Arjun tried to convince himself it wouldn't happen again.
For a week, he stuck to routines. He dragged himself to lectures, met friends for tea, forced himself into the numbing rhythm of assignments and small talk. If the first slip had been stress-induced, maybe normalcy could cure it.
But he couldn't stop glancing at his hands.
That night on the wall, they had been steady, powerful, carved with confidence. Here, they trembled when he typed, fingers cramping after an hour of half-hearted writing. The staff he remembered — no, the staff the archmage had held — hummed in his memory, every detail burned into his mind more vividly than any textbook page.
When he finally fell asleep at his desk, pen still in hand, the world folded again.
The archmage's body greeted him like a familiar coat.
The staff was in his hand once more, alive with a soft, pulsing light. Around him, the battlefield had cooled into a broken landscape: corpses littering the mud, banners soaked with rain. The storm was gone. The silence was deafening.
And yet the soldiers bowed as he walked among them.
"Master Arathen," one whispered — that name, not his own. "Your wards saved us. Without you, the eastern flank would have fallen."
Arjun's breath caught. Arathen. That's me here. Arathen.
It was absurd how natural it felt to answer to the name. When the soldier asked for orders, Arjun's mouth opened, and the words spilled with ease:"Burn the bodies. Reinforce the western barricade. The enemy will test us again by dawn."
The soldier saluted and ran.
Arjun froze, horrified. I didn't know I knew that. I didn't even think. It just… came.
But the more he walked through the camp, the more natural it became. Men and women called out to him, and he answered without hesitation. He knew their names, their injuries, their fears. He laid hands on wounds and watched them close under a shimmer of light he didn't understand. When a child wept over her father's death, he bent to whisper comfort — and the words were not his, but they calmed her anyway.
It was intoxicating.
For once in his life, no one questioned his worth. No one doubted his ability. He was needed.
Later, in a tent lined with maps, a scarred general poured him wine.
"You should rest, Arathen," the general said. "The men draw strength from you, but you're still flesh and blood."
Arjun lifted the cup. The taste was sharp, bitter, but it warmed him. "And you?" he asked, surprised by the archmage's low, resonant voice slipping from his throat.
The general laughed, the sound weary but genuine. "I draw strength from you too."
Arjun looked down at his hands again — not his own, but steadier, stronger.
And for the first time, he wondered: What if I don't want to go back?
He woke gasping in the library.
The fluorescent lights stabbed his eyes. His pen had rolled onto the floor. His essay document sat blank on the screen.
He caught his reflection in the black window beside his desk. His real face — rounder, softer, marked with sleeplessness — stared back at him. It looked wrong. Like a disguise.
I'm losing myself, he thought, shoving the laptop shut. Arathen is bleeding into me. Or I'm bleeding into him.
But when he reached for his bag, his fingers tingled with phantom magic. And beneath his exhaustion was a treacherous whisper:
Maybe that's not such a bad thing.