It was not supposed to happen to him. Prophesy was Morgana's gift, Morgana's trial. Yet he had seen.

The vision had came to him in such vivid detail that had stolen his breath from him, in a crowd no less. Had the attention of the crowd not been focused on Arthur, and Arthur's on the crowd All in Ealdor would have witnessed his magic acting of its own accord.

What struck Merlin the most was that what he saw was so distant, but entirely connected to this very moment. Over top of the vision he could hear Arthur's words as he spoke them.

He vaguely recognized the hall as belonging to the castle at Camelot yet in place of the long rectangular table that Merlin knew to be there was a vast round one. Ringing the table more knights than Merlin thought Camelot could provide. Among them faces he had never seen, faces he thought he knew, and faces he was certain of… Lance, and to his astonishment and dismay a younger knight seat to the left of Arthur had such solemn pale eyes marking him clearly for who he was… unmistakably Mordred.

But all the glory of the vision seemed dulled by the present words that built this future "Look around. In this circle we're all equals. You're not fighting 'cause someone's ordering you to, you're fighting for so much more than that."

Those words, he knew, were the mortar of the foundation of Arthur's kingdom.