The darkness was absolute.
Merlin's lungs burned, his breath coming in ragged, desperate hitches. Heh... heh... The silence of the void was a weight against his eardrums, broken only by the thundering of his own heart. Then, the sound started—a rushing, low-frequency roar coming from the shadows behind him.
He bolted. Doors appeared out of the gloom like tombstones. He ripped one open, lunged through, and found only another door. Open. Run. Open. Run. He was a rat in a maze, his strength failing, his legs turning to lead.
Suddenly, he skidded to a halt. He forced his shaking voice to steady, projecting a courage he didn't feel into the blackness. "I know you're there," he gasped. "Come out! I am not afraid of you!"
The rushing noise vanished. The silence returned, colder than before.
A freezing sensation crept up his spine, prickling like needles of ice. A hand—large, heavy, and impossibly cold—clamped onto his shoulder. A voice whispered directly into his ear, a sound like grinding stones:
"But you should be."
CRACK.
The sound of snapping bone echoed in the void, but it wasn't in his dream.
"Hold him tighter! Keep him down!"
In the cramped, dimly lit dormitory of the orphanage, the dream was a reality of a different kind. Four boys struggled to pin Merlin's stiffened body to his cot. His jaw was locked tight, his teeth grinding with enough force to shatter enamel.
"Mother Mary, his jaw! Look at his jaw!" a girl shrieked, clutching her rosary so hard her knuckles turned white.
Merlin's eyes were wide, but the pupils had vanished. In their place were twin pools of solid, shimmering black ink. The boys holding him weren't trying to comfort him; they were leaning back, their faces twisted in a mixture of duty and pure, unadulterated terror. They weren't afraid for Merlin. They were afraid of what was inside him.
The dormitory doors slammed open with a violent BANG that rivaled the thunder outside. Rain lashed against the floorboards as a massive silhouette stepped into the room.
He was a giant of a man, nearly seven feet tall, his presence filling the doorway. He had a thick, wild brown beard and a rugged, barrel-chested frame. He looked less like a doctor and more like a hunter, dressed in a dark green shirt and a heavy jacket fashioned from animal hides that smelled of wet earth and old pine.
"Mother Mary!" one of the boys cried out, his voice cracking. "Sir! Are you him? The healer?"
Mother Mary looked at the giant, her voice trembling with a mix of hope and fear. "Can you... can you fix him?"
The man didn't answer immediately. His eyes, sharp and knowing, landed on Merlin's ink-black eyes. He didn't look horrified. He looked like he had finally found what he was searching for.