Chapter 3
Vince dumbly stared at the numbers and letters that drifted in the air before him. The lanky man beside him hooked an arm under his shoulder and half dragged him toward a table in the corner. Every step jarred his battered body—pain lanced through his side, and his left arm hung useless, blood dripping steadily onto his torn clothes. His ribs ached where the beast had struck him, and even his bruises pulsed with heat.
And yet, even through the fog of agony, Vince’s eyes kept dragging back to the impossible sight floating in front of him.
The thin screen that was bristling with words. They looked so wrong and twisted as though someone had scrawled English in reverse. Letters bent into odd angles, half-legible, yet his mind knew them instantly. Understood them, as if the meaning was carved straight into his skull.
He knew that the information was about him. He couldn’t explain how he knew, only that he did.
Name: Artur Vale
The name struck him like another blow, and his stomach turned. Artur? The same name the lanky man had used. The same name flickering in the air, staring back at him. Was he in his body now?
And then there were more lines he couldn’t fully grasp. Status, spells, aspect, numbers, Initiate Level 3. Whatever that meant. It didn’t matter. Nothing made sense.
His body was screaming in pain, but his mind clung stubbornly to the status screen.
Vince blinked when a voice cut through the haze. In that instant, the screen dissolved, vanishing like smoke.
“You can read your status?” The man asked in a kind voice, but his eyes narrowed, searching for something.
Vince’s throat dried. Slowly, he forced a nod. “Yes. Artur… Vale.” His voice faltered on the last word, but he pushed it through his lips. “That’s… who I am, right?”
“Huh?” The latter’s frown deepened. “If you have to ask that, then you must have hit your head harder than I thought.” His gaze drifted to the bloodied carcass sprawled across the hall. “What were you thinking, summoning a grimmaw? Even battle mages don’t dare attempt a ritual code to drag something out of the seven planes. That art is sensitive. One misstep, and…”
He paused, his eyes flicking back to Vince as if the mangled beast’s corpse was explanation enough.
Vince stared at him, mind fumbling over the terms—grimmaw, ritual code, mages. He chewed them over for a few seconds, panic clawing at his ribs, and then tried to steady himself.
The man waited for a reply, and Vince realised he didn’t have many options. A second’s thought was enough to make that clear.
So he stuck with the plan.
“I… honestly don’t know,” Vince said truthfully. Because in reality, he didn’t know. “Last thing I remember, my head got slammed against the wall while that beast was circling me.”
The man’s eyes widened for the briefest moment, surprise flashing as clear as daylight. “Grimmaws like to give prey a chance. Toy with them. Let them run. Then they chase. If it had you cornered like that, you would have been hit badly.” His gaze drifted downward.
Vince followed it to his mangled arm, crimson soaking the sleeve, blood dripping thick onto the floorboards.
“More than badly,” the man muttered. “You need a health draught.”
“A… what?” Vince managed.
But the man was already moving. His hand slipped into a pocket, emerging with a tiny glass vial no bigger than a thumb. Liquid swirled inside, a faint blue glow coming out of it. He opened it and held it out. “Drink. It’s potent. Enough to spare you from losing that arm… maybe even knit it back slowly.”
The vial caught the light, gleaming with a promise Vince wasn’t sure he trusted. His fingers hesitated, but then, he made his decision. This man had cut a monster in half with the air itself. If he wanted Vince dead, it would’ve been done already.
He inhaled sharply through his nose and raised it to his lips and swallowed. The taste hit like rotten bark steeped in acid. It was bitter, acrid and pungent enough to curl his tongue. His body revolted at once and he lurched forward, gagging. His throat tightened.
A laugh rang out and the man’s shoulders shook with it.
Before he could reply, Vince froze as a current moved inside him.
For the briefest moment something foreign winded its way through his veins like a boneless reptile. It slithered and split into trails that coursed into every ache, every bruise and every torn muscle. Then it coiled around his arm, and he felt heat.
Not burning, but a gushing warmth, surging from the wounds outward. The pain dulled, the rawness softened, and his breath hitched. Vince’s eyes widened, staring at his hand as if it no longer belonged to him.
“What the hell?” he whispered, voice trembling.
The man watched him closely, then gave a brusque nod. “Don’t move your hand. Let the draught do its work. The pain should start easing soon.” His tone softened a fraction. “You’re lucky I had one on me.”
Vince swallowed again, his throat still raw from the bitter taste, and nodded. “Thank you… again. I don’t know how to pay you back.”
That earned the man’s raised brow, a flicker of amusement tugging at his mouth.
“You? Offering to pay me back? That’s a first.” His gaze slid past Vince, settling on the sprawled corpse of the beast. Something calculating passed across his face before he lifted a finger and pointed. “If you want to pay, let me have it. A carcass like this will fetch a good price and there’s plenty of material I can use.” He looked at Vince up and down, eyes narrowing slightly. “And I won’t even report you to Professor Blake.”
Vince froze under the way his stare marked his movements. Then the man leaned closer, his voice dropping lower. “But only if you keep your mouth shut. If even a whisper leaves your lips about me taking it…” his eyes glinted coldly, and for an instant, Vince could almost feel those wind blades cutting through his skin. “... I’ll sell you out first.”
The current between them thickened. Vince felt his throat close and instinct had him shifting backward, shoulders brushing the edge of the table. He nodded quickly, hands trembling. “You got it. I won’t say anything. Not a word.”
The intensity broke like a snapped string. The man reached out and patted his shoulder with a weary sigh. “Sorry. That came out harsher than I meant. I don’t want to threaten you, especially since you’ve really seemed to have lost your memories, but I can’t take risks. I can’t afford to be tied to someone like you.”
Vince wanted to ask why, to press for answers, but the thought dissolved into a sharp spike of pain tearing through his arm. He hissed, a curse slipping out, body jerking despite himself.
The man steadied him with a hand on his shoulder. “Easy. Just the draught working its way in. Don’t fight it.” He gave a short nod toward the hall. “Come on. Let’s get you back to your room. You need rest. I’ll handle the carcass once you’re out of the way.”
Vince nodded numbly, drained, his eyelids heavy. Questions swirled through his mind like gnats, but none could settle. Not now. What he needed wasn’t answers. It was a bed, warmth, and sleep. Only then could he start to untangle the chaos of this night.
The man slid an arm under Vince’s shoulders, steadying him as he helped him to his feet. Each movement sent fire racing through Vince’s battered frame, but he clenched his jaw and forced himself upright. Together, they started for the stairs.
They passed the carcass of the beast. Vince’s gaze betrayed him, drifting to its severed head, the slack jaw dripping thick strings of blood onto the floor. For an instant, its dead eyes seemed to meet his, and a hollow chill sank into his chest. If help hadn’t come when it did… that would be him sprawled in cold silence, torn open and forgotten. And maybe in the weird void again. Even the thought sent a chill down his spine.
He tore his eyes away and forced his legs to move.
The climb up the stairs was slow, every step a battle. Halfway through, pain lanced white-hot through his arm, sharp enough to buckle his knees. Vince drew a ragged breath through his teeth but bit down hard, refusing to let a sound escape. The man glanced at him, but said nothing. He only kept walking, though his eyes returned again and again, heavy with unspoken questions.
By the time they reached his room, Vince’s body was slick with sweat. The door still hung open, just as he’d left it. The man guided him to the bed, lowering him onto the thin mattress before his gaze swept the room. His eyes lingered on the dark blood stains smeared across the floor, then narrowed at the summoning circle drawn into the boards, intensity hardening his features.
Vince leaned back, chest rising and falling in uneven bursts, as the man crossed to a drawer and pulled it open. A moment later he returned with a roll of bandages.
“Let me bind you up,” he said simply. “The wounds need closing.”
Vince managed a nod. The man set to work without hesitation, hands moving with a speed and precision that startled him. The cloth wrapped firm and clean, layer after layer, knotted neatly. His movements carried the ease of someone who had done this not once, but countless times before.
When it was over, Vince looked down at his arm, now fully swaddled in white. Blood had already begun to seep faintly through, but the throbbing ache had dulled. He could almost breathe again.
The man gave a short nod of approval, then turned his attention once more to the circle. His mouth pulled into a thin line, and he shook his head. “Don’t try that again. If you do, you’ll be expelled by tomorrow.”
He started for the door, his cloak brushing the floor, his back already half-turned to leave.
“Wait,” Vince croaked enough to make the man pause mid-step and turn.
“What?”
Vince shifted on the bed. “What’s… your name?”
For a heartbeat the man only stared, then a laugh slipped past his lips. At least that was genuine. “You really have forgotten a lot.” He shook his hand, almost amused. “I’m Randall Reed. Don’t forget it again.”
With that, he pulled the door shut behind him. The latch clicked, leaving him with his thoughts.
Vince stayed still, but his thoughts wouldn’t stop. The room smelled of blood and smoke. The circle scrawled across the floor glowed faintly in the corner of his eye, a reminder of the disaster he’d stumbled into—or caused. His mangled arm throbbed beneath the bandages, but his mind replayed the night instead: the shriek of the beast, the glint in the man’s eyes, the impossible words burning across that floating screen.
It had been only hours, and yet it felt like he’d lived through years. The most bizarre, incomprehensible hours he could imagine.
Part of him wanted to reach for that hidden screen again—status—and see the words, make sense of them. To prove to himself it was real.
But exhaustion was stronger.
Way stronger than he thought.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept; it might as well have been a lifetime ago. And it actually was. There had been no sleep in the void. His body sank into the mattress, and his eyelids dropped and the world dimmed.
This time, no beasts chased him, no voice pressed in around him.
Just darkness.
A pleasant, dreamless darkness that welcomed him like an old friend.
***
Vince woke with a gasp, the sound ragged in his throat. For an instant, the beast’s silhouette lunged at him again, claws outstretched, fangs dripping. He flinched, eyes snapping wide, darting across the room in frantic desperation.
The movement tore pain through his body, white-hot lances running from his shoulder down to his wrist. He hissed, dragging his gaze to the bandages wrapped around his arm. They were stiff now, soaked dark in places where blood had seeped through. Slowly, like fog lifting after a storm, his mind began to focus.
The day before came rushing back all at once. The circle, the summoning, the beast, the fight for his life, the stranger’s blade of wind—every fragment slammed into him in a single surge. He lowered his head, staring at his battered body, and shivered. How had he even survived that?
The summoning circle was still there on the floor, dull lines etched into the wood. Looking at it was like tipping a bucket of cold water over himself. His chest tightened, and he forced his lungs to work, breathing slow and deep.
Alive. Against all odds, he was alive. And more than that, he had a human body again.
He chanted the same thing over and over like a mantra.
He breathed until the shaking eased. Then he swung his legs off the bed and stood, holding his arm close to his side.
“Artur’s bedroom, there has to be…” he muttered.
He noticed a narrow door in the corner, half open. Light fell on tile. There would be a mirror. He walked to the bathroom and pushed the door wider.
A stranger looked back at him.
“God… who am I?”
He touched his face, trying to fix it in his mind. His skin was pale but not sickly. A small bump sat near his temple, probably from the fall on the stairs. His brown hair hung in messy waves to his shoulders, sticking out in places like it had never been combed. His jaw was sharper than he remembered. His eyes were clear and steady—too steady for how shaken he still felt.
Was he going to be living as Artur now? Had the boy already been dead when Vince slipped into his body?
Probably.
The thought sat heavy in his chest, but standing here waiting for answers would bring none. That was never his way. Back in his old life, he’d learned to move first, think later. Do something, anything, rather than stew in questions with no answers.
He turned from the mirror and walked back to the bedroom. His eyes immediately went to the desk tucked against the wall. It was cluttered, scattered with sheets of parchment.
In two strides, he was there, lifting them one by one, scanning the surface.
What is all this?
He couldn’t help but gape as each page was filled with sketched circles—lines and symbols spiraling outward, vastly different from the crude mark burned into the floor.
Then his eyes landed on a book. Its cover was plain, but the title leapt out at him: “How to Design a Summoning Ritual Code for Dumb Mages.”
Vince raised an eyebrow, lips twitching. “Really?”
But as he traced the words, he noticed it again—the letters were scrambled like broken English. Yet his mind unraveled them as easily as if he had written them himself.
Another reminder that this world’s rules weren’t his, and yet, somehow, they belonged to him now.
He didn’t bother opening the book on ritual codes, sliding it aside with a grimace. His hands kept moving, rummaging through the clutter on the desk. Most of it was useless, at least to him.
A wand snapped clean in half, its core frayed like broken nerves. He turned it in his hand once before tossing it back down. Stacks of papers covered in verses, lines and rhymes scratched out with heavy ink—poems, or attempts at them. A key that he guessed was for his room. A handful of books he didn’t recognize; he set those in a neat pile for later. A dagger, plain but pointy enough to cut through something. He stared at it for a long moment, bitter regret tightening his throat. If he’d had it last night… things might have been different.
But none of it gave him what he needed—answers.
He crouched lower, pulling open the last drawer. For a moment he hesitated, mind flicking to Randall and wondered if he should simply ask him questions. The man had saved his life, but the memory of his glinting eyes and the casual way he’d threatened Vince lingered. If Vince went looking for him now, it’d mean owing him again, and favors were chains. He didn’t want chains. Not here, not now.
So he kept searching.
His fingers brushed against something tucked deep in the back. It felt like a smaller book compared to others.
He pulled it free, brushing it off with his sleeve.
Unlike the others, there was no title, only plain leather darkened with age, and he immediately understood what it might be.
A diary. He had kept a few like this himself.
He put it on the desk and cracked it open, the pages creaked faintly. He flipped through the entries and became sure it was actually a diary before opening up the last entry. His eyes darted through it, hoping to find some information on why Artur had summoned the grimmaw, but he froze as soon as he read the first line.
I’m going to be killed.
The words were uneven, the ink pressed deep as though written in desperation. Vince’s breath caught as he read on.
They plan to expel me and kill me. No one is with me. Not even Charlice. Everyone has betrayed me. I’m going to be killed. Not even the Great Zharkhan could save me.