Unknown.

2352.

49th Year of the Reign of King Caspian X.

Sapphyre.

They were almost prisoners of the witches, allowed to walk around, but not stray too far from sight. The landscape had shifted as they travelled, the jagged cliffs of Ettinsmoor giving way to rolling, mist-laden hills. The air grew damp and heavy, the scent of rain thick in the breeze. Towering pines lined their path, their branches whispering in the wind, as if warning them of what lay ahead.

It felt like they had been traveling for weeks, though she knew it had only been days. The terrain had grown wilder, more untamed. The rivers ran dark and deep, carving through the valleys like veins of shadow. Strange ruins dotted the land—crumbling towers and half-buried stones etched with runes long forgotten. It was as though they had stepped beyond the known world, beyond the safety of maps and kingdoms.

The further west they travelled, the stranger the land became.

The trees twisted unnaturally, their gnarled branches reaching toward the sky as though in silent agony. The ground itself felt unsteady beneath their feet, the very earth humming with an energy she didn't understand. Even the witches seemed to grow more wary, their normally assured strides cautious as they pressed forward.

But she knew where they were going.

To the far west, beyond the edge of the map. That strange call that the witches had heeded – that was where they were being taken.

When they finally arrived, the sight before her sent a chill down her spine. A sprawling encampment of tents lay nestled within the skeletal remains of a once-great city. Crumbling archways jutted from the earth, their surfaces marred by time and war. The remnants of shattered spires loomed like broken teeth against the darkening sky. The very air pulsed with something unnatural, thick with the residue of old magic. It was as if the stones themselves still remembered the sorcery that had once ruled here, whispering echoes of long-dead witches and their forgotten spells.

Sapphyre's breath caught. She recognized it. She had seen it in old maps, in texts detailing the forgotten history of the land.

The Witch-City.

They were permitted to roam the encampment freely – watched but not bound. A brittle kind of hospitality. That evening, a sharp-eyed witch greeted them, her voice clipped and eyes glittering with barely-concealed suspicion. She led them through the ruins, explaining in vague terms where they could go and where they could not.

Their assigned tent was near the heart of the camp, larger than she expected, reinforced with thick canvas and heavy bone-carved stakes. Inside, the space was dimly lit by softly glowing stones that pulsed like heartbeats. A narrow table sat between two cushioned benches. Furs were piled neatly in one corner, beside a basin and pitcher of water that smelled faintly of lavender.

The floor was layered with intricate rugs – woven with symbols she didn't recognize but that seemed to shimmer faintly when her eyes slid over them.

Sapphyre lingered near the entrance, her senses tingling with the ever-present magic that soaked the very air. There was a hum beneath her skin, an invisible current that pulled at her.

And somewhere in the center of the city, something was calling to her.

The Southern March.

Emerylda.

The landscape was as bland and monotonous as the rest of Archenland, but plains rather than hills. With grass that was not quite green and not quite yellow. Dry, but not quite dried. It was as if nothing in that blasted place could decide exactly quite what it wanted to be.

But she did not miss the house when they neared it – an ugly red-stone building rising from amongst the grass, with a pool of water before it.

And the man seemed to be waiting for them, not moving once as they approached.

He was the oldest man she had ever laid eyes upon, a stark contrast from Atlanteans who did not age in face. His beard fell to his knees, with braids strewn throughout, weighted with gold and diamond. There was a staff leaning against the wall, though he did not reach for it.

"Good day, Emerylda," he said in a merry voice, as if he were greeting an old friend.

Emerylda did not blink, simply observed him. He walked barefoot and he wore a robe of burnt umber, like autumn leaves or the sky of breaking dawn and there was a strangeness about it, a magic that she could not quite place. He did not feel like any seer she had met before, and yet his magic felt almost familiar.

"Good day, hermit," she said with a smile as she dismounted Snowflake.

"Come sit with me, Emerylda."

She bid as he told, joining him on the wooden bench that she could have sworn was not there the moment before. And yet, it seemed as if it had always been there, for the not-green grass grew up around its dark legs.

The hermit said nothing for a while, simply staring into the impossible pool.

Sapphyre would have broken the silence with some witty quip that would begin the conversation; but for once, Emerylda did not know what to say to the old man.

"I have seen you many times before, Emerylda of Atlantis." Surprise flitted through her, but not quite. Perhaps the seer was one of rare power. Did his sight reach into other worlds? "I've watched you come and go into Narnia, hopping through the portals as if you owned them. I watched you bring a baby from a desolate land, a baby that could have destroyed Narnia. I watched you in the City of the Witch Country and I watched as that land fell to ruin. For your boredom.

"Your heart corrupts; there is a darkness that clouds it, like a storm that's ever brewing.

Ruin follows close behind your footsteps, though the hand that causes it is not always your own. They are your strings. Your words. I see it all in the pool."

"Look again old man, for I am trying to build a better world, not ruin it." Anger boiled. It burned. How dare he? Her magic crept out, a deep green mist that sought to catch his mind.

Though as the man sighed and stirred the pool with his staff, her magic slid off his something within his mind – just as it did with Rilian.

Just as it did with Sapphyre.

She could shift into her serpent's form and strangle the life out of him, or lay claim to his breath with her poison-coated fangs.

In the folds of her skirt, she clenched her fists, unable to do anything but watch and wait.

What he saw in that pool, she could not tell, for she saw nothing but her own reflection in the inky depths.

"I see you sitting on a throne that is not yours. I see you wearing a crown that belongs to another. I see you basking in the glow of a love that was never meant for you. I see that throne breaking. I see that crown melted. And I see that love bestowed upon one more deserving."

"You lie." She stood, the trembling of her hands, and the mist of the magic gathered there still covered by her plush skirts.

"You're playing a dangerous game, Emerylda."

She stood slowly. "I don't play. I place pieces. And I remove them when I must."

His eyes darkened like the sky before a storm. "Even the brightest stars can burn their makers."

"Then I'll make sure they burn where I want them to."

"I have been here since Winter ruled this land, I have seen kings and queens come and go and you, Green Lady, are no queen."

The Southern March.

Drinian.

The Hermit of the Southern March had long been a figure of mystery and wisdom, a recluse in the wilderness where few dared to tread. His counsel was sought only by those with questions too tangled for court intrigue or common reason. As the path wound onward, solitary and silent under the vast empty sky, the weight of court politics and the strange, twisting fate of Narnia pressed heavily on the mind of the King's Advisor.

A name that seemed meant little when the king did not heed his counsel.

He guided his horse through the forested foothills in silence, the reins loose in his grip. The Southern Marches had always felt like the edge of the world – thick with quiet, heavy with watching trees. The sky stretched low and grey, and the path wound through the near-dead grasses. He had made the journey before, years passed. He remembered the peace that cloaked the Hermit's sanctuary.

He crested the final ridge, expecting the familiar clearing – and froze.

There, sitting on the stone bench outside the Hermit's weathered stone dwelling, was a woman.

He dismounted slowly, every instinct suddenly alert.

The woman turned, and the sight of her nearly stole the breath from his lungs.

The woman who was perhaps the most stunning creature he had ever seen; her beauty outshone even that of that Star Queen.

She was clothing in a gown the colour of the most beautiful emeralds, her hair an unbound river of darkened copper down her back, held back from her ethereal face by a band of silver that could almost be called a coronet. The sort of beauty that inspired the ballads sung before the King; she stood tall and proud, as if she owned the ground she walked upon.

Drinian was not one to lean towards poetry or whimsy, and he could not paint.

But he would painther.

Oh Aslan.

He would use pigments of copper and gold and cocoa for the colours of that hair. The creature of beauty, whoever she was, had stepped out of every man's deepest dream. Her face like one of the High Queens of old, her face too lovely, that glint in her eyes too fierce for her to be any common maid.

And she looked familiar.

Not from court. Not from battle.

From somewhere else. Somewhere far deeper.

She sat by the old man, her face burning with a strange, cold rage.

And then he heard her words.

"I am the future Queen of Narnia; the betrothed of Prince Rilian, Crown Prince of Narnia."

What?

Something in her face, the tilt of her jaw, the look in her burning green eyes – it struck him as familiar. A memory teased at the edge of his mind, one he couldn't quite grasp.

She turned then, her gaze brushing past him like a blade. Cold. Assessing. Powerful.

And still, he could not look away.

He remained silent beyond the customary greetings, choosing instead to watch her. Just as she watched him.

And the Hermit of the Southern March remained completely unaware of their silent battle.

Then as she spoke, a buried memory surfaced.

Rilian, young and full of life, wearing a dazed smile. Smiling for the first time since the death of his mother; telling him of the woman he had met. With hair of auburn and eyes of the deepest emerald. He had even introduced him – and Drinian pulled that memory from the depths of his aged mind.

The witch!

Green mist tinged his vision.

His vision faded, and all he saw was the face of the woman in front of him.

He blinked.

Those eyes, so stunning, so perfect.

She was so beautiful.

Slowly, an emerald mist seemed to spread through his mind, blurring his vision.

"For I am to wed Prince Rilian," her words, spoken through such a perfect, plump mouth, reached his mouth as if through water.

Rilian.

Who was Rilian?

"Leave here, witch," the Hermit said, his voice cutting through the air like a blade drawn in warning.

Drinian blinked, startled. The old man's eyes burned with clarity and command.

Witch?

He turned to the woman – but in that moment, something slipped inside his mind, and he couldn't remember why he had come.

The Hermit stood at the threshold of his stone sanctuary, the golden light of the west casting him in stark contrast. "This is no place for your games," he said again, more forcefully.

The woman did not flinch. Her expression remained composed, almost amused. "I'm not here to play games," she said, stepping forward lightly, almost mockingly. "Only to speak."

Drinian felt as if the world tilted slightly. He looked at her, then at the Hermit, and back again.

Why was he here?

Why did she feel like a dream he couldn't wake from?

The Hermit's gaze flicked to Drinian, sharp and unrelenting. "Wake up, boy. Do not let her beauty blind you. There is poison in honey too sweet."

And Drinian, standing between the two – between something ancient and something he did not yet understand – suddenly didn't know which way to turn.

Ruins of the Witch City.

Sapphyre.

The ruins around her blurred as her feet carried her across ancient flagstones and beneath broken archways. The feeling of the magic intensified – tugging, beckoning, urgent. It led her to a large tent set apart from the others, its fabric darker than shadow, rimmed with silver thread that shimmered in the dim light.

Inside, the air was still and charged, as if the tent had been holding its breath.

And in the center of the room, covered in a heavy cloth, sat a chair.

Even beneath the covering, the contours were unmistakable – tall, narrow-backed, and etched with runes that faintly pulsed through the fabric like veins of moonlight. The air around it shimmered faintly, as if the space it occupied was slightly... wrong.

Bent. Watching her back.

She recognised the magic as well as she knew her own – Atlantean.