Wrapped in an ocean of darkness, Vincent struggled to keep his mind intact. The void seeped through his nose and ears… suffocating and invasive. It wasn’t air or water… it was nothingness itself, filtering into his body, reaching for his mind, trying to erase his very existence.

  "No… You won’t take me."

  He fought with all his strength, but the darkness would not yield. He felt as if he had been dissolving for an eternity, condemned to an endless struggle to hold his mind together.

  "What happened? Did the teleportation work?"

  He had no idea how much time had passed since his supposed death… or how long he had been fighting here. Seconds? Years? Impossible to know. Where he was, time did not exist; the only reality was the present.

  Without context, time was eternal. But a faint murmur in the distance anchored Vincent to the present. Even if barely perceptible, new variables emerged in the dark prison that surrounded him…

  If there’s a murmur, then there’s sound. If there’s sound, then there’s direction… space…

  Vincent’s world expanded, sensory triggers to cling to.

  If I can hear, then I have ears… a head I can move, a neck I can turn, eyelids I can open.

  When he opened his eyes, there was only darkness… but also a faint light from where the murmur came. Curiosity sharpened his senses. It wasn’t a single voice, but two. Anger, tone, subject. He couldn’t make out the words, but the more complex his world became, the sharper his consciousness grew.

  That light… am I dead? Is this the light at the end of the tunnel? Or is this where the teleported pass through?

  He stopped for a second. His natural reaction was to resist; he didn’t want to die, but he also feared what awaited him if he stayed in the void one second longer. Could eternal life be waiting at the end of the tunnel? There was no way of knowing. The only certainty was that every moment wrapped in that black miasma gnawed at his very being.

  There’s no point in worrying about whether I’ll die or not… I only know that if I stay here, I’ll lose even the ability to understand if death is good or bad. I must move. I’d rather die than cease to exist.

  The desire for movement awakened the rest of his body. He tried to swim, gaining more awareness of himself, and with it, new factors began to weigh on him. Sleep invaded him, fatigue pressing down on his shoulders like tons of stone. The void that once surrounded him now felt tangible, viscous. Every step he took was a struggle, but the light grew a little brighter with each one.

  The light widened. Once it had been just a speck in the distance, but now it seemed more like a crack, a portal to another world. The voices became clearer, and blurry figures began to appear in the distance.

  I can hear them… they’re voices… shouting? Are they speaking to me?

  He focused all his senses on the crack. There was urgency in their tones.

  Could it be a doctor? Am I in a hospital?

  He can’t make out what they’re saying, but the sounds that once seemed sordid now carry nuances. He can feel their urgency… someone is shouting at him!

  “Wait, I’m alive! I’m alive!”

  He doesn’t understand what’s happening. He’s almost certain he took a shotgun blast before teleporting.

  Did my corpse heal itself when I teleported?

  He should be dead… and yet, every second reinforces his sense of being. His body takes shape. There’s ground beneath his feet. He can run.

  He pushes forward and tries to hurl himself toward the light with all his strength, but the ocean of darkness around him turns every step into a struggle. A viscous tide drags him back, pulling him away from the light.

  “I-I’m alive! HEY!”

  The image sharpens as he advances. The portal takes shape… it’s not a door, nor a crack in reality. It’s the inside of his own eyelids. He’s trapped inside his mind. On the other side, he makes out a face: a furious man shouting with desperate intensity, as if trying to reach him too.

  More and more memories flood in. He shouldn’t be alive… but he is. The weight of his body returns, fabric brushes against his skin.

  “Enough! Leave him be!”

  Refutes a second voice, this one from a young woman. Through the crack, their blurred figures take form. The girl struggles, trying to stop the man.

  “There’s no point!”

  Huh? Is she asking the doctor to give up? To stop trying to revive me?

  With the little information he has, Vincent tries to piece the scene together. In his mind, the doctor fights desperately to save him, while the nurse tries to stop him.

  “I’m alive, damn it! Don’t listen to her!”

  His fury steadies him. Suddenly, he recalls a part of himself he’d forgotten: the resentment, the thirst for vengeance.

  Those bastards… they’ve infiltrated the hospital too. They want me dead no matter what.

  His senses sharpen. He feels awake.

  “Damn it! I’m still alive! Don’t stop trying! Don’t turn off that defibrillator!”

  If he doesn’t interfere, they’ll let him die. He uses everything he has left to escape the miasma. The sting of anger on his back pushes him forward… the hatred is so intense that the liquid around him begins to bubble.

  “You idiot! Can’t you do anything right?”

  But as he gets closer, he detects a tone of reprimand that calms his waters. He hadn’t noticed… but they’re not speaking in any language he knows, and yet, he can understand them.

  Huh?

  Did he just insult me? He must be a very passionate doctor… he’s yelling at me so I won’t give up… right?

  “Stop it! Don’t talk to him like that! He hasn’t done anything wrong!”

  The female voice jumps to his defense. She sounds worried.

  “You’ve got to shake him like this so he understands! If that thick head is empty, then the body has to learn. Hand me the stick!”

  “No, please, I’ll clean it! Don’t hit him! He hasn’t done anything wrong! He has no bad intentions!”

  Almost at the other side, the image is still blurry and small, but clearer with each passing moment. He’s not in a hospital… he’s face to face with an angry man shouting just inches from his face.

  Am I recalling my life? I don’t remember ever living through something like this…

  The crack turns into a window, a screen showing a strange world. The scene unfolds in first person, as if they were shouting directly at him, but he knows this never happened. He hurries to cross the threshold, but faced with the hostility of what he sees, he hesitates to take the final step.

  Eh?

  It’s too late. Something drags him in. The force of the portal engulfs his body and the darkness around him like a drain. A blinding light consumes everything, and for an instant, he loses consciousness.

  Before opening his eyes, a wave of new sensations overwhelms him. The air is dense and hard to breathe, the sounds sharper yet deafening, and gravity weighs down on him as if trying to crush him. His body awakens before his mind, bringing with it the certainty that he has been sunk in a deep slumber.

  Opening his eyelids feels strange… as if he had never done it before. The portal is gone, and what he once saw projected on it is now reality itself. He has finally awakened.

  It’s not heaven or a hospital… the scene before him is so bizarre it leaves him bewildered.

  “Are you really so stupid you can’t even understand something this simple? Don’t mop the carpets with a wet mop!

  Huh?

  He is no longer submerged in darkness… but inside a body, though it doesn’t feel like his own. In his hands is a rustic mop, and in front of him, a man with the appearance of a priest shouts in his face. A severe expression marks the man’s features.

  “For all the gods’ sake! Is there really nothing in there?” He knocks on his head with a finger and clicks his tongue, imitating a hollow sound. “Knock, knock, knock… nothing.”

  Then he exaggerates the echo of the sound, spreading his hands theatrically as if shaping the air itself.

  It is only then that he truly pays attention to where he is.

  He finds himself in a massive library. Shelves crammed with old books and scrolls rise up to the high vaulted stone ceiling. Narrow aisles are dimly lit by flickering crystals, but the area where he stands glows thanks to the great stained glass window behind him. From what he can see, he is high up. From his position, only clouds are visible.

  A tower?

  “Hey! Don’t get distracted!”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  The man snaps his fingers in front of him, demanding attention.

  The priest before him wears a stern look. His eyes, nearly white-blue, stand out even more against his flushed skin. Bald except for a ridiculous tuft, burly, strong in build… but not large enough to suppress the urge to punch him.

  Vincent would love to beat him up, but he is incapable of reacting. He can’t even frown.

  Huh?

  The sensation in his body has returned, but the nervous impulses seem to travel only one way. He can perceive, but not react. His muscles won’t obey. It’s as if his body has been misconfigured.

  My body… why can’t I move it? I can’t even turn my head.

  “This one isn’t even fit for cleaning! It’s just an empty shell! Throw him off the tower already… let him return to nature.”

  Accustomed to the position of a boss, he cannot tolerate anyone daring to speak to him like that. Indignation consumes him and he tries to strike back, but the order never reaches his fist. It’s as if the connection to his body has been cut. It won’t respond. It won’t move.

  His consciousness is trapped inside his head… and it feels as though his body belongs to someone else.

  “N-no, you can’t do that! I’m paying his quota!”

  The girl intervenes. A freckled redhead a head shorter than him. Despite not being physically imposing, she steps in between the man and him to defend him.

  “D-don’t make me remind you of statute number 12 of the Womb Accord! If the resurrected can feed himself, then his well-being is the responsibility of the tower—”

  “Yes, yes, Lily, I know… no need to lecture me.”

  The man interrupts her, trying to calm her down. Her face and hair were turning the same color.

  “As Custodian of the Tower, I’m more than familiar with the regulations. I wasn’t serious.”

  His tone softens, and with it, his hostility.

  “How long have you been looking after him, huh? Ten years? More? It’s obvious his soul never settled… he’s an empty shell, a husk.”

  He diverts his gaze from her and fixes it on him. His expression shifts from compassion to indifference.

  “There’s no point in keeping him in this state. Better to make use of him while we still can. Maybe there’s something useful in his memories that might endure… that way, his life would have meaning.”

  He looks at me as if I were a thing.

  “He’s alive! I won’t let you extract his memories!” Lily snaps back firmly. “He looked after me when I was catatonic! I-I won’t abandon him.”

  Her voice cracks as she speaks. She tries to defend him, but the indignation in her tone betrays that, deep down, she knows the Custodian isn’t entirely wrong.

  “You know your cases are different… He was simply never there.” Drestan points at his head. “It’s a failed resurrection.”

  Resurrection, he said? So I really did die?

  “But Drestan… I mean, Custodian Drestan, I’m the one in charge of him, and he hasn’t done anything that terrible either… I’ve even been teaching him things.”

  “And you know very well that’s useless. His condition has been deteriorating since birth. The ego inside him, the one that once cared for you, has almost vanished. I can see it in his motor skills… he doesn’t have much left. Don’t you think the most humane thing is to allow his memories to live on somehow? Wouldn’t you like to know if he even registers your existence?”

  Lily says nothing. She keeps searching her mind for a way to defend him.

  Of course there’s something inside me! Can’t you see?! I’m alive!

  He gathers all his strength to respond, to scream at them that he’s still there… but with such poor control over himself, all he manages is for his muscles to tense erratically, twisting his face.

  “Puh… bllrgh… pff…” is all Vincent can articulate.

  Drestan looks at him with disgust.

  “Look at him… more idiotic by the day. Now he’s drooling.”

  Damn it, that’s not what I meant to say. What’s wrong with this body?! It won’t respond!

  “That’s because you yelled at him!” Lily, the girl who apparently has been protecting him all this time, rushes to defend him. “He doesn’t do it all the time.”

  So I do drool sometimes? The way they’re treating me… it’s like I’m mentally disabled.

  Vincent shifts the focus of his struggle inward, toward himself… or rather, toward what he currently is. It seems he’s been incapable of carrying out even the most basic tasks.

  Apparently I wet the carpets… the damp mop in my hands makes that clear. This library uses them to muffle footsteps so readers aren’t disturbed… it makes sense…

  But if it’s so obvious… why did I use a mop to try to clean them?

  His place in this world grows clearer. It’s overwhelming. Knowing that he has died and been resurrected in another world should have thrown him into panic… if not for the fact that his body isn’t even capable of feeling nervous. He’s so disconnected that not even his heartbeat has quickened. Thanks to that, he can keep a cool head.

  Resurrection. Husk. Extraction. Idiot. Mop…

  He processes the words in his mind. The man’s threat of extracting his memories should be his greatest concern… but something else terrifies him even more.

  Did I take possession of the body of a simpleton incapable of cleaning a floor?

  All signs point to yes. A cruel and ironic fate for a genius. For an instant, Vincent wonders if this is some kind of divine punishment…

  He who bites the forbidden apple shall be expelled from Eden.

  “Oh, Magister Lily… what am I going to do with you?”

  The man turned his back on her and began rummaging through the books.

  “You know what you were resurrected for, don’t you?”

  Drestan picked up one of the nearby tomes and opened it in his hand. It didn’t look like a book, but more like a folder; scraps and loose sheets slipped out as he spread it open.

  “Construction of hydroelectric dams… The Peloponnesian War… a recipe for… ‘tofu’? … and this doesn’t even seem translated…”

  He muttered as he flipped through the pages, showing Lily a few of them. They were full of blurred fragments and random sketches. There didn’t seem to be much coherence in the tome.

  “We are here, and I include myself, to make this empire a better place. The accumulation of knowledge from thousands of worlds is what has given us the level of prosperity we enjoy today. If we have nothing to contribute… then why were we resurrected in the first place?”

  Custodian Drestan shut the tome and put it back in its place. Then he addressed Lily in a more serious tone.

  “You terrestrials are under much more pressure… Lacking magic originally, you have more to prove. The Tower seeks knowledge, and the scholars don’t like to see a resurrection wasted. They’ll want to extract something before he vanishes completely.”

  Lily was about to reply, but before she could say a word, Drestan stopped her with a gesture. He knew exactly what she was going to say.

  “It doesn’t matter that you’re paying his quota or working twice as hard. What the Tower wants is knowledge… something new.”

  “Even so… you know they can’t extract his memories without his explicit consent, and I’m the one who speaks for him.”

  “And what will happen when you’re not here, uh? I know you have an expedition next week. They know it too… they’re counting on it.”

  This time the man stepped closer to Vincent and asked:

  “Listen to me, husk. When she’s not here to defend you, will you even be able to say no?”

  There was a hint of pleasure in the theatrics of the scene. He was doing it to teach Lily a lesson… but there was resentment in it as well. He wanted it to happen, he wanted them to extract his memories.

  “Mbbuu…”

  Vincent makes a desperate effort to speak, but his jaw is stiff, his tongue won’t respond… and now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t even know how to say “no” in that language.

  "You know he can’t speak! Don’t pressure him! Maybe he was never able to in the first place… maybe he was a nonverbal autistic or something…"

  “I don’t understand the terminology of your world, Lily, and I get that the Womb brought you from the same place, but an idiot in your world is still an idiot here.”

  Drestan dismissed her with indifference and then turned directly to Vincent.

  “Why don’t you come with me, boy? I promise it won’t hurt.”

  If I don’t respond now, the man will take me. I don’t know what he means by extracting my memories, but it doesn’t sound good. This body must have learned the language through assimilation, otherwise I wouldn’t understand what they’re saying… I can’t think about the linguistic side of this. I just need to recall what Lily has been saying all this time.

  “Nnnnnn- Nnn.”

  He poured all his focus into trying to move his tongue the way he wanted. It was as if he had to forget how he thought his body moved and relearn how to do everything again. Instead of a meaningless babble, this time it sounded more like a stutter, something deliberate.

  Both the man and Lily stopped their discussion to stare at him closely.

  “Nnnn- Nnnou.”

  At the sound of that poor excuse for a denial, Lily’s face lit up.

  “Ah! He spoke!”

  “Nnnoou.”

  “And he keeps speaking? How wonderful!”

  “A baby is more understandable than that! I think he’s just burping.”

  Lily stepped between him and the Custodian again.

  “He just said NO very clearly! Isn’t that enough?”

  “It won’t be for the Extractors…”

  Drestan examined him with curiosity, as if searching for the faintest trace of intelligence in him.

  “So that’s why he couldn’t clean the floor… he used his whole brain just to babble!”

  His mouth curved into a mocking smile.

  “And it only took him thirty minutes. Ha!”

  But in the end, all he found was another reason to laugh at him.

  “Stop trying to teach him things, girl. He’s a lost cause. If you fill his head with information, he might even forget how to breathe.”

  Lily’s expression darkened… as if that were a real possibility.

  Am I really that much of an idiot in this world? Is that even possible?

  “A-anyway… you heard him! As you can see, the lessons I’ve given him have helped.” Lily snatched the mop from his hands and quickly changed the subject. “I’ll take care of this little accident. You can leave it to me, sir.”

  It seemed he had shouted enough, and faced with Lily’s stubbornness, Drestan relented for the moment.

  “Bah! I don’t care if you want to waste your life dragging this dead weight around. With your talent, you’d have paid off the debt by now… I’ll let it slide for now, but you’d better not let a single one of those tomes get wet, or I’ll make you transcribe them by hand. Without magic.”

  “Y-yes, sir! Thank you very much!”

  “Hmp.”

  The Custodian withdrew. Judging by his title, he must be charged with keeping order. Lily didn’t seem to be a nobody either.

  He called her Magister Lily… And what did he mean by transcribing books without magic?

  Before he could dwell on what had just happened, Lily planted herself in front of him and shouted.

  “Vin! Are you alright? He didn’t hit you, did he?”

  Vin? How does she know my nickname?

  The girl examined him, running her hands along his arms and thighs in search of marks. The sensation was strange. As she touched his limbs, his muscles stirred, making the body feel more like his own… and suddenly, he collapsed.

  “Ah!”

  Becoming more aware of what was now his body made him question how he had even been standing. The moment he thought about it, he took control… and with it, also his sense of balance.

  And by regaining it, he lost it.

  It still didn’t feel entirely his. It was as if he were controlling it in third person. That’s why, when he fell, he didn’t cry out in pain. No reflex, no reaction. Just a dull thud against the floor.

  “Vin!” Lily cried, desperate. With a single stride she closed the distance and held his face in both hands. “Can you hear me? Are you there? Is anyone there?”

  She slapped him desperately while his body lay sprawled on the floor. Her quick reaction had kept him from hitting his head, but her frantic insistence disoriented him more than any potential blow. She had no intention of letting go of his face; her eyes were locked on him… or on whatever lay behind them.

  “No… maybe you don’t understand me…” she muttered to herself. “Can you hear me? Do you speak English? Moshi moshi…”

  Hearing her speak English put into perspective how strange it was to have been so naturally using the language they had been conversing in. He understood every word clearly, but when he tried to pronounce them, it felt like trying to recall something he hadn’t used in decades.

  “What’s happening to you? Are my lessons really messing with your brain? Forget about that and focus on breathing!”

  It took him a little, but slowly he managed to recover. Relieved, Lily helped him lean against one of the shelves.

  “Ah… what am I doing? There’s no way that really happened. An awakening at your age is practically impossible…”

  Awakening? She mentioned it again.

  “It must have been my fault… I was too hard with the lessons. But you finally did it! You can almost say no!”

  Lily smiled at him as if he were a child, though he could clearly see his body was that of an adult.

  She treats me like I’m her little brother.

  “Just a little more and I won’t have to worry about the Extractors. I thought your faculties were deteriorating… but if you can speak now, it means you’re stable. For now, stay there while I clean up this mess. I’ll reward you with a piece of fruit when I’m done.”

  I was wrong… she treats me more like a monkey.

  The girl turned, picking up a staff that had been leaning against a nearby table.

  “I’ll dry this up in no time! Then we’ll go get your reward, okay?”

  He nodded slightly, which made Lily burst with joy. He still had no idea what kind of relationship they had, how she seemed to know his name… or even where they were.

  Judging by the architectural style and their clothing, it seems like I’ve traveled to the past… though that man mentioned things I recognized in that book. I think we’re in some kind of monastery… life here must be terribly boring…

  “Auris totalifonis eu no d?e fosforis…”

  The girl planted the base of her staff on the carpet and began reciting something in another language… this time, he couldn’t understand it.

  “Ignis!”

  At first it was barely perceptible… but in an instant, the temperature in the room rose several degrees. An orange glow emanated from the base of the staff and, after a few seconds, steam began to rise from the carpet.

  What…?

  For the first time since gaining consciousness in that body, his catatonic face twisted into an expression: surprise.

  That glow, that radiance… could this be… magic?