The moment Merlin’s soul settled fully into him, Milo understood two things at once, arriving together the way everything in a Soul Sync arrived—whole, immediate, and entirely too much to process politely.
The first was magic itself. Vast and ancient and startlingly alive, it hummed through him in a way no manuscript’s borrowed knowledge had ever quite managed. It wasn’t like reading about fire and suddenly understanding heat. It was like having spent your entire life staring at a locked door, convinced there was nothing behind it, only to discover it had always been ajar and the universe itself had been waiting patiently on the other side, tapping its foot.
The second, layered underneath the first like a second heartbeat, was Merlin.
Not just his skill. His self.
Milo felt it arrive in fragments, the way memory always arrived during a sync—a boy, younger than Milo had expected, gangly and quick-tongued, standing in a stone courtyard not unlike this one, scrubbing armor that wasn’t his own while muttering insults under his breath at a golden-haired prince who couldn’t hear him. He felt the specific, bone-deep exhaustion of carrying a destiny nobody had asked his permission before assigning him, and underneath that exhaustion, stubbornly, endlessly, kindness—the instinctive, reflexive kind that reached for mercy before it ever reached for a blade, even when every wiser, colder voice around him insisted otherwise.
Oh, Milo thought, feeling the shape of the man settle over his own instincts like a second, gentler skin, I like you.
"You’re doing that thing," Merlin’s voice said, from somewhere behind Milo’s own eyes now, wry and warm and entirely too pleased with itself for a man technically merged with a stranger mid-battle, "where you go all quiet and thoughtful. Arthur used to do that right before he said something spectacularly stupid. Should I be worried?"
"I’m reasonably confident I’m about to say something spectacularly stupid too," Milo admitted, out loud, and felt the King’s eyes narrow at the sight of him apparently arguing with himself.
"Good," Merlin said. "It’s a fine tradition. Carry it forward proudly. Nothing builds character quite like the horrified silence of everyone who just watched you put your foot in it."
The King, watching this exchange with visibly deteriorating patience, cut in. "Are you quite finished?"
"No," Milo said, and felt Merlin’s own particular flavor of insolence rise up through him, sharp and easy, "but I imagine you’d like me to be, so let’s call this progress. You’re welcome, by the way. I’m being terribly considerate, all things considered."
"You’re an insufferable little—"
"Careful," Merlin’s voice said, delighted, from somewhere just behind Milo’s own thoughts. "I’ve heard that tone before. Usually right before someone royal and self-important tries to have me thrown in the stocks. Never once worked out well for them, if it’s any comfort. I once had a king try to execute me for ’unseemly familiarity with the crown prince.’ I was familiar with him because I’d saved his life seventeen times that week alone. You’d think that would earn a bit of gratitude, but no. ’Merlin, you’re being cheeky.’ ’Merlin, you’re making the visiting ambassadors uncomfortable.’ ’Merlin, stop setting the king’s ceremonial robes on fire, it’s not appropriate for state functions.’"
"Did you actually set the king’s robes on fire?" Milo asked, genuinely curious now.
"Only twice. Both times entirely justified. The first time he’d been horribly rude to a serving girl who’d spilled wine on his favorite tunic—not even his formal tunic, just a casual one, he had dozens—and the second time he’d tried to have me executed, which I thought was rather poor form. A bit disproportionate, you understand. If I’m going to be killed, I’d prefer it be for something I actually did, not just for being mildly irritating."
The King, meanwhile, had apparently decided that watching Milo converse with the air was the final insult his dignity could bear. He moved.
Fast—faster than his exhausted, poison-riddled body should have still been capable of, closing the distance in a single, desperate lunge, clearly betting everything on catching Milo distracted mid-conversation with a dead man.
"There," Merlin’s voice said, instantly sharp again, all warmth burned away into pure, practiced focus. "Left. Now. And I mean now, not ’eventually’ or ’when you feel like it’ or—oh, excellent, you actually listened. That’s a first. Arthur never listened. He’d hear me say ’left’ and then charge right just to prove a point, and I’d spend the next hour cleaning up whatever mess that created while he pretended he’d intended it all along. Royalty. They’re all the same."
Milo moved before his own mind fully processed the instruction, Merlin’s centuries of battle-honed instinct pouring seamlessly into muscles that had never once, in Milo’s own memory, learned to dodge quite that cleanly. The King’s strike passed through empty air where Milo’s chest had been a half-second earlier, and Milo felt the displacement of the blade against his sleeve, close enough to shave the fabric.
"Oh, that’s good," Milo said, delighted despite himself, feeling the borrowed grace of it settle into his own bones. The magic coiled in his chest like a contented serpent, warm and responsive, waiting for him to remember he could actually use it now. "That’s genuinely good. No wonder you survived scrubbing boots for a man that arrogant."
"Practice," Merlin said, dry. "Endless, thankless practice, mostly spent making sure Arthur never noticed how many times I saved his life while complaining about the smell of his armor polish. He thought I was just naturally gifted at being in the right place at the right time. ’Merlin, how do you always know when I’m about to be ambushed?’ ’Oh, you know, lucky guess.’ ’Merlin, how did you know that wine was poisoned?’ ’I just had a feeling.’ ’Merlin, how are you still alive after that dragon attack?’ ’I’m very hard to kill, Your Majesty. It’s a character flaw.’"
"Did he ever figure it out?" Milo asked, sidestepping another strike, feeling the rhythm of the fight settle into something almost comfortable.
"Figure out what? That I was the most powerful wizard in Britain and had been secretly protecting him since he was fifteen? No. He thought I was just very dedicated to my job. That was Arthur for you. Could see the truth of a man’s heart from a hundred paces, but completely blind to the literal magic happening right in front of his face. It was endearing, honestly. Infuriating, but endearing."
The King attacked again, and again Milo—Merlin, both of them, tangled together now into something neither fully accounted for alone—slipped the strike clean, countering with a small, contained burst of raw magic that caught the King’s shoulder and staggered him back a full step. The magic felt different from what Milo had used before. It wasn’t borrowed or constructed or carefully assembled from other people’s work. It was his. Theirs. It sang in his veins like something that had always been there, waiting for permission to wake up.
"You’re not fighting like a scholar anymore," the King said, breathing hard now, genuine alarm finally, fully surfacing. His crown sat askew on his head, and a thin line of blood traced from his lip where he’d bitten it during the last exchange. "You’re fighting like—"
"Like a servant who spent twenty years quietly outmaneuvering people who thought themselves above him," Merlin said, and Milo let the words come out in his own voice, feeling the truth of them settle comfortably into his own chest. "Funny thing about being underestimated your whole life. You get very, very good at proving people wrong right when it matters most. It’s practically a hobby at this point. ’Oh, you think I’m just the help? Allow me to demonstrate precisely how wrong you are while maintaining perfect eye contact and a pleasant smile.’"
And beneath the banter, Milo felt something else arriving in fragments—a great, golden dragon’s voice, ancient and patient, urging a younger Merlin toward pragmatism, toward the cold, necessary cruelty destiny sometimes demanded. Merlin had listened to that voice for years, respected it even, and had still, stubbornly, chosen kindness in the moments that actually mattered most, again and again, right up until kindness had cost him everything he loved most in the world.
That’s the tension in him, Milo understood, feeling the shape of it settle into his own chest. Not weakness. A choice, made and remade a thousand times, in a world that kept insisting mercy was a luxury he couldn’t afford. He kept affording it anyway.
"You loved him," Milo said, out loud, surprising even himself with how plainly it arrived. "The prince. Arthur. Whatever else happened between you, whatever the dragon told you to become instead—you loved him the whole time, didn’t you."
Something in the merged awareness went quiet, and warm, and old. The kind of quiet that comes with centuries of reflection, with looking back at a life well-lived and finding no regrets worth holding onto.
"Every insufferable, arrogant, occasionally brilliant inch of him," Merlin said, softer now, all the earlier banter briefly set aside. "Being a servant to a man like that, being a legend while scrubbing his boots and pretending I hadn’t just saved his life with magic he wasn’t allowed to know I had—it should have been humiliating. Mostly it was just funny. That’s rather the trick of it, kid. You can carry the weight of the whole world’s fate and still make room, most days, for finding the absurdity in it. If you don’t, the weight just crushes you flat. Arthur never understood why I laughed so much. He thought I was just naturally cheerful. No. I was just refusing to let the world turn me into something bitter and cold. That’s a choice too, you know. Made and remade every single morning. Some days it’s harder than others, but it’s always a choice."
Milo felt that land somewhere deep, somewhere that had nothing to do with the King, or the courtyard, or the desperate strategy he’d walked into this fight carrying. It landed like a key turning in a lock he hadn’t realized was there.
He understood now. Merlin could have shared any number of devastating spells, any number of battle-hardened reflexes. Instead, he’d chosen to share himself—his memories, his laughter, his stubborn refusal to become what the world kept trying to make him. Merlin wanted to be remembered. Not as a legend, not as a weapon, but as the boy who’d loved too openly and laughed too easily, even when everything around him demanded otherwise.
Milo didn’t care that Merlin had given him sentiment instead of raw power. He understood, with the clarity of someone who’d just been handed a gift he didn’t deserve, that this was the greater offering. Merlin had trusted him with the shape of his soul, and that mattered more than any spell he could have taught.
Besides, Merlin was powerful enough that even his fragments were more than most mages would ever achieve. He could afford to be generous with himself, because his legacy was written in the bones of the world itself.
The King, watching Milo’s expression shift through something private and unreadable, took the opening.
He had the grace of a desperate man, which is to say he had no grace at all but was willing to make up for it with sheer, reckless aggression. He came in low, aiming for Milo’s knees, clearly hoping to bring him down to the ground where the borrowed instincts would be less useful.
"Above," Merlin said, and Milo vaulted cleanly over the King’s crouched form, landing behind him with a grace that felt entirely alien and entirely correct. "Now, here’s a question—do you actually want to hurt him, or are you just trying to prove a point?"
Milo considered it. The King was scrambling back to his feet, breathing hard, his earlier confidence replaced by something that looked very much like genuine alarm. The courtyard was wrecked. Jay was dead. Half the kingdom’s best warriors had fallen to this man’s ambitions.
And yet.
"I want him to suffer first," Milo admitted, surprising himself. "I want him to understand. I want him to know that he lost, really lost, the moment he decided that nobody else’s life mattered. I want him to live with that."
"Ah," Merlin said, warm and approving. "Good instincts. Killing is occasionally necessary. But making someone know the consequences of their choices? That’s far more satisfying. Also, it tends to stick better. Dead men can’t learn anything. Humiliated, defeated, thoroughly dismantled men? They remember every detail. Trust me. I’ve made a career out of it."
The King lunged again, but his heart wasn’t in it anymore. Milo saw it in the way his shoulders had dropped, the way his eyes kept flicking toward the edges of the courtyard. He was looking for an exit now, for any option that didn’t involve continuing this fight.
"You could have been great," Milo said, and felt Merlin’s agreement humming through the words like a second voice underneath his own. "You had everything. Power. Authority. A kingdom that obeyed you. And you threw it away because you couldn’t stand the idea of someone else having anything you didn’t. You killed the wrong person, You Piece of Shit."
The King’s expression flickered—something caught between contempt and the first, fragile stirrings of understanding. "You think that matters? You think any of you matter? You’re—"
He raised one hand with ill intent, feeling centuries of hard-won mastery gather behind the motion. The magic that answered wasn’t just his anymore. It was Merlin’s too, ancient and deep and utterly certain. It felt like standing in a storm and knowing, for the first time, that you could direct the lightning.
The King’s eyes widened—not with contempt this time, not even with the earlier, grudging respect he’d shown Jay or Raizo. Something closer, unmistakably, to real fear. He scrambled backward, hands raised in a gesture that might have been surrender or might have been something more desperate.
Then Merlin cast his spell.
[DREAM EATER]
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