The sensation came before the thought.
An echo. A shiver. As if something deep within this body remembered a life that wasn't mine.
A flicker in the spine. A twinge in the wrist.
I wasn't alone in here.
Even as I breathed, walked, blinked there were movements that didn't feel entirely mine.
Not painful, just... inhabited.
Familiar gestures I hadn't learned. Emotions I didn't recognize.
As if Kim, the boy I now was, hadn't left completely.
I tried to shake it off. It was early morning, and I had a class to attend.
The classroom was vast and cold, lit by torches embedded in blackened stone.
Long tables stretched beneath vaulted ceilings, and shelves of ancient tomes lined the walls. I slipped into one of the seats, trying to go unnoticed.
The professor a thin woman draped in silver-gray robes began speaking of things I didn't understand. "Fluxes," "Pacts," "Lineages of Spirit," "Mythic Blood."
I took notes, though my hands trembled slightly.
The ink bled over strange names some whispered through my head as if they had been there long before I ever wrote them down.
At some point, I raised my hand.
"What happens," I asked, "if a Pact is forgotten?"
The class fell silent for a heartbeat too long. The professor's eyes flicked toward me, unreadable.
"No pact is ever truly forgotten," she said. "Only sealed. Buried. Or... erased."
Something in her voice told me it wasn't just theory.
Back in the quiet of the corridor, I asked the only one who might know more.
"Geri."
His presence stirred instantly.
"You're asking too many questions," he replied in that same deep, slow voice that felt like old stone cracking under frost.
"You don't even know what you are yet."
"But you do."
"...Partly. That's why I'm still here. But I won't hand you everything. Not yet."
"Because you don't trust me?"
A silence. Then
"Because you're not Kim. And because you don't even know what he did."
The cold returned. Not from the wind—but from something inside me.
That night, I searched the room that had once been his.
My room now, technically.
Dark wood furniture. A shelf of books with underlined pages. A faded map pinned to the wall.
And in the drawer of the desk, beneath a loose board, I found it.
A small, leather-bound notebook. Old. Worn. A few pages ripped out. The writing sharp, urgent.
One line caught me instantly.
I can't trust them.
Not even her.
She lies too.
The ink had smudged slightly, as if written in haste. Or in fear.
My heart pounded. I had no idea who "she" was.
But Kim clearly had secrets. And enemies.
And I was now trapped inside his unfinished story.
I left the room, the notebook hidden in my sleeve.
As I stepped into the hallway, a voice called out behind me.
A girl about my age. Auburn hair. Tired eyes. A faint smile.
"Kim," she said softly, as if the name itself carried weight.
"I was looking for you."
She didn't see the stranger in me.
She saw him.
I froze.
I was living someone else's life.
And the world hadn't noticed the switch.
But I had.
And whatever Kim had uncovered... whatever he'd been running from...
Was now mine to face