Hey, welcome to the long-awaited Epic Merlin Fic. It is complete at 30,000 words, and will be entirely posted within the next couple days.

Warnings: Contains discussions of war, combat injuries, angst. Also, hypothetical major character death in some of the several AUs. Spoilers for all seasons, major spoilers for 1-4.

For a long time, the Great Dragon Kilgharrah did not sleep at all, he only raged. Uther Pendragon, out of vicious cold madness, had destroyed every one of the dragons save Kilgharrah, had killed nearly all the folk of magic and scattered the survivors on the four winds, driven off his dearest friend Balinor, and had chained him up like a beast in deep caverns, where he could barely sense the world outside.

All at once, a wave of power burst over him. A child drew his first breath, somewhere miles away from Camelot. The boy would be a warlock one day, but he would also be much more. He would be a Dragonlord, with the power to wake dragon's eggs, and, somehow the dragon knew even then that the fate of all the folk of magic would one day depend on this newborn boy. With the child's ringing cry in his ears, Kilgharrah slept at last.

Dragons can go without sleep for months if they must, but when sleep comes, it brings prophetic dreams, dreams of what might come to pass as well as what was fated beyond anyone's power to change.

As Kilgharrah slept beneath the castle, the veil of time parted before him.