¹ 𝐒𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐋𝐄 𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐄 ━━ 𝘣𝘣𝘤 𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘪𝘯

━━ 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘦𝘱 𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘧𝘢𝘭𝘭

𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐌𝐈𝐃

into sleep he will fall

BLEEDING ONE WITH VESPERTINE skies, the drowsing citadel of snow-white stone was swathed by the blackest of all magic—one so oppressive, so scathing, so unlike any the great sorcerer Emrys ever came upon. The flowers and trees whispered midsummer ambrosia on the wind but the air he breathed was heavy and burning, as if drowning in a sea of water and fire at once. His soul leadened to stone and his veins percolated electric rivers, fraught with anxieties chasms deep.

Though the witch was banished from their world and cast to perdition's flame, lingering remnants of her touch haunted the grounds. Echoing the merciless currents of the ocean deep, her magic could be felt with every advancement and every breath. A dark power that sought to pull them under. Even with her gone, not a thing felt as it should be, and perhaps it never would again. Ruination like splintered glass was left in the witch's wake, and Merlin Wyllt knew all too well that what was broken could never be what it once was again.

All that could be felt, like the weight of a thousand ages upon their shoulders, had magnified tenfold upon crossing the chamber's unguarded threshold. With that overburden of black magic came the sleeping beauty, lost in the midst of a dormant world, soul wandering briar and flame. Both hands enclosed over a thorned rose in early decay, but even if the waters of life were to reverse the wilt, the flower would be shamed by the natural hue of her still lips. A frightening, anomalous warmth emanating from her flesh, as if her blood became liquid fire and her bones reduced to blistering magma.

To the eye of the world, she appeared peaceful as a starry night—a placid ocean with not a storm in sight—but who could tell what things of nightmare lurked beneath the illusion?

It was impossible, he knew, but if ever there was a time Arthur Pendragon doubted the love in his heart to be true—the the woman before his eyes was his destiny written in the stars above—it was a time he didn't remember, nor did he care to. All that mattered was that which he knew now, and without a doubt, he knew that theirs was the love poets of old bled sonnets in the name of. Even so, demons of lingering insecurities and deeply-rooted fears whispered in his ear, plaguing him with reminders of what would happen should his kiss fail.

He couldn't dare fail someone he loved—not again.

Blood, bone and sunlight soul trapped in a steel cage of his own fear. Ice-frozen thorns coiled around his heart like a noose, spreading through his veins until Arthur became all he never thought he would again. The fearless became the fearful, the strong became the vulnerable, and the king became a simple boy. A boy made of glass, so easy to break, and more afraid than he'd ever been.

"Come back to me..." Pleas trembled in a prayer so gentle, no other could discern what was said, but hearing his words was not necessary. All was translated crystalline in those eyes of hollow skies.

Kneeling to her bedside, those eyes ingrained every freckled constellation, every strand of sunset blaze into his heart. Clinging to the rise and fall of her chest, the honey breath in her lungs. Ancient texts spoke of the curse's salvation, how only an act of true love could reverse the sleeping death; Arthur was quick to act in the only way he could think of, pressing his trembling lips to hers in a short-lived embrace. Unlike the orthodox hummingbird flutter wherever she was concerned, his heart stormed anxiously against his chest, threatening to burst through flesh and sinew.

Countless heartbeats passed as he waited for her to wake, for a glimmer of life stirring within the stillness, but he was instead met with a veil of somnolence all his own.

Hypnotic oblivion rose from thin air, growing further in power with every struggle against it. He was shackled, drowning. Desperation seared within as he tried to escape its binds, but the unwelcome waves forced him deeper still. The shackles tightened, he was drowning and he could not escape. As his heart raced with the fear of the unknown, every fiber of his being shattered like glass once he realized she wasn't waking up.

His kiss didn't work.

It didn't work.

Why didn't it work?

"Arthur?"

Though he knew Merlin was right there with him, just as he always had been and always would be, the sound of his trusted manservant's voice echoed so distantly, as if he were calling out from above the ocean's surface while Arthur remained lost in the deep. Moving his lips to speak, not a sound was set free; he was confined not only to the prison of silence, but the prison of his own body. All caused by the forcible comatose he could no longer resist.

Arthur had no choice but to let go. To let the darkness steal him from the light, as it had first taken his love, and he was met with that same realm of shadow and thorns before his body hit the floor.

Aaaand we are back!!! Long way to go before we get to the sleeping curse (again), but I'm way more excited about it this time around. Currently planning four chapters around it, but that's subject to change of course.

When writing the original version of this story, every episode was written into one chapter—that will not be the case this time around. Instead, episodes will be broken into two or three chapters because I have NO idea how I even used to do that. Fetus!Terra was a psychopath.

Glad to be back at this!