His first breath was earth and moss and something wet rotting beneath the surface.
The world around him was cold and dry, blurred by darkness and a dense canopy of trees overhead. A forest? Maybe. It felt far away, like he was seeing it through someone else's eyes.
He blinked slowly, trying to push back the fog in his head. His limbs didn't want to move. Every muscle ached like he'd run a marathon with someone else's legs. His mouth was dry. His heartbeat pounded too slow and too loud, like it didn't belong to his chest at all.
He tried to sit up. Everything ached—but not in a way that suggested injury. No wounds. No bruises. Just disorientation, like he'd fallen from somewhere high and landed in the wrong foot.
His balance failed immediately, and he crumpled sideways into the dirt with a grunt. The impact wasn't hard, but it shocked him. Not because it hurt—but because of how small he felt. His arms were lighter, his center of gravity lower. His body… was off.
He tried again, slower this time. Hands braced against the ground, he pulled himself upright. The forest tilted, then steadied, but his vision still swam. He wiped a trembling hand across his face. His skin felt different. Fairer, maybe. He paused.
Something was wrong with his hand.
He held it up, turning it slowly in front of his face. It wasn't his. The fingers were leaner, longer. Beautiful, even if they were calloused in places he didn't recognize.
"What the hell…" he murmured—but the voice that came out wasn't right either. Not younger, exactly, but his voice, light and musical, didn't sound like it belonged here. It belonged in gardens and courts, not on a battlefield carved by monsters.
His pulse quickened. He touched his face—his jaw was narrower, his nose different. His cheekbones too high. And the hair… He grabbed a fistful and held it in front of his eyes.
White, long, and falling in soft waves over his shoulders
Not dyed. Not synthetic. Not a trick of the light.
This wasn't his body.
He lurched to his feet on instinct, but his legs buckled under him, sending him staggering sideways into a tree. The bark scraped his shoulder, and he hissed. His breath came fast now, sharp and shallow.
"Okay—okay, just breathe," he muttered to himself. "You're not dreaming. You're awake. You're just—just…"
He couldn't finish the sentence. Because there was no logical way to finish it.
Minutes passed—he wasn't sure how many. Long enough for the pounding in his head to dull into a steady throb. Long enough for him to try standing a few more times, awkwardly, like a newborn fawn learning how its legs worked. The movements were alien. His stride was too short, too springy. His arms moved differently when he walked, like they were built for something else.
He kept stumbling, muttering curses under his breath, fighting off the rising wave of panic.
Eventually, he paused to lean against a tree, drawing in slow, deliberate breaths. That's when he noticed a weird staff lying nearby—shaped like a twisted branch, curved, black and filled with weird colors. Something about it tugged at him. Instinct? Memory? It was as if the staff was humming faintly with something he could feel more than hear.
He reached for it.
And the second his fingers wrapped around it, something shifted.
Warmth surged through his hand. Not heat, exactly—more like recognition. Familiarity. Like a piece of himself clicking into place.
He finally noticed the smoke coming from a near place, clinging to the air like a veil, thick and bitter, seeping into his lungs with every breath. Before he could think, his body moved, and he turned around. Behind him, what remained of a city stood broken. The walls—titanic stone barriers meant to hold back the end of the world—were shattered like eggshells. From the large hole, he could see rubble piled in the streets. Houses burned in quiet ruin. There were also massive footprints carved deep into the stone leading to the hole.
It was as if giants had walked through this place and won.
He stared in silence, because now he could hear the screaming. Not of voices. Not anymore. The land was screaming. The dirt. The trees. The wind itself. Echoes of agony lingered in the very bones of the world, and it pressed against him as he stood there on the cold ground, as if the soil remembered what had just happened and refused to let it go.
"…Ah," he said softly as he brushed ash from his sleeves with a kind of absent grace. "So I missed the beginning."
He froze.
And then, without warning, threw the staff away as if it burned him.
He stumbled back, chest heaving. His hands were shaking again. The world spun a little. A panic attack threatened to claw its way through his throat.
He closed his eyes. Breathed in. Out. Again.
When he opened them, the staff still lay where it landed. Harmless. Waiting.
After a long pause, he stepped forward and picked it up again, and just like before—calm returned. His body knew what to do, even if his mind didn't. Still clumsy on his feet, but steadier now, he took another few steps forward.
Okay, he thought grimly. So walking needs practice. Fine.
He didn't know where he was. Or who he looked like. Or why the hell holding a long staff made him feel less insane.
But step by step, he'd figure it out.
Though something still felt off. Not just the body. Not just the weird ease with which he could now move when he held this staff.
His thoughts. His mind.
He tried to remember his name.
Nothing.
His chest tightened. He searched again, deeper, chasing fragments—flashes of memory, a voice, a reflection. But the harder he tried, the more it all slipped through his fingers like smoke.
He didn't know who he was.
"Come on," he whispered to himself. "At least a name…"
Still nothing.
A tremor ran through him, and he fought off another swell of panic. He clenched his hands, grounding himself in the feel of bark, the familiar weight of the stick, the dirt under his feet. He took a deep breath, trying to will the rising fear away.
It helped—barely.
He looked down at himself, as if his body might hold a clue. That was when he really noticed the clothes.
His outfit was… bizarre. Fantasy-RPG-tier bizarre.
He wore robes of white and soft violet, layered like a ceremonial garb but dirtied by earth and soot.
"This isn't cosplay," he muttered, his voice a little too thin. "Right?"
He ran his hand down the side of the cloak. The fabric was real—heavy, a little worn. No seams from a sewing machine. No tags.
So… either this was a dream. Or someone had gone through a hell of a lot of trouble to—
He stopped.
No. This wasn't a dream. His heart was still racing too fast. The cold air stung. His legs still hurt from stumbling through the brush. He was awake.
And if he was awake, then… maybe this was another world?
"But why?" he whispered. "Why me? Why this?"
When he received no response, he decided to go to where the walls were. If there was smoke, maybe there were people… maybe someone needed help. Or maybe it was already too late.
The wind shifted, and something sharp touched his senses. His thoughts paused. He sniffed the air instinctively—then blinked in surprise.
It smelled like grief, fire, and the metallic tang of blood.
He focused on the smells again and realized something else: he shouldn't be able to smell this much, this clearly. His nose had never been this sharp, after all. And now that he thought about it—his eyes weren't straining either. He could see the edges of leaves far in the distance, the tiniest detail of bark patterns, insects crawling near the roots of trees. It was all so crisp.
"I needed glasses before," he muttered. "Didn't I?"
It felt true. It sounded true.
And now? Now he could practically read the fine print on the tree bark.
More proof—this wasn't his body. This wasn't normal.
The smoke was coming from somewhere to his left. Cinders danced in the air like lost fireflies. The scent of ash, charred wood, and blood filled his nose. The wind kept shifting, but he was sure of it now. He adjusted the grip on the stick—comforting in his hand like a forgotten extension of himself—and started walking toward the scent.
Toward answers.
Toward the aftermath.
.
When he walked through the hole, there were no screams, no cries. Just wind and ruin and the lingering ache of grief pressed deep into the bones of the world.
His hands tightened around the staff. His heartbeat was calm, but his body wasn't. There was too much inside him—too much sensation, too much weight. This body felt tuned to things normal people couldn't feel: sorrow bleeding out of soil, fear like static clinging to the air, echoes of dreams that didn't belong to him.
He wasn't ready.
He didn't even know what he was walking into.
But still… he walked.
Step by cautious step, he moved toward the shattered world beyond the trees because the smoke was rising and the silence was screaming. And something told him the real tragedy was only just beginning.
He only stopped when passed through a somehow intact house and saw his reflection, finally. It was then when the name came to him like a whisper: Merlin.
Am I Merlin?
Yes, he was. And it was not just a name. A self. But it fit, somehow. The power that buzzed faintly in his fingertips, the presence in his chest that wasn't just blood and breath—it all aligned with that name. A half-remembered myth. A man of dreams. A watcher of distant tragedies.
He didn't know how he knew all of that. He just… did. And the moment he remembered it—remembered who he was, what body he'd been reborn into—a pulse of ancient magic stirred in his blood. Warm. Deep. Patient.
He flexed his fingers and power answered. Illusions. Visions. Dream-weaving. Support magic. The shape of it all rested behind his eyes like a spell half-formed. Not muscle memory, exactly—but something deeper. Something older.
But the power meant nothing here, he thought as he watched his surroundings. Because he'd come too late. The people were gone—eaten, crushed, or fled.
This place… this world... was not the one he remembered. It wasn't Chaldea. Not Camelot. Not even Earth as he knew it. But it was broken, and that made it familiar.
.
He saw it before it saw him.
A shape in the distance, looming like a nightmare birthed from myth. Towering flesh, steaming and twitching as it lumbered across the scorched ground. Its limbs moved too loosely, as if the joints had forgotten how they were supposed to work. Its face was wrong—blank and too wide, eyes dull with something worse than hunger: resignation.
Merlin didn't know how he knew, but he did.
There was pain inside it, buried deep beneath muscle and bone and blood, something echoed inside that creature. Not thought. Not words. Just a whisper. A weight. A suffering it couldn't express, only endure.
It horrified him, but it also made him curious.
He stayed rooted behind a cracked stone pillar, his fingers trembling against the bark of his staff. The magic in his chest pulsed faintly, instinctively, like it too recognized something unnatural—something holy and unholy at once.
He could feel the itch of his power in his veins, trying to understand, to reach out, to see, but he didn't know what he'd touch if he did. He didn't know what he would become if he tried. He was still new to this body, after all. Still fumbling through the borrowed knowledge that had come with it. Spells half-formed. Instincts that stirred without warning. Dreams that didn't feel like his.
He was Merlin, yes—but not yet.
Not fully.
And so… he did nothing. He closed his eyes, took a shaking breath, and whispered to himself.
"No one. Nothing. Sees me."
A light brush of magic flickered across his skin—soft, like silk and morning mist. The kind of spell that wasn't cast with force, but intent. The kind that slipped into the world like a suggestion rather than a command and the Titan walked past him. It didn't even turn its head.
He stayed hidden in plain sight, heart hammering in his chest, and when it vanished behind broken ruins, he turned away. Not because he didn't want to know, but because he knew he wasn't ready to understand. So, he followed the ache in the air—the place where hearts still beat, where fear still burned hot and alive.
Toward the people.
.
The gates of the inner district were not open when he arrived, but it was nothing a quick use of illusions couldn't fix. He walked with quiet feet, head bowed, his long white hair tucked beneath a tattered hood scavenged from a ruined cart. Ash and blood still clung to his robe, helping him blend into the chaos. It wasn't a spell, not exactly—just the soft hum of misdirection, the art of not being noticed.
There were hundreds, maybe thousands of people that had made it in—refugees from the district he came in, some with wounds still fresh and untreated, others carrying what little they had left on their backs. Some carried nothing at all. Just grief.
He slipped into the crowd without a word and felt everything.
The fear was thick. It sat in the air like smoke, clinging to skin and choking hope. Parents gripped children too tightly, as if the Titans could still reach through the Wall and rip them away. Soldiers—what few he saw—stood stiff with exhaustion, eyes hollow. Some wept silently when they thought no one was watching.
Even without magic, he could have read the emotion here like a book.
But with it? It was overwhelming. Every step was a heartbeat out of sync. Every face, a question without an answer. He kept his mouth shut, and his ears open as the stories came slowly. Whispered. Fragmented.
"—just appeared out of nowhere. Kicked through the Wall like it was paper—"
"—they're saying Maria's gone. All of it. Every settlement. Especially Shiganshina—"
"—my brother was on the southern patrol, they haven't come back—"
"—no one knows what happens next—"
"—there's not enough food for all of us—"
The words painted a picture more brutal than any battlefield. The Wall—this people's symbol of safety, of permanence—had been breached. These Titans had come pouring in. Thousands were dead and the ones here now were only what remained.
The leftovers of a massacre.
Merlin said nothing, but the weight pressed deeper against his ribs. He should have helped. He should have done something.
But what? He didn't even know what the enemy truly was. Didn't know how this world worked, or who was pulling its strings. All he had were fragments—power, instinct, the ghost of a legend he hadn't fully become.
So he watched and listened. And when night fell, and the fires dimmed, and the crying slowed to a hush, Merlin sat alone beneath the shadow of Wall Rose.
His fingers curled loosely around his staff.
And for the first time in this world, he whispered, "I'm sorry I was too late."
.
The days bled into one another, slow and uncertain. Even as the city around him tried to return to routine—what remained of it—Merlin stayed invisible.
He moved between the refugee camps and battered streets, always just another quiet presence. Too clean to be entirely lost, too strange to be entirely seen. He helped where he could: soft words for the grieving, steady hands for the injured, conjuring clean water where it was needed, though never when others watched too closely.
The world didn't need a magician.
Not yet.
But he couldn't stay hidden forever, he knew. And when he first heard of the military from a conversation near a ration line, he knew there was a choice to be taken. It came from a group of boys—dirty, exhausted, but wide-eyed—as they talked about enlistment.
"They say the only way to make a difference is with a blade."
"No, the Survey Corps is suicide. I'm going to the Garrison."
"I just want to fight back. I don't care how."
He watched them quietly, something old and warm twisting in his chest.
Fight back.
He hadn't fought when he arrived. He hadn't known how. He still wasn't sure he did. But every night since, he'd dreamed of smoke and teeth, of sorrow wrapped in muscle and bone. Of eyes—blank and hopeless—staring at him from behind Titan skulls.
He couldn't forget them.
And he didn't want to be the kind of Merlin who simply watched. So he learned and practiced. So even if the magic came slowly, he continued. He knew it was all there inside him—coiled like breath, like the memory of a dream half-remembered. Sometimes it pulsed when he passed a place of pain. Other times it responded when he reached for comfort, for light. His first real spell was cast in the ruins of a farm, long abandoned: a barrier of light and thorns, woven from instinct. It wrapped around him like Avalon itself had sighed and leaned forward.
He could feel Avalon. A constant presence at the edge of perception. A doorway locked just behind him.
But unlike the Merlin of legend, he wasn't trapped.
He could move. Could choose.
And he chose this. To be a participant. So, six months after the fall of Shiganshina, he stood in front of a recruitment post in Trost.
He wore plain clothes now. Hair tied back. His staff hidden inside a pocket dimension only he could retrieve. He said his name was Merlin, and gave no surname. When asked why he wanted to enlist, he simply said:
"To understand."
And they let him in.
.
.
.
I know, I'm publishing lots of works lately.
In my defense, I was looking through my old fics—The ones I never posted but were still hidden in between all the trash (and old SPN fics)—and I found this one and said why not publish it? I mean, it was not badly written and even if it's a weird enough crossover that I don't think it will have that many followers as it was done when I was in my AOT phase and when I was reading Merlin fanfics (from the TV series, not FGO).
I just remember that I wanted Merlin in the AOT world, but I also wanted someone prettier. To pair with Levi.
One thing led to another, until I started working on an outline. I then remembered Merlin from FGO. I mean, I never played the game and got into that fandom via osmosis, so don't ask me about it. I just thought that Merlin was pretty and a little shit after I watched a video of his powers and history, I think?
So it was born for the lols. And unless I get a loooot of support from comments and stones, I don't think I'll continue writing it.
Just to let everyone know, I've got 20 chapters already written that I'm currently editing. They're a bit long, but nothing I cannot finish while working between other fics.