“Ungh…”
Mordred’s eyelids felt like glued leather.
When she finally forced them apart, the light didn’t gently enter her eyes—it pierced straight into the back of her skull like a hot needle.
The last thing she remembered was taking a fat bite out of a questionable, neon-blue mushroom in a greasy Amsterdam alleyway because her bro swore it would ‘change her perspective.’ That was followed by a vivid dream that left her with a lingering phantom pain that throbbed in the center of her sternum.
In the dream, the holy spear had gone clean through her breastplate, through meat and spine, pinning her to the frozen dirt while the sky bled red above Camlann.
‘I liked Mordred in Fate, but getting run through by Rhongomyniad is definitely not a memory I want to live twice,’ she thought.
She blinked, waiting for the blurred blobs overhead to sharpen into the familiar white acoustic foam and ceiling fan of her bedroom.
They didn’t.
Rough-hewn oak beams stretched across the ceiling, caked in thick black soot and stringy dried moss.
A dim, orange glow flickered rhythmically across the wood, casting long, swaying shadows.
‘Where am I?’ she thought.
She tried to shape the words with her mouth, to push breath past her vocal cords, but her tongue felt absurdly thick, completely filling the cavity of her jaw.
The air she inhaled hit the back of her throat, wet and freezing, and what actually burst out of her mouth was a shrill, raspy infant squall.
WAAAAH!
WAAAH!
‘What the hell—what is this?!’
Panic hit her like a bucket of ice water.
She tried to throw her weight forward, to force her elbows under her frame and sit up.
Nothing moved.
Her spine felt like a cooked noodle.
Her head flopped uselessly to the side, her neck collapsing under its own weight as her cheek slammed into wet, coarse linen that smelled overwhelmingly of copper and iron.
She couldn’t feel her legs.
She tried to brace her arms against the bedding, but two tiny, reddish, wrinkled fists flailed uselessly in the air, fingers twitching in uncoordinated sputters.
“So energetic right from the very moment of birth!”
The voice didn’t come from a distance; it descended from directly above her.
It was low, smooth, and laced with a cold, rhythmic cadence that made every hair on Mordred’s neck stand up.
She strained her eye muscles, tracking the shadow that fell over her face.
A woman was leaning over the rim of the wooden basin.
Her skin was ghastly pale, almost translucent under the dim torchlight, framed by thick, cascading dark hair that spilled around her shoulders like oil.
Her eyes burned with an unhinged, feverish heat, but her red lips curved into a soft, conspiratorial smile as if the two of them were already sharing a private joke.
“Arthur…
my greatest hope has finally entered this world,” the woman whispered, leaning down until her dark hair brushed Mordred’s forehead.
She reached into the basin, her long, freezing fingers gently cupping the side of Mordred’s cheek.
The hard tip of her index fingernail rested lightly near Mordred’s windpipe—not pressing down to kill, but lingering like a feather touch as her smile softened into something almost tender, yet wildly unhinged.
“Just wait.
The day you are dragged down from that throne is no longer far off.
By what right do you get to be king instead of me?!”
The woman tilted her head, her breath smelling of bitter herbs and stale wine as she let out a quiet, bubbling laugh that ended in an affectionate hum against Mordred’s ear.
“Mordred, my good child…
my cursed little child of sin…
everything rests on you now~”
Mordred’s breath caught in her throat.
Her heart beat against her tiny sternum like a trapped bird.
‘Morgan.’
The suffocating proximity of the woman’s freezing hand made the horrific reality lock into place.
This was Morgan le Fay—King Uther’s daughter, Arthur’s half-sister, and the dark side of the Lady of the Lake.
Born with the supreme magic that Uther had tried to replace with Arthur’s dragon blood, Morgan claimed all of Britain as her personal property, using her children to control nearly half the Knights of the Round Table.
And now, using Arthur’s stolen genetic material, she had manufactured a homunculus to steal the crown back.
‘I actually reincarnated into this miserable kid?’ Mordred thought, looking back into the glowing, unstable eyes resting above her.
‘And this dark, chaotic woman is my mother?
If things keep going according to canon, I’m guaranteed to get run through by that holy spear at Camlann.’
Morgan smoothed a stray lock of hair from Mordred’s forehead, her expression melting into a warm, satisfied smile before she turned to glide softly toward the doorway.
Mordred stared back up at the soot-stained oak ceiling beams.
She concentrated on her right arm, forcing the firing synapses in her infant brain to trace down through her shoulder, down her forearm, into her hand.
Her fingers twitched, skin bunching up, until her tiny knuckles turned white and locked into two firm, trembling fists.
‘No way.
I know how this story ends.
I’m rewriting this entire damn script.’
CLANG!
The heavy iron practice sword struck the damp oak post with a sharp, iron-on-wood crack that vibrated all the way up through Mordred’s forearms.
The jarring impact rattled her teeth.
Her fingers slipped along the wet leather wrap of the hilt, the coarse material dragging against the torn, calloused skin of her palms.
Sweat dripped off the point of her chin, hitting the black mud near her boots with tiny splashes.
Mordred let out a breathless, wheezing chuckle, shaking her head as she leaned her forehead against the flat of the cold blade.
“Well…
that angle was complete garbage,” she muttered aloud, her voice light despite the exhaustion burning through her chest.
Five years had passed since that night in the wooden basin.
Her altered homunculus biology didn’t give her a normal childhood; her bones had lengthened rapidly, her joints aching every few weeks as her muscles expanded to match the frame of a young adult.
It was unnerving to wake up every month with slightly longer limbs, her clothes constantly tearing at the seams, but her muscle tone, agility, and reflexes had settled into something built purely for battle.
She dragged the edge of the blade back off the gouged wood with a low rasp, rolling her right shoulder to work out a dull knot in the joint.
The air in the forest clearing was thick with the scent of crushed pine needles, rotting leaf mold, and wet earth.
She hadn’t spent those five years isolated in brooding silence.
While Morgan’s court engaged in tense political scheming, Mordred had made herself an inescapable, oddly endearing presence among the castle staff, guards, and local woodsmen.
She brought fresh game to the cooks, joked with the armorers while they hammered out spare iron, and spent her mornings training in the dense woods surrounding the Lady of the Lake’s domain—hunting wild boars and wolves not with cold military discipline, but with an infectious, wild energy.
‘In the anime, she swings like an absolute freight train,’ she thought, wiping sweat from her eyes with her forearm and giving the carved oak post a playful tap with the blunt tip of her sword.
‘My body has the strength, but trying to look cool while swinging fifty pounds of steel is a work in progress.’
She leaned back against the post, letting out a dry, amused chuckle.
‘Bro was right.
His shrooms changed my perspective, alright, from a Daddy’s little pampered princess to a heavily armored, five-foot-one anime clone destined to get run through by her own gender-bent king of a father.
I feel I am going to have major Daddy issues.’
A loud snap of dead brush echoed from the thicket twenty feet to her left, followed by the soft rustle of heavy foliage being pushed aside.
Mordred didn’t snap into an offensive guard or glare into the brush.
Instead, she lowered her sword, letting the heavy point rest casually in the mud, and wiped her brow with the back of her leather brace.
She turned toward the sound with a relaxed, crooked smile.
“If you’re here to tell me I’m ruining the timber, standard woodcutting rules don’t apply out here,” she called out, her tone light, open, and entirely welcoming.
She shifted her weight, resting a hand on her hip and leaning slightly against the pommel of her sword, waiting to see who had wandered into her spot with an easy, amused grin.