Jeremiah awoke with a shout, his body jerking hard enough that one leg tangled in the sheets and nearly dragged him over the side of the bed.
For one wild second, he was still in the forest.
Fire fell through the branches. Heat rolled across his skin. Something heavy moved beneath him—scales, muscle, and blunt animal terror. He threw an arm up, twisting to dodge a fireball that wasn’t there.
Then he slammed back into reality.
The forest broke apart, dissolved into the pull of sweat-damp sheets against his legs, the familiar creak of the mattress, and the quiet hum of Billy’s tank in the corner. Thin darkness pressed against the apartment windows. Somewhere outside, the distant noise of the Outskirts’ nightlife bled through, replacing the sounds of the forest.
Jeremiah sat upright, breathing hard.
Sweat cooled across his bare chest. His hands clenched the sheets tight enough to ache. For several seconds, he couldn’t move. He only stared into the dark, waiting for the last scraps of the dream to loosen their grip.
Some part of him could still feel the drag of scales through the underbrush, the low hunger in his gut that had not been his. The sharp, impossible pain of that blade cutting deeper than flesh. But after a moment, the alien weight of another body faded, slowly replaced with something more familiar.
Eventually, his shoulders sagged. He let himself fall back against the pillow with a tired groan, one arm thrown over his eyes.
“With as much as you wake up screamin’, some might get the impression ya were a bit dramatic, kid.”
Jeremiah froze. Slowly, he tilted his head and lifted his arm just enough to glare across the apartment.
Mero sat on his dining room table as if he owned it, one leg crossed over the other. A bag of Jeremiah’s bagels lay open beside him, one already split and thoroughly abused with cream cheese.
Jeremiah stared at him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked flatly.
He pushed himself upright with a grunt. His head still felt thick from sleep, and his body carried the lingering aches from the day before. Sam’s medicine had helped, but it could only do so much without proper rest — at least, according to her.
Mero took a bite, swallowed, and gave him a look of exaggerated offense. “What? Am I not allowed to check up on you anymore?” He lifted the half-eaten bagel. “I figured you’d be more appreciative. I’m a busy guy, ya know.”
“Right…” Jeremiah muttered.
Like Mero had ever needed a reason to break into his apartment.
Or steal his breakfast.
The fairy took another bite and chewed with obvious satisfaction. “I’m serious, kid.” He pointed the bagel at Jeremiah. “Figured I’d check in on ya. Especially after what you’ve been through.”
Jeremiah’s irritation softened despite himself.
Now that he thought about it, he really hadn’t seen much of his so-called fairy guide lately. Not properly. Mero had drifted in and out of the shop, tossed out a few comments, stolen food, and vanished whenever things got complicated. Since the tournament, Jeremiah could probably count their longer conversations on one hand.
He drew in a slow breath and let it out.
“I’m fine,” Jeremiah said.
Mero raised a brow.
“I’m… fine,” he repeated after a moment. “Mostly. I think.”
His hand fell to his side as his gaze drifted toward the ceiling.
The apartment settled around them. Billy’s tank hummed softly in the corner, water shifting with a faint mechanical ripple. The sound was familiar. Real. It grounded him in a way he hadn’t realized he needed. Ever since returning from the Testing Grounds, things had felt… foggy.
Jeremiah rubbed at his eyes, then dragged his hand down over his mouth. “I’m just worn out,” he said, more to himself than Mero. “Didn’t sleep well. Just a bad dream, that’s all.”
Mero folded his arms, bagel still in hand, and nodded as if Jeremiah had confirmed something.
“About your scaly friend, I assume?”
Jeremiah froze.
The last traces of sleep vanished in an instant.
His gaze snapped back to Mero. “How do you know that?”
Mero studied him over what remained of the bagel. Then he popped the last bite into his mouth, chewed thoughtfully, and dusted his hands together.
“Like I said,” he replied, his tone lighter than his expression, “I expected something like this.”
He hopped off the dining table and rose into the air, wings beating in a lazy blur,crossed the room without a sound and landed on Jeremiah’s bedside table.
He stepped around Jeremiah’s phone, hopped over his wallet, and stopped beside a neatly folded switchblade.
Jeremiah stared at it, a chill crawling up his spine.
He had set it there. He must have. But he didn’t remember taking it out of his pocket. He didn’t remember having placed it there. In fact, until Mero stood beside it, Jeremiah wasn’t even sure he remembered the blade existed at all.
Mero nudged the switchblade lightly with the toe of his boot, his gaze lingering on it with an unreadable expression. Then he glanced back up.
“After all,” the fairy said, his voice quieter now, “it was your first time absorbing a name.”
Jeremiah didn’t respond right away, his fingers tightening around his sheets.
His mouth went dry.
For a few seconds, he said nothing, forcing himself to breathe, slow and even, until he was sure his voice wouldn’t crack when he spoke.
“Mero,” Jeremiah asked carefully, “what exactly did that thing do to me?”
Mero laughed, though there was a softer edge to it this time. “Cool your jets, kid. Nothing bad, I promise.” He tipped his head toward the blade resting on the bedside table. “You remember our discussion about what this thing is, right?”
Jeremiah followed the gesture, his gaze settling on the switchblade. Up close, it looked plain. Unremarkable. That somehow made it worse.
He nodded slowly. “It’s a Namekiller. An anti-fae weapon.”
“Right.” Mero’s grin lingered, but his eyes sharpened a fraction. “So how do you think it works?”
Jeremiah dragged a hand down his face, irritation stirring beneath the lingering fog in his head. “I… haven’t the slightest clue, Mero. Why would I?” A bite crept into his voice. “Can we stop talking in circles about this? I’m tired.”
In more ways than one, but he wasn’t going to admit that just yet.
Mero chuckled and raised a hand. “Alright, alright. No need to bite my head off.” He leaned forward slightly. “To put it simply, a ‘name’ isn’t something that’s easily damaged. Not in a way you’d recognize. It’s not really something the idea of ‘damage’ applies to, the same way a number doesn’t have a flavor.”
Mero nudged the blade again with the toe of his boot. “Because of that, anything that qualifies as damage tends to be… temporary. Even if part of a name gets stripped away, it’ll eventually find its way back to the whole.”
The fairy’s gaze drifted, something darker settling behind it. “The only way to really mess with a name is to fold it into something bigger. Subsuming it.”
Jeremiah’s brow creased.
“For a Namekiller to live up to that term, it needs to do more than just ‘cut’ a name.” Mero went on, his voice quieter now, more measured. “So it ‘steals’ those bits it cuts off and passes them on to whoever’s holdin’ the blade.”
He spread his hands slightly. “That does two things, in effect. First, it weakens the target’s name by shaving down their ‘whole.’ At the same time, it strengthens the wielder by folding those stolen fragments into their own.”
Mero lowered his hands and fixed Jeremiah with a hard look.
“In a very real way, each blow from a Namekiller is more devastating than the last.”
Jeremiah’s eyes widened, all traces of sleep vanishing in an instant.
“That’s…” His voice dropped. “That’s horrible.”
The words came out softer than he expected, a strange unease settling deep in his chest.
Mero gave a small shrug, though his expression didn’t carry the same lightness as before. “Yeah. It is.” A faint smirk tugged at his mouth. “There’s a reason a lotta folks call these things cursed.”
He tilted his head. “That said, like any weapon, they ain’t evil on their own. It all comes down to who’s usin’ ’em.”
Jeremiah’s eyes narrowed. “So… what? Are you saying I’m… part lizard now?”
He couldn’t claim he truly understood what a ‘name’ was in this context, but he knew it went deeper than something you were called. A ‘name’ was more than that. So what did it mean to fold part of one into your own?
For a heartbeat, Mero just stared at him.
Then he barked a laugh.
“Na,” he said, waving a hand. “Doesn’t work like that. Not for you, anyway.”
Mero leaned back in the air, folding his arms as he searched for the right words. “This is where it gets a little tricky,” he admitted. “It’s hard to explain if you ain’t Wyrd-born.”
After a moment, he nodded to himself and leaned forward. “Think of a ‘name’ like… a story. Not just who someone is, but everything they are. Every moment, every choice, every memory that makes that bein’ what it is. That’s what the Wyrd sees when it looks at a name.”
Jeremiah’s frown deepened, but he didn’t interrupt.
Mero continued, more slowly now. “When a Fae takes a name, they step into it. They become part of that story. A Fae doesn’t wear a name like a mask. That name becomes part of their greater story. We don’t pretend; we Become.”
He tilted his head toward Jeremiah. “For non-fae sapient beings, things are different. Your identities aren’t nearly as flexible, and instead of becoming, taking a new name… fortifies. Those memories and moments settle into you, become your experiences, your history, making you more than you were before.”
Jeremiah’s stomach dropped.
“The dream…” he said, the words slipping out before he could stop them.
Mero snapped his fingers and pointed. “Bingo.”
Jeremiah’s gaze dropped back to the blade.
“You might not have been tryin’ to absorb the beast’s name,” Mero added. “But the outer layer, those memories and experiences that hadn’t had time to settle, got… knocked loose, for lack of a better term, during your fight.”
Jeremiah leaned back and groaned.
Mero must have seen the apprehension on his face, because the fairy rolled his eyes.
“Yer fine. Typically, you’d have to be actively trying to absorb those name fragments. Otherwise, they just get absorbed by the blade itself.”
“Whatever you say…” Jeremiah muttered weakly.
He didn’t look convinced. He leaned back against the headboard, one shoulder pressing into the wall as his gaze drifted toward the bedside table.
Mero’s explanation made sense in the same way most Wyrd explanations made sense, which was to say it sounded more like incoherent ramblings than a cohesive system, yet made just enough sense that he couldn’t outright dismiss any of it.
On the one hand, Mero was right. The blade didn’t feel malicious. There was no hunger in it, no quiet pull at the edges of his thoughts, no whispering temptation like the horror stories always described. It just… sat there, quiet and unassuming, as if it were nothing more than a tool.
On the other hand—
Jeremiah could still feel the echoes of that strange, existential pain as the blade shaved off what Mero claimed were only soft, surface-level memories. What would it have felt like if he had cut ‘deeper?’
The thought settled heavily in his chest.
He might not have called it evil.
But Jeremiah wasn’t naive enough to pretend it was anything less than cruel.
He pushed the thought away before it could settle.
Mero shrugged, drifting lazily in place. “My point is, how such ‘experiences’ manifest differs for everyone. You had a lotta things stackin’ up all at once — your exhaustion, the panic, that lizard’s weak sense of self, and the nature of the Wilds themselves.” He tilted his head. “Among other things.”
Jeremiah’s brow creased as he turned back to the fairy. “Other things?”
Mero pointed past him, toward the shelf above his bed.
Jeremiah followed the gesture.
The rainbow feather rested where he’d left it the night before. In the dim apartment, its internal glow stood out more clearly than it had in the atrium, though no less strange. Color slid slowly along its length — red into gold, gold into green, then into shades that refused to settle into anything he could name.
“I’m not sure if you noticed,” Mero said, a hint of humor slipping back into his voice, “but that thing is absolutely radiating Dream energy. That, combined with how much time you’ve been spending in the Wyrd Wilds? I’m not surprised in the slightest that you’re having weird dreams.”
Jeremiah studied the feather for a moment, then reached up and carefully plucked it from the shelf.
It felt warm between his fingers, as though it had only just fallen. The soft glow it cast carried a faint heat, like the faintest kiss of sunlight. He leaned back against the wall and turned it slowly by the quill, watching the shifting colors scatter dim reflections across the room.
Mero lifted off from the bedside table and drifted closer. “Ya know,” he said, tilting his head, “I’m surprised ya didn’t leave that for yer guest. The System did say it would be beneficial.”
Jeremiah’s eyes flicked to him, then returned to the feather.
“I also have no idea where it came from,” he said, “or what left it behind.”
Though he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it felt… familiar somehow.
“The System says it’s safe. Great. Wonderful.” His voice flattened slightly. “But it doesn’t tell me what it actually does beyond a vague description, or how I’m supposed to use it properly.” He rotated the quill again, watching the light bend along its edge. “After the last few weeks, I’m getting tired of trusting mysterious gifts just because they come wrapped in a System window.”
Mero raised a brow. “So what? You’re just going to keep it on your shelf? Seems like a waste to me.”
Jeremiah let out a slow breath and pushed himself out of bed, his body protesting the movement with a dull, persistent ache. He stood carefully, working through the stiffness, then crossed to the bedside table and set the feather down beside his phone.
He stretched, shoulders rolling back with a faint wince.
“No,” he said at last. “I might not know much about magical stuff like this…”
His gaze flicked toward Billy’s tank, where the water shimmered softly in the dark.
“But I know someone who does.”
Jeremiah turned and started toward the bathroom.
“I think it’s time I gave Ulrick another visit.”