Before Camelot, before the legends of knights and kings, before Arthur even drew his first breath, there was Avalon.
A land of magic, a realm of secrets, a place that no mortal was ever meant to rule.
I was there when the war began—a war not fought with swords and shields, but with whispers and unseen hands.
A war that no one remembers.
Because history was rewritten.
And those who lost?
They were erased.
But I remember.
And today, traveler, I shall tell you the truth about the Shadow War of Avalon.
The War That Should Not Have Been
Avalon was never meant to be touched by war.
It was a land of harmony, ruled not by kings, but by balance—between light and shadow, life and death, magic and nature.
But peace is a fragile thing.
And when the balance was broken, the war began.
A war fought not with armies, but with secrets and betrayals.
A war that no one remembers.
Because the victors ensured it would be forgotten.
But I was there.
And I remember everything.
The Gathering Storm
It began with a whisper.
A rumor carried by the wind, a name spoken in hushed tones—Morganna.
Not the Morganna of later legends, not the witch-sister of Arthur, but someone else.
A different Morganna, long erased from time, whose name once held power equal to my own.
She was the Guardian of Avalon’s Veil, the keeper of its hidden gates, the last of the Shadow Lords, an ancient order that ensured no mortal ever found the sacred realm.
And yet…
She broke the first rule of Avalon.
She let someone in.
The Betrayal That Opened the Veil
His name was Edris the Hollow.
A sorcerer of great knowledge, a man who claimed he could strengthen Avalon’s magic, make it untouchable, eternal.
Morganna believed him.
She let him into the sacred halls, let him walk among the enchanted trees, let him breathe the air of a world never meant for men.
She trusted him.
And he betrayed her.
Because Edris was not what he seemed.
He was not human at all.
The War of the Unseen
The moment he stepped beyond Avalon’s threshold, the Veil trembled.
Magic shifted, the balance wavered, and suddenly, the shadows began to move.
Not the gentle shadows cast by trees and moonlight.
Other shadows.
Shadows with form and intent, creatures that had long been waiting just outside reality, watching for the day Avalon would be vulnerable.
And Edris?
He was their harbinger.
He spoke a word—a single word in a language older than the stars.
And the gates of Avalon…
They shattered.
The Unmaking of Avalon
The war was unlike any battle I had ever seen.
No steel was drawn.
No banners were raised.
No horns sounded across the hills.
This was a war of silence and secrets, of illusions so perfect that no one knew which side they were fighting for.
The invaders were not seen—they were felt.
A creeping sense of wrongness.
A shifting of reality itself.
A war where even one’s own thoughts could not be trusted.
Avalon fought back.
But Avalon was not ready.
Merlin’s Intervention
I arrived too late.
I was in Camelot, studying the early stirrings of Arthur’s fate, when the first echoes of the war reached me.
By the time I returned to Avalon, the shadows had already taken root.
Morganna was missing.
The Veil was weakened.
And Avalon’s leaders were trapped in their own illusions, unable to see what was real and what was not.
So I did what I had to do.
I broke the rules.
The Last Spell of Avalon
There was only one way to end the war.
Not by fighting.
Not by defeating the enemy.
Not by winning.
By erasing it.
By making it so that the war had never happened at all.
The spell I cast that day was forbidden, even for me.
It was not a spell of destruction, nor a spell of creation.
It was a spell of unmaking.
It would not kill the invaders.
It would remove their existence entirely.
As if they had never stepped into Avalon.
As if they had never existed in the first place.
The cost?
Avalon’s history would change.
No one would remember the war.
Not the fae.
Not the guardians.
Not even Morganna herself.
The war would be erased from time.
And Avalon would be safe.
But some things cannot be erased so easily.
Some things… linger.
And so, even now, when I walk through the mist-covered shores of what remains of Avalon, I can feel them.
The echoes.
The shadows.
The memories that history tried to forget.
And I know that, one day, someone will break the spell.
And the war will return.
And this time…
There will be no one left to stop it.
The Spell That Erased a War
The moment I cast the spell, reality cracked.
It was not a simple enchantment.
Not a barrier, not a curse, not even the kind of magic that reshapes the world.
No—this spell was different.
It did not change history.
It rewrote it.
The shadows that had infiltrated Avalon, the invaders who had used deception and illusions to unravel the Veil, were torn from existence.
They did not die.
They did not retreat.
They simply…
Stopped having ever existed.
And with them, so too did the war itself.
Or so I thought.
Because the truth is, even erasure leaves an echo.
And some things refuse to be forgotten.
The Price of Unmaking
At first, it seemed as though the spell had worked perfectly.
The sky over Avalon turned blue once more.
The rivers shimmered with their usual golden glow.
The creatures of the enchanted forests resumed their songs, unaware that their world had almost been lost.
The gates of Avalon were whole again, the Veil restored.
And yet…
There was something wrong.
Something that even I could not explain.
For one, Morganna was gone.
Not dead.
Not lost.
Just… missing.
And no one—not even those who had known her best—remembered she had ever existed.
Even her name was gone from the tongues of the fae.
Her face had faded from the minds of Avalon’s rulers.
Her magic—once as mighty as my own—had been erased along with the war.
I was the only one who remembered her.
And that, more than anything else, told me that something had gone terribly wrong.
The Cracks in the Illusion
At first, I thought I had simply forgotten some detail of the spell, some law of magic I had overlooked in my desperation.
But then…
I started noticing the gaps.
Shadows that moved when there was no light to cast them.
Moments where the world flickered, as though a different version of Avalon were trying to push through.
Figures in the mist—not fae, not mortal, not anything I had ever seen before.
And then there were the whispers.
Soft at first.
Nothing more than the sound of wind through the trees.
But over time, they grew louder.
More distinct.
And finally, one night, as I stood before Avalon’s sacred lake, watching the reflection of the stars ripple across the water,
one of the shadows spoke.
A Voice from the Forgotten
“You should not have done it, Merlin.”
I turned sharply.
For a moment, there was nothing there.
Then, from the edge of the mist, a shape unfurled itself.
It was not a person, not a creature, not even a spirit.
It was a memory given form.
A piece of the war I had erased.
And it had come back.
“You were not meant to break the balance,” it whispered, its voice both familiar and strange.
“You did not end the war. You only buried it.”
I gripped my staff.
“Who are you?” I asked, my voice steady.
The shadow hesitated.
Then, in a voice I should not have recognized, it spoke a name.
“I am Morganna.”
The War Was Never Over
It was impossible.
Morganna had been erased.
She should not exist.
She should not be able to speak, to manifest, to remember.
And yet, here she was.
Not fully formed.
Not truly alive.
But present.
“You think you erased me,” she said, her shape flickering between shadow and flesh.
“But I was part of Avalon. Part of the Veil. Part of the very thing you tried to protect.”
“And when you unmade the war… I was unmade with it.”
A terrible realization settled over me.
I had not saved Avalon.
I had broken it.
The war was not truly gone.
It was simply waiting.
Trapped in the places between time.
Between memory.
Between existence and oblivion.
And now, something had found it.
Something was bringing it back.
The Return of the Shadows
The first sign came a week later.
Avalon’s rivers—normally golden and clear—began to darken, their waters filled with faint, flickering reflections of people who were not there.
The second sign came at dusk, when the sun set twice in the same evening, as though time itself had faltered.
The third sign…
Was the scream.
A cry that echoed through the entire land, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once—a sound of something trying to force its way back into existence.
And then…
The war began again.
Not in the past.
Not in history.
But in the present.
The Shadow War of Avalon had never truly ended.
It had only been waiting for the right moment to return.
And now, traveler…
That moment had come.
The First Battle of the Second War
The scream had not come from a single throat.
It had come from Avalon itself.
The land was in pain.
The waters churned, the sky flickered between night and day, and the mist that once protected Avalon from mortal eyes thinned, revealing glimpses of things that should not exist.
And then… the shadows moved.
Not like before.
Not as faint echoes, not as lingering memories of an erased war.
No—this time, they were real.
And they were here to reclaim what had been lost.
I had undone them once.
But now, they had undone my undoing.
And Avalon would pay the price.
Morganna’s Return
Morganna stood before me.
No longer just a whisper in the mist, no longer a half-formed shade caught between existence and oblivion.
She was fully here.
Her robes were woven from twilight, her eyes still held the weight of Avalon’s secrets, but her form… it flickered, as though this reality was rejecting her.
Or perhaps…
She was rejecting it.
“You were never meant to be erased, Morganna.”
“And yet, you erased me,” she said, her voice cold, but not cruel.
“I had no choice.”
“There is always a choice, Merlin.”
Her fingers curled, and in an instant, the Veil between Avalon and the rest of the world… tore open.
And from that wound in reality…
The Forgotten Ones stepped through.
The Forgotten Return
They had no names.
Not anymore.
They had been erased from history, just as the war had been.
But now…
They were reclaiming their existence.
Figures wrapped in shadows, warriors that had once stood among Avalon’s greatest defenders, only to be lost to time itself.
And at their head stood Edris the Hollow.
The one who had betrayed Avalon to the darkness.
The one who had brought the war to its gates in the first place.
He should not exist.
I had erased him.
And yet, here he was.
“You thought you could unmake me, Merlin?” His voice was silk wrapped around steel.
“You thought you could unmake all of us?”
His eyes—once human—were now pits of endless black, reflecting nothing, absorbing everything.
“You were wrong.”
The War That Never Ended
The air crackled with magic.
The very foundation of Avalon shifted, as if the land itself was deciding whether to accept this new history or resist it.
I raised my staff, prepared to push the shadows back once more, to undo what had been undone—
But then, Morganna stepped between us.
“Enough.”
She turned to Edris.
“You were a traitor then. You are a traitor now.”
Edris smirked. “And you are still bound by Avalon’s laws, Morganna. You cannot kill me.”
Her expression did not change.
“No, I cannot.”
She turned to me.
“But he can.”
The Choice That Should Never Be Given
It was a trap.
A test.
A cruel joke played by fate.
Morganna, once my greatest ally, once a protector of Avalon, was now forcing me to do what she could not.
To end the war… permanently.
To kill Edris.
But it would not just end him.
It would undo him.
It would erase him from existence…
Forever.
And I hesitated.
Because I knew the truth.
The spell I had cast to erase the war had been flawed.
I had thought I could simply remove an event from history, and that would be the end of it.
But the world does not work that way.
Everything has a price.
And if I unmade Edris once more…
What would be lost this time?
Would it be Avalon itself?
Would it be me?
Would it be… something even greater?
Morganna was watching me.
Edris was waiting.
The war hung in the balance.
And for the first time in my long, long life…
I did not know what to do.
The Final Decision Awaits
The air grew thick with unspoken possibilities.
The weight of the moment pressed against my mind, against my soul, forcing me to make a choice.
I had three paths before me:
- Erase Edris once more, undoing his return, risking another fracture in reality.
- Fight him the old way, accepting that he may never truly be defeated.
- Do nothing… and allow Avalon to decide its own fate.
Each path held a cost.
Each path carried consequences I could not yet see.
And so, traveler, I ask you now:
Which would you choose?
Because whatever I do next…
Will shape Avalon forever.
The Three Paths Before Me
Time did not move.
The battlefield—the very fabric of Avalon itself—was caught in a moment of unreal stillness, as if the land was waiting for my decision just as much as those who stood before me.
Edris, the Hollow Sorcerer, his blackened eyes filled with endless hunger, stood poised, ready for either annihilation or victory.
Morganna, the Forgotten Guardian, watched me with piercing intensity, knowing she could not act but willing me to do what she could not.
The warriors of the Forgotten, their forms shifting between shadow and substance, waiting to see if I would unmake them again.
And me?
I hesitated.
Because I knew what was at stake.
One action.
One spell.
One decision.
And Avalon—perhaps the world itself—would never be the same.
I had three choices:
- Erase Edris again, using the magic that had already fractured reality once before.
- Fight him as a man, knowing that something which has already been erased cannot be destroyed in the normal way.
- Do nothing, allowing fate to unfold as it was always meant to.
And I knew, deep in my soul, that no matter what I chose, I would never walk away unchanged.
The Path of Erasure – The Risk of Undoing Reality
I lifted my staff.
“I could erase you again, Edris.”
The shadows around him hissed, as if recoiling at the very idea.
“You could try,” he sneered. “But will Avalon survive a second wound?”
And that was the truth, wasn’t it?
Magic—true magic—demands a price.
The first time I had erased him, Avalon had nearly been destroyed.
What would happen if I did it again?
Would Avalon simply… cease to be?
Would I?
Could a world survive two fractures in time?
I didn’t know.
And that meant the answer was no.
I could not risk it.
Not again.
The Path of Battle – The Fight Against the Forgotten
“Then I will end you by my own hand,” I declared, twirling my staff, channeling magic the old way.
Edris laughed, dark and hollow.
“You cannot kill something that was already erased, Merlin. Not with steel, not with fire, not with your precious magic.”
I struck first.
A bolt of raw energy, enough to shatter mountains, launched from my staff.
It tore through Edris’s form…
And passed straight through him.
His body reformed, untouched, as if my attack had never happened.
And that was when I understood.
He was right.
I could not kill what had already been erased from time.
Edris was not truly here—he was a wound, a scar upon reality, a lingering fracture in a history that should not have existed.
If I could not erase him…
If I could not kill him…
Then there was only one path left.
The Path of Surrender – Letting Avalon Decide
I lowered my staff.
Morganna’s eyes widened in shock.
Edris’s grin faltered.
The warriors of the Forgotten shifted uneasily, sensing that something was about to change.
“You cannot win by doing nothing, Merlin,” Edris spat.
“I am not doing nothing,” I said. “I am letting Avalon choose.”
I closed my eyes.
I released my magic, allowing it to sink into the land itself, into the Veil that had once kept Avalon hidden from the world.
The world shuddered.
The sky darkened.
And then…
Avalon spoke.
Avalon’s Judgment
The land rejected them.
The Forgotten.
Edris.
The war itself.
Avalon had been wounded by my first spell, its history rewritten against its will.
But now…
It was healing itself.
The shadows twisted, pulled backward, as if an unseen force was undoing them at last—not through magic, not through erasure, but through Avalon’s own will.
Edris screamed.
“No! NO! I was meant to return! I was—”
His words collapsed into silence as his form dissolved into nothingness.
Not erased.
Not destroyed.
But unmade by the very world he sought to claim.
One by one, the warriors of the Forgotten vanished.
The Veil sealed itself.
And the war ended.
Truly, this time.
Not by my hand.
Not by Morganna’s.
But by Avalon’s own will.
The Aftermath – What Was Left Behind
The battlefield was silent.
The sky cleared, the mist settled, and Avalon…
Was whole again.
Morganna stood beside me.
Whole.
Present.
Real.
“You saved Avalon,” she said.
“No,” I corrected. “Avalon saved itself.”
She nodded.
And then, after a long, quiet moment, she turned to leave.
“Where will you go?” I asked.
“I do not belong here anymore, Merlin,” she murmured. “Not in this version of history.”
“You could stay.”
She shook her head.
“Some things, once forgotten, are never truly part of the story again.”
She stepped into the mist…
And was gone.
Merlin’s Final Words
The Shadow War of Avalon is not in any history book.
No bard sings of it.
No mortal remembers it.
Not even the fae speak of it.
Because it was never meant to happen.
The world erased it.
The Veil sealed it.
And only I—and perhaps Morganna, wherever she walks now—still remember.
But sometimes, traveler, when the wind moves just right, when the mists thicken over the sacred lake…
I swear I hear the echoes.
Not of battle.
Not of war.
But of a name lost to time.
A name once known.
A name…
That Avalon refuses to speak again.
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