Second Divine War
Year 0: First organized Hypofiend attack. Mages begin mobilizing. Verdant is reluctantly summoned. Cyran returns to court advisory.
Year 1: Tensions rise between Merlin and Cyran. Disagreements grow over strategy and involvement. Verdant tries to remain in a support role, offering magical insight but avoiding command.
Year 2: The war escalates. The Lyceum councils begin mobilizing en masse, and with them, the Magisters. Cyran is quick to rise to a leadership role within the Magical Front—logical, sharp, unshaken in crises. His ascent is strategic. Earned. Calculated.
Verdant, meanwhile, is invoked as “Merlin”, and must stand at the front, they say—if not as a commander, then at least as a beacon. A symbol of arcane unity. Something to rally behind.
But Verdant hates being a symbol. It itches like a too-tight collar. They had, naively, believed their time as Merlin could pass without conflict, that the role could be fulfilled quietly in the gardens and margins. That belief dies quickly.
Year 3–4: Major escalations. The magical front suffers losses; Dura exerts pressure. Verdant is forced into greater involvement, increasingly exhausted. Tensions with Cyran peak, culminating in a near-public fallout.
Year 5: Merlin ends things in Ryeham with a new seal that reinforces the barrier between Experia and the Other, as well as nourishes the land—the latter effect from Verdant’s influence rather than Dura’s. This is the last act of Merlin Verdant will perform before retreating into seclusion.
