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Darkness.
Then pain.
Then cold.
Calem gasped as he awoke with a violent jolt, his lungs seizing as though they had never breathed before. A rough wooden surface dug into his back. His vision swam, the world above a blur of green and gold—leaves rustling high above in a dense canopy, sunlight filtering through them like the shards of broken glass.
Where… am I?
The question barely had time to form before a wave of nausea surged through his tiny frame. He clutched his stomach—no, not his stomach. Smaller. Softer. His arms were thinner, his skin smooth, pale, unscarred by age or labor. These weren't the limbs of a man in his thirties. He was trapped in the body of a child.
He blinked slowly. This wasn't a hospital. Not a dream either. The cold dirt beneath him was real. The distant birdsong, the rustle of leaves, the earthy scent of pine sap—everything screamed life. But not the life he knew.
Memories surged like a flood. His wife's tired smile as she kissed him goodbye that morning. The sound of his daughter humming as she drew with crayons. The weight of bills in his pocket. Normal. Mundane. Then—blackness. A whisper of something pulling him.
Now, here.
A place that defied explanation.
As he sat up shakily, the world tilted, then sharpened. Before him stretched an old dirt path snaking through a thick forest. Trees towered, impossibly tall, their roots like giant veins running through the forest floor. Flowers glowed faintly beneath the shadows, not reflecting light—but producing it.
Magic.
That word dropped into his thoughts like a stone in a still pond.
A few meters ahead, a group of children played under the watchful eyes of two robed adults. One child, a boy with ash-blond curls and olive-toned skin, extended his hand. A tiny flicker of light bloomed at his fingertips—a spark that twisted mid-air into a ring of flame. The others clapped, and the fire dissipated into harmless embers.
Calem stared.
No tricks. No wires. No incantations he recognized. Just a casual manipulation of something fundamentally unnatural.
Magic.
The adults nearby exchanged words in a language Calem didn't recognize. Their speech was fluid, rhythmic, but completely alien. He couldn't even discern the syllables. He opened his mouth to speak—"Hello?"—but the word died in his throat.
What came out instead was a raspy croak in a tongue that didn't match his thoughts. Panic surged. His mouth moved, but the words didn't make sense—not to them, not to him. One of the adults frowned, stepping forward, speaking gently, but Calem couldn't understand a single thing.
Language. I can't even speak to them...
It was a wall higher than any he had ever faced. Isolation dug its claws into him.
He looked down again at his small hands, his trembling fingers. Why? Why here? Why this body?
His throat clenched. He clenched his fists. His family… his real body… his life—they were out there somewhere. Waiting. But how would they wait? Days? Weeks? Years?
Tears burned the corners of his eyes but didn't fall. He wouldn't allow it. If magic was real, then maybe—just maybe—there was a way back.
And if there was a way…
He would find it.
No matter the cost.
---
◇◇◇
The village was simple but alive.
Wooden huts with arched roofs lined the edges of the clearing. Smoke curled lazily from chimneys, and strange creatures—half-goat, half-ostrich—grazed on blue-tinged grass nearby. Colorful flags fluttered on poles that shimmered with glyphs glowing faintly under the sun.
They had taken him in cautiously, the two robed adults escorting him to the nearest elder—an old man with bark-like skin and eyes like molten amber. The elder muttered something, placed a glowing hand on Calem's forehead, and nodded.
He was no threat.
But he was not understood either.
Over the next days—weeks, maybe—he was given a place to sleep in a stone hut near the back of the village. A kind woman, round-faced with copper-colored hair, brought him food and clothes and tried speaking slowly, gently. He listened. Watched. Memorized. Every symbol she traced in the dirt, every word she repeated, became a seed of understanding.
His first breakthrough came with a symbol scratched on a flat stone:
🜂
She pointed to fire, then the symbol. Again. And again.
Fire.
Then another:
🜄
She poured water from a jug and pointed again.
Water.
Bit by bit, a primitive understanding formed.
He organized his thoughts using what he knew from Earth: pattern recognition, root phonemes, structure analysis. If magic could be learned, then so could this language.
He practiced at night under the stars, muttering to himself, drawing symbols in the dirt with trembling fingers.
And always, he listened. Even when others ignored him, even when the villagers spoke behind his back in hushed tones, he listened. He had to.
Because knowledge wasn't a luxury—it was survival.
---
◇◇◇
Magic, as he came to observe, wasn't some chaotic force flung from instinct or emotion. It was a science. A structure. Glyphs were drawn in air or ink, and their precision dictated their effect. Energy—or Essentia, as he began to understand—flowed from within the caster and into the pattern, triggering reactions depending on alignment, intent, and shape.
He watched as one of the village initiates, a girl with pale blue eyes and braided silver hair, drew a circle with her finger in the air. The glow remained suspended, then spread outward like ink in water. Moments later, a gust of wind blew across the training yard, scattering petals.
The elder overseeing her nodded.
Attainment.
That word was spoken reverently, always in the context of learning and rank. The villagers had levels—ranks of magical understanding—that granted new capabilities. Magic wasn't binary. It was a ladder, and each rung required not just energy, but comprehension.
Attaining magic was not merely casting spells—it was internalizing the truths behind them.
Calem didn't know what levels there were, or how far they stretched. But he saw the hunger in the eyes of the initiates. The older children trained for hours, meditating under moonlight, inscribing glyphs with trembling hands while their Essentia slowly grew.
And then there were the Archmages. A word that came whispered in firelit stories.
They were beings of incomprehensible power. Said to bend time, space, life, and even memory. Some believed Archmages had transcended death. Others believed they no longer walked this world.
But no one knew how to become one.
What if reaching that level could send me home?
The thought clung to him.
If Archmages had the power to reshape reality, then perhaps they also had the power to break through dimensions. If there was a path, no matter how distant, he had to find it.
---
◇◇◇
Weeks passed. His speech improved, slowly, unevenly. Simple words became basic sentences. The kind woman—Anla, he now knew—smiled when he correctly named objects or asked questions. The villagers were surprised at how quickly he adapted, unaware that behind his childish face was the soul of a full-grown man armed with desperation.
One night, as the stars wheeled overhead in patterns he had never seen before, Calem sat beneath the massive oak at the edge of the forest, a burning twig in his hand. He traced a symbol in the dirt:
🜁
The glyph for air.
He whispered the word he had learned: "Zeyru."
Nothing happened.
Again.
Again.
His voice steadied. His eyes focused.
"Zeyru."
The symbol glowed faintly—just for a second—and then fizzled.
But it had glowed.
He laughed—a soft, breathless sound. The spark was tiny, but it meant something. It meant he could cast. He could learn. He could rise.
The stars above spun slowly, indifferent to his joy. But Calem didn't care.
He was still far from understanding this world. Still far from home.
But now, for the first time, he wasn't lost.
He had taken the first step.
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