to mourn aloud. Sometimes he wondered if silence itself was the heaviest grave of all.

And still, the second grave was never avoided. Only renamed. Only delayed.

The chain continued.

Morgause rose next. Not with fire, but with quiet resolve. She moved like someone who had already died once. Her voice was low, her gaze steady, her magic precise. She fought not merely for vengeance, but for restoration—to restore the Old Religion, the balance Uther had destroyed.

But vengeance twists the hands that wield it.

She was struck down by the physician and his apprentice, her body breaking, her light dimming. Still, she chose sacrifice. On the Isle of the Blessed, she offered her life to Morgana and called it a gift.

Her grave was ritual. The second was Morgana’s—already seeded in grief. The young sorcerer felt the echo of that choice, knowing every sacrifice carved another scar into him as well.

Two sisters, divided by faith, united in ruin.

And ruin spread further.

When blood betrayed blood, Agravaine whispered poison into the ear of a king. He did not shout. He did not rage. He simply leaned closer, and let the rot bloom. He uncovered Emrys’s name, thinking revelation would redeem him. It did not.

He died by the hand of the warlock, alone in the dark. A clean kill. A necessary one.

His grave was shallow. The second belonged to Arthur’s trust, which would never again be whole. The servant carried that fracture like a shadow, knowing trust once broken is another kind of grave. He remembered the weight of Arthur’s hand on his shoulder, the warmth of shared laughter—now hollowed into emptiness.

But betrayal does not always wear a crown. Sometimes, it stands in chains.

Kara did not kneel.

Her hatred was sharp and deliberate, the kind born of exile and grief. She saw in Arthur not a man, but the echo of his father. He offered her mercy. She spat it back.

She called her acts war. Her death—freedom.

And yet, she loved. She loved Mordred with a fierce, quiet devotion. Enough to protect him. Enough to die for him.

Her grave was defiant. The second was his.

Because her death broke something in him that no crown could mend.

And so the prophecy ripened. The storm gathered. The field waited.

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The battlefield was iron and fire. The sky hung low, heavy with ash. The wind carried no songs — only the sound of steel meeting bone. his blade through Arthur’s side, prophecy fulfilled in blood. Arthur, bleeding, broken, drove Excalibur back into Mordred’s soul.

Mordred died first, with a bitter smile. He had kept his promise. He had ended the king. But the cost was his own life.

Two graves. Two blades. Two boys grown into men—who might have lived, had the world not already carved their names into legend.

The field fell silent. And in that hush, the warlock ran.

He found Arthur among the bodies. The king was still breathing—barely. The young man’s hands shook as he lifted him. His palms came away slick with blood, warm and human against the cold armor. The wound was mortal, but hope is a stubborn thing. So he carried him—across forest, through rain, toward the lake that shimmered like a promise.

The trees did not speak. The sky did not break. Only the sound of footsteps, and the weight of a dying king pressed against his chest.

Every step was a prayer. Every breath, a plea. Not yet. Not him.

But destiny had already decided.

Somewhere between the mountains and the mist, Emrys broke.

He told Arthur the truth. That he had magic. That he had always had it. That every secret, every unspoken truth, had been for him.

It was not an apology. It was a confession carved from grief.

Arthur’s eyes held disbelief first, then anger, then something worse—the hollow ache of betrayal. The world he knew collapsed in that single moment.

But as the hours passed, and the breath grew shallow, the fury ebbed. In its place came understanding. A quiet, wordless acceptance.

The man he had trusted most had lied to him—and yet, he had never been more loved.

It was here the double death occurred: the death of the king’s certainty, the death of the servant and close friend he had once known.

And in their place, only truth remained. Bare. Painful. Holy.

But the circle had not yet closed.

Elsewhere, Morgana fought to keep her crown of shadows.

She had wanted safety. She had wanted truth. But vengeance had curdled into hunger. She moved through the ruins like a ghost, her magic flickering, her voice hoarse from rage.

The warlock faced her, blade in hand. Excalibur pierced her heart.

She fell, and with her fell the war against magic.

Her grave was hers alone. The second was his—he who had loved her once, who had tried to save her, who had watched her fall and had to be the one to end it. Every death seemed to return to him, another unspoken grief pressed into his chest, another weight he could never set down.

At last, they reached the lake.

Arthur, fading, understood. His destiny was complete.

He died in the arms of the one who had carried him through every hush of destiny, whispering friendship, devotion, the words they had never spoken until it was too late.

His grave was the end of an era. The second was Emrys’s—not in flesh, but in the way he walks the world now: empty, waiting, carrying the weight of words forever withheld.

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Then came the dragon.

Kilgharrah descended from the sky, wings vast against the morning light. He spoke not of comfort, but of legacy. Of the story they had shaped. Of Albion, still waiting.

“When Albion’s need is greatest, Arthur will rise again.”

It was not a promise. It was a sentence.

The warlock listened, hollowed by grief, and said nothing.

He rose.

He took Excalibur—the blade that crowned, betrayed, and killed—and with trembling hands, cast it into the lake. His fingers ached from the weight, the cold steel biting into his skin before it vanished beneath the water.

The surface rippled. And from its depths, she came.

Freya.

The Lady of the Lake. The love he had lost. The magic he had mourned.

She caught the blade in timeless stillness, her hands luminous, eternal. She did not speak. She did not need to.

Excalibur was gone. Arthur was gone. And with him, the Camelot he had known died—the kingdom that breathed only through his presence, its towers and laughter laid to rest in the same grave.

The circle was complete.

And the people remembered. Not in songs, but in whispers. Every market stall, every stone in the courtyard carried the shadow of the graves. Camelot itself became a tomb, its laughter buried beneath the weight of vengeance.

Emrys placed Arthur upon the barge, set him adrift into the mist. The lake swallowed him. The legend began.

And the sorcerer remained.

He did not die. He could not.

Time moved on, but grief is a kind of magic too—one that keeps the heart beating long after it should have stopped.

He walked the world like a shadow of its former self, haunted by the echo of a voice that called him friend. Sometimes he felt the weight of Arthur’s body still in his arms, the warmth fading, the hush deepening. Every step was another void, another grave carried within him.

He wandered through centuries and secrecy, through ruins and rivers, through the memory of Camelot’s towers reflected in the water.

And still the chain held.

They say he waits.

By the shore. By the edge of time. By the graves no one else remembers.

He waits for the king who will return. For the world that might learn forgiveness. For the moment when two graves might finally become one.

Camelot was built on vengeance. On grief mistaken for justice. On love twisted into punishment.

And every time, the prophecy was fulfilled.

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.

They did.

Every grave had its twin, and he was the one left to carry them all.

He waits.

And he will always wait.