Snow fell in slow spirals across an empty hilltop, untouched by footprints, untouched by time. The wind carried no birdsong, no laughter—only the faint hum of ancient magic waiting to wake.
At the center of the standing stones, a boy knelt.
Seventeen. Pale. Exhausted.
His cloak fluttered heavily in the icy wind, and runes beneath the snow glowed faintly where his hands pressed to the ground. He looked too young for the burden hanging on his narrow shoulders—too young to be the one the world whispered about.
But he was.
He was Merlin.
And he was the reason magic existed at all.
A presence stepped into the circle behind him, lighting the snow with a cold, blinding radiance.
"Again," the being said.Its voice was calm. Icy. Eternal.
Merlin didn't have to turn to know who it was.
Uriel, Flame of God.The Watcher.An archangel whose light did not warm—only revealed.
Merlin gritted his teeth. "I am trying."
"You falter because you fear him."
Merlin's hands stilled.
"Don't," he whispered. "Don't talk about him."
Uriel's emotionless gaze softened—barely."You cannot run from what your father is."
"My father," Merlin spat, "was a demon."
Not a metaphor.Not an accusation.
A fact.
The first of his kind to fall with Lucifer.The one who ripped holes in reality because he wanted to see what bled through.
Magic was born from that union of light and darkness.A curse and blessing in the same breath.
Merlin's breath shook. "Every witch burned at a stake? Every child hunted for sparks they couldn't control? That's on him."
Uriel's wings folded tighter."And yet you are the one sealing the wound he created."
Below their feet, the earth trembled.
Something ancient stirred beneath the hill.A fragment of a fallen angel—sealed, wounded, starving.A creature of hatred drawn to fear and suffering.
The cause of the first witch-hunts.
Merlin's runes flickered as the fragment pressed back.
Its presence hissed through his mind—whispers of bone smoketorchespyresand the screams of the innocent.
Merlin flinched, clutching his head.
Uriel's voice sharpened."Focus."
"You keep saying that," Merlin muttered, "as if I'm not kneeling over a hole in reality!"
Even so, he forced himself to breathe.To steady his hands.To call magic—not fire, not light, but the unstable mix of both that lived in him alone.
The runes blazed.
A tear in the world ripped open beneath the snow.
The fragment rose like a smear of living shadow.
It had no face.No shape a human mind could hold.Only hunger.
"You are me," it whispered inside him.
Merlin almost believed it.
Almost.
Uriel's hand settled on Merlin's shoulder."Remember your choice, child. Not his."
Merlin stood, trembling.
He lifted the sword lying beside him.
Ordinary metal twisted into brilliance.Runes crawled across the blade like molten lightning.
His voice broke as he whispered:
"Excalibur."
The sword answered with golden fire.
The fragment recoiled violently.The snow melted in a circle around Merlin's feet.
"I won't let you touch this world again," Merlin breathed.
He raised the blade—
And brought it down like a falling star.
Light swallowed everything.