The word hung in the air. Absolute Being.
Morgana just stared, unable to form a coherent thought. Elizabeth’s "convenient" seemed to echo.
Merlin watched them, the weight of his own admission settling in. To explain, he’d have to go back. To the beginning he’d only recently remembered.
"It wasn’t a prophecy that brought me here," he said quietly, his gaze turning inward. "It was an accident. A really, really bad one."
Seventeen Years Ago, Somewhere in the Void
The ship was quiet. A soft, artificial hum was the only sound in the long, sleek corridors of the starliner Aethelstan. It was a vessel of explorers, scientists, and their families, traveling between colony worlds.
In the nursery sector, among rows of softly glowing stasis pods, one light changed from steady blue to a gentle, pulsing gold.
Inside pod 7-C, a baby opened his eyes.
But the consciousness behind those eyes was not an infant’s.
Where... where am I? The thought was clear, panicked. I was... I was on the highway. The truck... the lights... oh god, I died. I died! Why am I small? Why can’t I move right? What is this... tube?
Baby Merlin—his new name not yet given—began to flail his tiny limbs in distress. The pod’s sensors registered the abnormal neural activity and the physical agitation. A soft, chiming alert sounded in the corridor.
Within minutes, footsteps rushed in. The pod’s clear lid hissed open. A face filled his vision. A woman with kind, tired eyes and hair the color of starlight. Her expression was pure relief.
"Oh, my little star! You’re awake! Shhh, shhh, it’s alright. Mama’s here."
Her voice was love itself. She reached in and gently lifted him, cradling him against a warmth he’d never known in his previous life. The sensation was overwhelming. This was his mother. His mother. The body’s memory recognized her, even if his reborn soul was screaming in confusion.
A man appeared beside her, tall with a serious face that instantly softened when he looked at the baby. He placed a large, gentle hand on the baby’s head. "Vitals are spiking, Lyra. He’s scared."
"He just woke up in the dark, my love. Anyone would be." Lyra rocked him gently, humming a tune that vibrated in her chest. "There, there, Merlin. It’s just us. You’re safe."
Merlin? the soul within the baby thought, clinging to the name. My name is Merlin. Okay. Okay. I’m a baby. I’m... reincarnated? On a spaceship? This is insane.
He tried to calm down, to focus on the warmth, the smell of his mother, the solid presence of his father, Corvus. They were real. This was real. He had a second chance.
For a little while, it was peace. Lyra fed him a warm, nutrient-rich formula. Corvus told him silly stories about the stars outside, pointing at the viewport where distant suns streaked by. Merlin, trapped in a baby’s body, could only listen, absorbing their love, trying to quiet the turmoil in his mind.
Then, a different sound cut through the ship’s hum.
A deep, blaring Klaxon. Red lights began to strobe in the corridor.
"ALERT. PROXIMITY COLLISION WARNING. MULTIPLE CONTACTS. BRACE FOR IMPACT. ALL HANDS TO EMERGENCY STATIONS."
The calm shattered. Corvus’s head snapped up, his face going pale. "Asteroid field! It’s not on the charts!"
Shouts and running feet echoed outside the nursery. The ship shuddered, a grinding screech of metal on rock. An impact. Then another. The lights flickered.
Lyra held Merlin tighter, her eyes wide with terror. Corvus was already at a wall console, his fingers flying. A tactical hologram flickered to life, showing the ship surrounded by a dense cloud of tumbling rock. Dozens of contacts. Too many.
"The shields are failing! Evasion is impossible!" Corvus shouted over the noise of another, closer impact. The ship lurched violently. A rending sound of tearing metal screamed from somewhere deep below.
No. No, no, no! Merlin’s infant mind screamed, his new father’s panic confirming everything. I just got here! I just got a family! I can’t die again! Not like this!
Corvus turned from the console, his decision made in an instant. His eyes met Lyra’s. A universe of love and despair passed between them in a glance. They both looked down at their son.
"The escape pod," Corvus said, his voice rough. "The planetary scanner... it found one. A green world. Magical signature. He’ll have a chance there."
Lyra nodded, tears streaming silently down her face. She didn’t argue. There was no time. She kissed Merlin’s forehead, her tears wet on his skin. "Be brave, my star-born son. Be so, so brave. We love you. Forever."
Corvus pried Merlin gently from her arms. His hands, usually so steady, were trembling as he placed the crying baby back into the reinforced stasis pod—now converted to an escape capsule.
"Live, son," Corvus whispered, his voice breaking. "Live a great life. For us."
He sealed the lid. Through the haze of his own tears and the pod’s clear surface, Merlin saw his parents’ faces one last time, hands pressed against the glass. Love, raw and devastating, etched in their final smiles.
Corvus slammed his fist on the eject sequence.
With a jolt and a roar of compressed air, pod 7-C was blasted out of the dying Aethelstan and into the chaotic storm of asteroids and debris.
The last thing the baby Merlin saw was a flash of blinding light as a massive rock sheared through the ship’s main deck. Then his pod was spinning, tumbling through the void, its course violently altered by the shockwave and a chunk of flaming wreckage that was once his home.
The pod’s navigation, damaged, locked onto the only viable, green, life-filled signature it could find: a world named Velar. It streaked through the atmosphere, a falling star.
Back in the Clearing, Present Day
Merlin finished, his voice flat. "They called me ’star-born’ because I literally fell from the stars. The prophecy just... latched onto the imagery. My ’power’ wasn’t a blessing from the gods. It was... what I am. The soul that arrived in that baby had the latent nature of an Absolute, and landing on a high-magic world... it just woke up. Grew with me."
He looked at his hands. "My parents on Kandor... they found the pod. They buried it. They raised me as their own. They gave me a normal life for as long as they could." He looked at Morgana, his eyes hard. "And now, because of that prophecy, they might be in danger because of me. So we’re not going to your cave. We’re going to my house. Now."