The Wheel of Kin: A Daughter's Journey

Rings of Rhuidean

The silence stretched until Elara slipped into unconsciousness.

Or something like it.

She didn't remember closing her eyes. She didn't feel the moment her body sank from Lanfear's arms to the soft dust of the earth. But when her vision cleared, she was no longer in Rhuidean.

The world around her shimmered like glass, like water catching sunlight. She stood barefoot on smooth black stone, surrounded by polished surfaces and glowing panels that hummed with unfamiliar energy. The air buzzed, thick with power and purpose, the scent of ozone sharp in her nose.

She knew—somehow—this was not a dream.

This was memory.

Not hers.

A woman stood in the center of the chamber, her back straight, dark hair gathered in a bun. Clad in a sleek white robe, she moved like starlight—deliberate, radiant, cold. Her hands danced across floating instruments of light, coaxing threads of Power from the fabric of reality itself.

Not saidin.
Not saidar.

Something else.
Something deeper. Older. Hungrier.

Elara's heart pounded as recognition bloomed like frostbite.

Mierin Eronaile.

Before the name Lanfear cursed her.

"Mierin," a voice called from behind her. A man—tall, golden-haired, his voice filled with caution. "You're pushing too far. The Pattern is straining."

"I am on the edge of a breakthrough, Beidomon," Mierin said, eyes flashing with intensity. "Imagine it—a Power beyond the flawed duality of male and female. A source untouched by madness or limitation. A third way."

"You don't know what you're touching," he whispered.

"No," Mierin replied softly, reverently. "But I will."

The panels glowed brighter. The black stone beneath her feet vibrated. Threads of darkness began to curl in from the edges of the room—unseen by the others, but not by Elara. She saw them. Felt them. They moved like tendrils. Like breath.

Something was coming.

Mierin extended her hands—and the world tore.

A wound opened in the air. Not a gate. Not a weave. A rupture. Beyond it: not light, not shadow, but an absence that pulled everything toward it. A nothing that hungered.

Elara staggered backward, choking on air that wasn't air. Her skin burned with power. Her eyes locked with Mierin's.

And in that moment—she saw herself.

A child, cradled in Mierin's arms. Not born of her flesh, but born of the moment. Of the accident. Of the Bore.

A spark that should not have been.

The True Power flowed from that rent in reality—and some part of it reached out and chose.

Chose her.

The infant Elara's eyes opened—shining, depthless black. The veins in her skin glowed like cracks in porcelain. Mierin stared down at the child, her expression unreadable.

Beidomon's scream echoed in the lab. "You've opened it! Light, what have you done?!"

And Mierin whispered only
"Creation... or calamity?"

Elara gasped as the vision shattered.

She woke alone.

The sand was warm beneath her cheek, the air still hushed and strange. Mist curled low around her boots as she sat up, blinking against the eerie light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Lanfear was gone. Not a footprint in the dust, not a whisper in the wind. Only silence and the towering bones of a forgotten city.