The golden pocket watch ticked into place.
12:00 AM.
In the same breath, across the fog-veiled arteries of London, two boys gasped awake.
Shisan jolted upright on a floor matted with grime and dust, his breath ragged, muscles twitching. His hand reached for a blade out of instinct—only to grasp air. There was no weapon. No armor. No allies. Just cold, rotting wood beneath him.
Claudius blinked beneath the violet haze of his dormitory ceiling, heart steady, but mind already turning. Each breath was measured. Each heartbeat synchronized to thought.
They had returned.
Back to their own bodies.
Back to the beginning.
Claudius did not rest. He rose smoothly from the stiff iron bed, the ticking of the pocket watch beside him echoing like a countdown. That sound—a mechanical pulse—confirmed what he had suspected:
This was no fever dream.
Not a projection.
Not a mental trial.
It was structured. Patterned. Cyclical.
A forced body-switch, occurring precisely at midnight. With no incantation. No trigger. No circle. It was embedded into the world now, as regular as breath.
But many questions remained:
Who? Why? Where?
Who's body was I transferred to?
Why was I transferred to that specific body?
Where is that body now…?
Cladius put his hand on his chin.
'I may not be able to answer all those questions as of now, however I can answer one of them right now.'
Claudius moved to his desk and opened a drawer, retrieving a slim rune-bound tablet etched with sensory runes. His fingers danced across the surface, summoning the Clock Tower's surveillance network. Not public—barely legal—but accessible.
He filtered through leyline resonance logs, tracking the residual imprint of his displaced soul.
Anomalous readings. Arcane distortion. High concentrations of dissonance.
All centered...
"South boroughs," Claudius muttered. "The old dead zones."
A grimace touched his lips.
Too distant.
Too irrelevant—for now.
Shisan, whatever he was, had not yet interfered with Claudius's life. No effect on his studies. No breach of the Somnus Wing. A variable, yes. But not an urgent one. Not when finals are so close.
Not yet.
He slid the tablet aside.
"Focus."
The book of recursive sigils awaited. Claudius resumed his studies beneath the lamplight.
Across the city, in a broken house that leaned like a drunken corpse, Shisan stirred.
Mud clung to the side of his face. Damp air filled his lungs with rot. He sat up slowly, wiping dirt from his eyes, and squinted through the shadows of the ruined space.
"Was that... a dream?"
But he remembered the violet halls.
The oppressive lights.
The boy—his body—walking through them like a ghost of precision.
And now?
This was real. His real body.
Heavy.
Familiar.
Stronger in instinct, but weak in performance.
He rolled to his feet, every joint aching, and found a cracked mirror wedged into the wall. The surface was gray, filmy, distorted by grime.
He scrubbed it clean with a rain-soaked rag. No soap. No enchantment. Just raw resolve.
Then he dipped his fingers into a pile of wet earth from the floor.
And began to draw.
Crude lines. Curved pathways.
The spiraling staircase. The floating scrolls. The stone tables. The whispering crystals. He etched everything from the Somnus Wing into the mirror with earthen strokes. Memory etched into mud. It wasn't beautiful—but it was real.
A start.
Shisan rolled his shoulders. It had been a long time since he felt this feeling in his own body, soreness.
Then, the rituals began.
Push-ups.
Hands to the floor. Filth slicked beneath him.
A hundred.
A thousand.
Four thousand.
Exactly one hour.
Pistol squats.
Down. Up.
Left. Right.
Eighty in a minute. Thighs quaked. Knees screamed.
Hollow body hold.
Ten minutes.
Pure hell. Vision blurred. Core shaking.
But he endured.
When he finally collapsed onto the floor, gasping and shivering, he whispered aloud:
"This body is... pathetic."
But he clenched his fists, remembering the crimson lady.
'Such a being with so much power has probably scratched the very heavens, much like the sword saints back at home. But there was something different about her… I can't put my finger on it,'
"I have no choice but to make it stronger."
He staggered to the door, hand reaching for the knob—then paused.
Something tugged against his senses. A line. A thread.
He traced it with his eyes.
Tension wire.
Linked to a plank overhead.
A bottle. Its contents faintly shimmering—ammonia? Silver nitrate?
Like a lightning bolt, the thought instantly came into Shisan's mind. It wasn't a dream or illusion. But a body swap.
And whoever had swapped bodies with him had prepared for sabotage, an enemy.
Shisan's jaw tensed, examining the trap more closely.
A trap like that was meant to cripple. Blind. Debilitate.
He disarmed it carefully, toe by toe, crouch by crouch. Three more followed—beneath a floorboard, beside a hinge, along a jam.
All deactivated.
Not today.
He emerged into the streets of London.
And froze.
Chariots made of metal raced down roads of stone, powered by invisible fire.
Glass towers shimmered in the sky. Lights pulsed with no flame.
Signs blinked with color and motion. No runes. No scrolls.
People spoke to glowing rectangles as though they were familiars.
Shisan walked among them, low and cautious, his heart pounding.
"This... This world is built by sorcerers," he whispered.
But he knew better.
This wasn't sorcery.
It was something else.
He found a food stall—bright neon, manned by a woman with eyes dulled by exhaustion and a rune scar etched into her neck.
"Food," Shisan demanded.
She sniffed.
"No coin. No chip. No smell. No service."
He blinked.
"What?"
"Go wash, freak."
She turned her back.
Three more vendors turned him away.
One sprayed him with a hose.
Another threatened the guards.
He clutched his stomach, hunger roaring.
Defeated, he returned to the broken house, feet aching, coat soaked.
He stared again at the mirror, at the outline of the Somnus Wing etched in brown.
He needed information.
He needed allies.
He needed power.
But most of all...
He needed to find the magical academy.
The most probable cause for all the illusions he came across thus far.
To find the root of this madness.
As rain battered the roof, he fell asleep against the wall.
Dreams came slowly.
And in them, violet halls pulsed with unspeakable power.
Across the city, Claudius studied beneath lamplight.
Unaware that their war had already begun.