The lost city of Kêr-Is

The story of Kêr-Is begins long ago, on an island just off the coast of Brittany. Coveted for its maritime advantages, the island was a natural stronghold for early Bronze Age Celtic peoples—rich in resources, ideally positioned for oceanic trade, and difficult to besiege. Over the centuries, it became home to a prosperous culture steeped in seafaring, warfare, and exploration. For two thousand years, the fortunes of Kêr-Is would rise, fall, and shift with the tides of history, largely ignored by empires too wary to invade and too eager to trade.
  The Romans, among others, deemed it more profitable to barter with the islanders than to conquer them. In time, the city of Kêr-Is—resilient and remote—was among the first in the region to adopt Christianity, converting to Catholicism early in the faith’s spread across Europe.
  But the island’s blessings came with a hidden flaw. As Kêr-Is entered its second millennium of settlement, it became increasingly clear that the sea itself was turning against them. Erosion, rising tides, and the island’s low elevation spelled a slow, creeping doom.
  Salvation came in the form of King Gralon, son of the revered King Gradlon. Pious and brilliant in equal measure, Gralon was a masterful engineer. He devised an unprecedented system of dikes, canal locks, and drainage mechanisms—an intricate network that turned back the tide and reclaimed the island. Many believed his designs were divinely inspired, whispered to him by angels. Gralon was hailed not only as a king, but as the savior of Kêr-Is.
  Under his reign, the city entered a new golden age. Trade flourished. Wealth flowed through its ports like floodwaters through his canals. Gralon’s palace was said to gleam with marble from far lands, fragrant cedarwood, and gold filigree—an opulent symbol of a people reborn.
  But for all his faith and ingenuity, Gralon bore two fatal weaknesses.
  The first was spiritual hunger—an ache for the old ways. Though baptized and devout, he was haunted by the echoes of his ancestors’ gods. The wild rites, ecstatic indulgences, and primal freedoms of the pagan past stirred within him a longing that prayer could not quiet. Rumors—unfounded, yet persistent—circulated that he had consorted with devils to build his mighty floodgates. Whispers claimed the knowledge he possessed was not holy, but infernal.
  The second weakness was more earthly, and far more dangerous: his daughter, Dahud—also called Dahut, Ahez, or Ahes, depending on the tongue. His love for her was pure, but it blinded him. And in that blindness, the seeds of Kêr-Is’s downfall were sown.
  Dahud was Gralon’s daughter, but her mother had not been a mortal woman. She was born of the sea—daughter of a Mari-Morgan, one of the ocean’s fae-touched mermaids. In his youth, Gralon had fallen into a fateful affair with the sea-maid, and from that union came Dahud, whom he swore to foster as his own. From the moment of her birth, it was clear she was unlike other children. Her eyes shimmered like moonlight on deep water. Her voice could calm storms—or call them.
  Dahud grew into a woman of breathtaking beauty and cunning grace, and her love for the sea ran deeper than blood. But while she wore the trappings of the Christian court, the God of Abraham held no place in her heart. The psalms grated against her soul. Church walls felt cold and suffocating. Though she appeared at Mass, her lips moved in hollow mimicry. Behind closed doors, she whispered older names.
  For she was not merely royal—she was arcane. Born of two worlds, her blood remembered the old gods. She had a gift for magic—one she nurtured in secret, away from watchful eyes. Some said she could sing to the tides and shape them. Others claimed she danced under moonlight with sea-spirits and bound lesser gods to her will. Quiet warnings began to spread: the princess of Kêr-Is was no mere noblewoman—she was a sea-witch, and her power was growing.
  It was whispered that Dahud consorted with beings older than Christendom, offering prayers to ancient deities that slumbered in the deep, waiting with bitterness and broken memory. But Gralon, ever blind in his love, would hear none of it. To him, Dahud was his daughter—his joy, his shining jewel. She could do no wrong.
  That love should have been her shield. Instead, it made her a target. The clergy, uneasy with her presence and fearful of her power, began to conspire in whispers. They saw in her the devil’s child—a creature of sorcery and seduction, born to undo the kingdom. Tales spread like wildfire. That she bewitched men. That she performed rites of debauchery in hidden chambers. That her magic corrupted the very air of Kêr-Is, leading the city toward ruin.
  Worse still, some claimed she had ensorcelled her own father—that her sorcery clouded his judgment and chained his soul. What had once been jealous gossip turned to venomous accusation. And then, violence.
  One night, an assassin crept through the palace—a blade meant for Dahud’s heart. Whether sent by fanatics or foreign agents, none could say for certain. She survived, but something within her cracked.
  After the attempt on her life, Dahud changed. It was as if the entire city—save her father—had turned against her. Even old allies of the crown murmured about her corruption. Rumors took root that the tides rose because of her. That ships foundered near the harbor because of her spells. That the wealth of Kêr-Is was no longer blessed, but cursed.
  She watched the city wither under the weight of its fear and superstition. And in the silent hours before dawn, she stood by the sea and listened—not to the bells of the cathedral, but to the ancient voices in the waves.
  The storm had not yet come. But it was coming.
  They say it was through her magic that Dahud foresaw the uprising—the revolt that would rise like flame and foam against her and her father. She saw torches lit in the streets, spears sharpened and raised, voices once loyal now howling for blood. They called King Gralon indulgent. Corrupt. And her? A daughter of devils.
  In her visions, Dahud saw the unthinkable: her father—flawed, yes, but kind and good—falling beneath the fists and blades of the very people he had saved. The man who had held back the sea itself, who had carved life from drowning stone, dying alone in the streets of his own city while trying to protect her.
  And something inside her broke.
  She could endure the slander. The whispers. The fear in the eyes of strangers. She had survived the poison of rumors and the sting of betrayal. But to see her father—her one true anchor—cast down by the very souls he had shielded with his dikes and canals? That kindled a fury in her deeper than the abyssal trench, blacker than a midnight storm at sea.
  Gralon had given them everything. And now they would take even his life?
  In the grip of that fury, Dahud did something she had long resisted.
  She reached beyond.
  In her grief and rage, her call was answered by a voice that echoed like crashing waves over a broken shore—Morvran fab Tegid, the Sea Raven, dread son of Ceridwen, god of drowned wisdom and ocean vengeance. A being born of old blood, of ruin and secrets, of shipwrecks and sorcerers' bones. He came to her not in form, but in current and thought, his voice rising with the tide.
  He made her an offer.
  He would answer her pain. He would drown their betrayal. He would make all who hated her and her father pay, not with steel, but with salt and sorrow. The sea would come—not as punishment, but as justice.
  All Dahud needed to do… was open the gates.
  The gates her father had built. The silver and golden keys he kept beside his bed, heavy with love and trust. The gates that had kept Kêr-Is safe. That held back the endless sea like a clenched fist. She need only take those keys. Turn them. And let the ocean remember what had once been its own.
  And in that moment, with vengeance surging like a tidal swell, she agreed.
  That eve, as the moon rose high and the tides swelled beneath its silver pull, Dahud moved silently through the palace halls. In her hand, she clutched the keys—one of silver, one of gold—stolen from beside her father's bed. Guided by fury and vengeance, she descended alone to the sea wall, where the great gates of Kêr-Is stood sealed against the ocean’s hunger.
  And there, beneath the stars, she did the unthinkable.
  She turned the keys.
  The ancient locks groaned. The great gates opened. And the sea, patient and waiting, came rushing in with the roar of certain doom.
  But before the first wave reached the city’s heart, Dahud returned to her father.
  She found him still asleep and placed the keys at the foot of his bed. Then she woke him, and—true to the fey-born blood in her veins—she spoke honestly. She told him what she had done. Why she had done it. What was coming.
  And still, even then, Gralon forgave her.
  He did not curse her or strike her down. He wept, yes, but took her hand and begged her to come with him—to flee. To warn the people. To save who they could. She stood in silence, her heart torn and stunned by his boundless love.
  How could he still care for them? For the people who would have seen him murdered in his own streets?
  But Gralon, ever the king, roused himself. He rang bells, shouted warnings, stirred the guards and servants. He did what he could. He tried to save them.
  And Dahud watched.
  Watched as her father shouted into a sleeping city. Watched as the waves crept over the harbor walls. Watched as the flood she had summoned swallowed not just the hateful, but the innocent—women, children, the quiet souls who had never raised a hand against her. And something within her broke.
  Not rage. Not triumph. Something human. Something guilty.
  By the time they reached the last escape vessel, Gralon’s arms were heavy with the weight of loss. His daughter rode behind him on his great black horse, its hooves churning foam as it leapt from the drowning streets toward the ship.
  But just before they reached the ramp, Dahud turned.
  She looked back.
  The city was gone, devoured by the sea. The bells of its cathedral silenced. Its lights drowned.
  "I belong there," she said.
  And then she let go.
  She slipped from the saddle and fell backward into the rushing tide. Gralon cried out, reaching for her—but his hand found only wind and spray. She vanished beneath the waves.
  Into the dark.
  Into silence.
  A father remained behind—broken-hearted. A city lay in ruin. And far below, in the drowned deeps, a dark god smiled.
  After that night, Ys lived only in myth. The tale of Kêr-Is—once whispered in sorrow—was twisted by time. Dahud became the villain of the story, a wicked sorceress whose petty indulgences doomed a pious kingdom. The righteous king, the indulgent daughter, the flood sent by God. A morality tale. A warning.
  But the world never knew the truth.
  Dahud did not die.
  She was half Mari-Morgan, and the sea that swallowed her was no grave. It was home. She breathed in the deep. Her magic had always been born of it. When needed, she could slip between forms, her legs giving way to a gleaming tail. She sank among the drowned stones of her city, surrounded by silence and ghosts.
  There, she did not despair. She called.
  She invoked the old pacts—the sacred bindings once forged between rulers and the spirits of their lands. But where her father had built dikes and walls, she forged her bond with spell and soul. She called not upon the Christian god, but upon the powers older than history. The gods of her blood. The ancient deities of sea and earth. And she bound herself to Kêr-Is—in body, in spirit, in sorrow.
  This act defied Morvran fab Tegid, the Sea Raven.
  He had answered her once, but he had not given his blessing freely. He had seen in the city’s death a harvest—a tide of souls to claim for his dominion. But Dahud, in her grief, forgave those who had hated her. She chose not vengeance, but mercy. She refused to surrender the dead.
  And that—that—was unforgivable.
  He came before her in his true form, vast and foul, his raven eyes burning with hatred. His presence alone could kill a weak-willed mortal outright. He hissed, his voice the churn of black tides:
  “You deny me the dead?
You called me forth and now bar my due?
Then a curse upon you, Queen of Kêr-Is!
May your city rise… only to be cast down once more!”
  And so it was.
  As the first sun rose over the drowned ruins, the city of Kêr-Is was no longer of this world. It had shifted—to the Otherworld. To a place between life and myth, ocean and sky. And there it remains.
  A city caught in an endless cycle.
  It rises. It thrives. Its people build, rejoice, prosper. And then—the waves come. Always. They crush. They kill. They shatter the spires and drown the squares. The city sinks, only to rise again in time.
  And Dahud—now immortal, now Fey Queen—remains.
  In her ageless cunning, she has learned to work within the curse. She has come to know the rhythm of the tides, the cycles of doom. She has learned to evacuate those she can. To warn the wise. And the sea-dwelling fey, her kin and subjects, care little whether the city lies above or below the waves.
  But she never leaves.
  Because the ghosts of Kêr-Is still linger. Still scream. Still weep.
  Each time the city rises, so do they—reborn, without memory. They live their lives, rebuild their homes, rediscover joy… only to drown again when the tide comes. And their queen, ever watchful, ever grieving, must witness it all.
  She tries to comfort them. To guide them. To break the cycle. But it holds.
  And so she watches—with tear-filled eyes and a heart that burns with sorrow that will not die.
  She is Queen of Ys.
  And she will never abandon her people, for she is and ever shall be her fathers daughter.