A/N : Hi everyone! This is my first story ever ever, and I hope you'll like it ! don't forget to review so I know :)

A new evil arises, one that threatens the foundations of magic itself. But Merlin, this time, is not alone in his fight. The big lizard gives a new prophecy. The time of legends is nearing.

The plot takes place between the first and the second season of Merlin BBC and includes 1 OC called Eylen. Merlin just turned 18, Arthur and Gwen are nearly 20, Morgana is 22 and Eylen is 17.

At the end of this chapter, please comment and suggest names for Eylen's druidic name – eh eh eh – ! (and point out all grammar errors, I am not beta-ed)

Thank you for reading !

Oh, and the image for the story is mine (I drew it :) )

Disclaimer : I don't own Merlin (if I did there would be ten more seasons) :P

Later update of the A/N : Dear new readers, I've started a crossover between Merlin and Sherlock. It's called Conspiracies and takes place in medieval Camelot. Check it out :)

Chapter 1

Warm sunlight was filtering through the heavy curtains and landing exactly on her face, that she lazily tried to hide with her pillow without much success. She sighed and stretched, stiff from the night in the cold and empty castle, and blinked her rich green eyes open.

Eylen had always lived in Daobeth; anyway, for longer than she could remember; and she had a very good memory. She was always utterly alone, except for her mom, who came to see her twice a week, bringing biscuits and dusty books. Apart from these weekly visits, the young girl had all the city for herself, but it was no good without people. She knew all the books of the castle's library by heart, and spoke fluently every foreign language she could came upon. Even that weird language of the Old Religion (what in the earth could be this religion? Anyway, speaking its language made her feel weirdly more alive). But where was the good of knowing languages if you cannot practice them with someone?

She drew the curtains open by pulling an arm out of the heavy blanket. By the window, Eylen could see the snowy towers of her castle, after having blinked a lot to get her eyes used to the blinding sunlight. Daobeth had once been a flamboyant kingdom, but was now a little piece of land, reduced by barbarian invasions ages before. The castle was the only standing building left in the entire kingdom, and washidden to the view by the forest (though she could not fathom how no one had ever come close to the castle except for her mom).

She reluctantly tried to get a leg out of her warm blankets, and accidently knocked over her hairbrush. The fall's noise reverberated in the desert corridors, making her shiver.

An eerie silence reigned along the citadel, one that Eylen had grown used to for a long time now (but seemed to re-discover every other morning). She spent her time in the forest, that she called Holt (well, "holt" meant "forest" in the language of the Old Religion, but she had chosen the name when she was four, so she cut herself some slack. This forest surrounded the castle and was the liveliest place ever; the girl knew every animal, every tree, every flower; and she loved racing the deers -even though she always lost!- and helping the birds make their nets…even though she was the only person there, she did not feel all alone. Except in winter. It was soooo boring, and even if the girl enjoyed playing in the snow, she regretted the animals did not share her eagerness for the cold weather, and she had grown bored really being alone for months.

Eylen wished so much she could leave Daobeth. She had never been elsewhere because of some weird curse - if magic even existed!- she was under, that would block her from stepping outside the frontiers. Each time the young girl had tried to get near the border, she had felt very dizzy and light-headed, and could not put one foot in front of the other without collapsing. Her mom always came to bring her back to the castle. She could not fathom how she knew exactly when she was trying to leave and where she was, and she had never dared to ask.

This was visit day. She forced herself to get up, and remembered this was the first time she was going to see her mom since she had turned seventeen, two days before - on the summer equinoxe's day.

Eylen sat up and tried to order her unruly chestnut hair with her fingers, as the hairbrush was lying way too far after its fall. After few minutes more of gathering her will, she finally got up, frowning slightly, though not because of the coldness of the air. Her mom should have arrived by now, she was always there at dawn.

Merlin was, as usual, late for the succulent broth Gaius had made for supper. It was getting cold…all this hard cooking work for nothing! His ward was going -again - to complain about the taste of his meal (hey! It tasted good, when it was hot anyway). Merlin was really going to be the death of him. The door creaked open and a black mop of hair emerged from the side, along with a sheepish grin and a weird smell - horse dung?-. At last!

When Merlin finally got rid of the smell (it was really horse dung…Gaius's nose is so accurate, from years of medicine and pure skill), he hobbled out of his room and crashed down the stairs. He landed on the bench at the table, just in front of his bowl of cold broth. Gaius sighed and did not even look up from the book he was reading. The boy's balance was not improving, and he was going to complain about his magnificent broth's taste.

Eylen was bending to retrieve her shoes under her bed when something most bizarre happened. She caught sight of the weird silver mark she had always had on her shoulder, that was glowing.

Wow…I need to go to sleep earlier tonight.

The young girl blinked twice to chase all the remaining sleepiness of her eyes, but her mark kept glowing. And getting warmer, and warmer. And itchier too. That was rather annoying, but she decided not to scratch it, because it could get even more itchy.

Eylen shivered. Her feet were freezing, so she ignored the bothering itchiness, bent to catch her shoes and put them on. Right when she got up again, she felt really really light-headed, worst than when she tried to get out of Daobeth, and her mark decided to burn.

She screamed- and put her hand on the mark, trying to get the burning to stop. As the girl finally touched it, she felt some rush of power - weirdly enough -, and got the impression to be more alive than ever - quite cool -, and some silver sparks shot out of her hands and formed weird spiralling shapes in the air in front of her. Go figure, it looked just like the strange silver mark of her arm. That's when the world started to spin way too quickly - not cool - and some wind rushed to tangle her hair - hey, that's unfair, she tried to brush it. And everything went black - well, not really, more like fuzzy, but it was horrible anyway.

Merlin was having one of Gaius's horrid broth in his mentor's chambers, having ridden himself of a horrid smell, his body sore after scrubbing the royal prat's chamber's ground AND the stables. He really wished he could go to sleep and never ever get up again in the entire week. And it was only Monday. He was letting out a yawn and trying to force his eyes to stay open when he felt his magic tingle. The warlock looked at his left, towards the door of the physician's chamber. Gaius was reading and apparently oblivious to magic.

Great, someone (or something) is going to make an attempt on the Prince of the clotpoles' life. Again. Life is sooo unfair...can't the bad guys wait until next week?

He started to yawn again when a chestnut-haired girl appeared right from nowhere, visibly trying to stay standing, a bewildered look on her face and her eyes glowing bright silver.

Wait…silver?

"Wow, that was most weird" she thought loud. Eylen regained her balance, feeling really dizzy, and saw two persons staring at her, mouth agape.

"Errrm… hi!" That was certainly not the way she had imagined she would introduce herself to the first real-live people she met.

If her nausea was not increasing so drastically, trying to make her legs buckle under herself -and succeeding-, the girl would have burst out laughing at the face the people in front of her were putting. Seriously, both had the same eyebrow raised dramatically, and the mouth hanging open in a superb O-shape.

The youngest one, by far, a raven-haired boy that looked around 18 - almost her age! -, stood up and reached for her as she collapsed. A golden-silver dome appeared around them. Some sort of power wave shook the world's core, whispers of words sounding like "forþgesceaft" echoing through her mind.

Everything went black.

A/N : Don't forget to review and share ! It takes you less than a minute and makes my day!

Airin9