SWNOVELS Gild: Chapter 32
There weren’t always six kingdoms in Orea. At one time, there were seven.
A thousand years ago, Seventh Kingdom ruled at the edge of the world. Past the Pitching Pines, past the frozen mountain of Highbell, far past the Barrens and even the arctic sea.
Way out at the end, so far that even the sun and moon only skimmed its horizon. So distant that the flat earth ended in a precipice with nothing below. Seventh Kingdom lived in perpetual gray, no light, no dark, no beyond. But it was here where the bridge was found.
Lemuria. The bridge that led to nowhere.
The bridge was just a track of gray, empty dirt that stretched over the edge of the world, past what the eye could see. That strip of land kept going, with nothing below or around it, nothing existing at all except for the dark, sightless void.
It was said that if you were to step off the bridge, you would fall forever, and not even the Divine gods and goddesses could find you to give you the reprieve of death.
But Seventh Kingdom’s monarchs were scholars. They didn’t believe in myths or unknowns. So they sent soldiers and explorers onto the bridge of Lemuria to find out what was beyond, to discover where the bridge led.
For years, hundreds of Oreans journeyed on the bridge, only to never be seen again. Most believed it was a fruitless endeavor, one the monarchs should give up. A suicide mission. A task soon given to thieves and debtors instead. A venture that never led to anything.
Until one day, a woman walked back across.
She wasn’t a soldier or an explorer or a scholar or a thief. She wasn’t sent by the monarchs. She was a stowaway. An orphan girl whose father had gone over the bridge and never returned.
At age ten, she slipped past the guards who stood at the start of the bridge and ran silently, determinedly, into that void to search for her father.
No one ever knew. No one ever saw.
She walked through time and space, battling madness and starvation and thirst. Where all others finally caved and tossed themselves off the bridge, giving in, she pressed on. Where every other Orean man had failed, she succeeded.
Saira Turley did the one thing that no others had—she walked the bridge of Lemuria, and came back to tell the tale.
But she didn’t return alone.
Because the bridge, that narrow road in the nothing, led to a new world. A world of magic.
She might not have found her father, but Saira did find Annwyn—the territory in the realm beyond.
The realm of fae.
Saira fell through their ground and landed on their sky. Bird, they called her. Broken-winged bird.
A group of fae took her in, cared for her, and she was amazed at these people with their remarkable power. She found a new family in the magical paradise, made a life there.
But her heart was always in Orea, the place where her mother was buried, where she had fond memories of her father.
When she turned nineteen, Saira fell in love with a fae male—the prince of Lydia. It was said that their love was deeper than all the seas of Annwyn, that music was made from the song of their hearts.
And before they married, the prince gave her a wedding gift.
He couldn’t bring back her father for her, but he could bring back her home. So the prince took her to the bridge of Lemuria once more, at the edge of their glittering sky, and he bound it.
Through space and time, he found the thread that connected their realms through this voided bridge. With his great powers, he yanked it closer to Annwyn, to the fae kingdom, so that Saira could return home to Orea whenever she wished.
Orea and Annwyn became sister realms. It was a celebration for all seven kingdoms when fae and Oreans united.
After that great joining, Lemuria was no longer that voided, endless path of death, but a true bridge between the realms, one that only took minutes to cross.
And for hundreds of years, we coexisted. Mingled. It’s where Orean magic still comes from, mixing with the fae. But year by year, that magic dies out a little bit more because no more fae come here. And no more Oreans cross into Annwyn. They haven’t for three hundred years.
Because the fae betrayed Orea.
A new monarch rose, long after Saira Turley and her prince drew their last breaths. A king who spoke against cohabiting with Oreans, against mixing with lesser beings. He snapped the thread that Saira’s husband had tied with love, severing the bridge, and cleaving the realms in one mighty swipe.
Seventh Kingdom, vulnerable there at the edge of the world, was swallowed whole from the force of the magical cut. The land and people were never seen again. And the bridge of Lemuria fell into that void, crumbled to nothing.
So Orea has the fae to thank for the magic that still exists here. But it’s a bitter gift that’s laced with betrayal.
Because there is no Seventh Kingdom anymore. There is no peaceful alliance. There is no bridge to Annwyn. There are no more fae.
…Or so people think.