The sky was as blue as the eyes focused on me. Purple hair flowed in the wind down to the man’s waist. There was a giant and extravagant entryway to a castle bigger than the royal one. All around were several buildings, prestige and power emanating from every brick. I hesitated, glancing around. What…?

Something caught in my throat, and I started coughing. Wet warmth dripped down into my hands. Gross. I tried swallowing, but I couldn’t.

Coughing harder, I heard someone yelling out. Jesus, I was coughing really hard, wasn’t I?

…

I stared down at the blood on my hands. Didn’t I just wake up? How was I already at the Academy?

The world blurred around me. The scenery was oddly familiar.

The dungeon under the Academy was cool and ominous. A breeze seemed to come from nowhere, and it was lit up using magelight. The darkness swarmed, yipping and baying like hounds hunting the light, waiting for their opportunity to pounce.

Aphrodite shivered, looking around at the darkness. Professor Lance didn’t look behind him, his strides long and his pace quick.

She had agreed to be used as an experiment for the rest of the year in the place of Rowan as a punishment, but she hadn’t thought it would be so intimidating.

It felt like she was being led into the depths of a maze she would never be able to escape. Aphrodite steeled herself as she stared at the back of the distant and cold Professor Lance.

Rowan had only broken the rules of the Academy because of her. Aphrodite would accept this punishment with the grace of a noble lady.

The midnight blue of the professor’s outfit matched well with his eyes, Aphrodite thought. If only she could see his eyes. Maybe if she could, she would be less intimidated by the darkness.

“In here.” Professor Lance said. His voice was emotionless, and he looked bored as he turned.

Aphrodite regretted her wish to see his gaze. It was cold, and she wondered if she would ever see daylight again.

At least she could get lost within his sapphire eyes.

“R-right, yes, Professor,” Aphrodite stammered, blushing as she walked into the room the professor had stood in front of.

It looked like a dungeon. There were chains everywhere, and carved in the center of the square room was a terrifyingly complex magic circle. Just what sort of heated and dubious experiments did the Academy allow to be used as punishments?

I blinked at the sense of deja vu. This room looked almost exactly what I’d imagined it to. The circle took up almost the entirety of the room. There was a lot more blood than I expected, though.

The tile was cold against my skin, and my entire body ached in an extremely unpleasant way. The air was cold. It smelled like blood and vomit.

Slowly, I tried pushing myself up. I couldn’t, though.

No, that wasn’t quite right. I felt like I had to wait for something.

“Get up,” An order came.

I readily pushed myself up. Looking around, the room looked like it belonged to a cultist. Blood was everywhere.

Looking at the man, deja vu slammed into me again. My own memories seemed to overlap with my imagination of the novel’s contents.

It felt like I’d only seen the man before me in a movie, instead of having spoken to and interacted with him for several months by this point. Just like what happened with Silas, I felt like I was standing in front of a movie star.

He wore the outfit all professors of the Magic Academy did. His pants were white stained red with blood, and his shirt was as well, a coat-tailed blazer the color of the midnight sky wrapped around his shoulders.

All along his fingers were various rings and Foci, and in his hand was a pale wand with a green gem implanted into it around the handle.

You look impressive, I tried to say, but I couldn’t speak. It was then I realized I wasn’t breathing, and my heart wasn’t beating.

The man who truly encapsulated everything I’d ever thought when Professor Lance was first introduced walked forward.

Unlike my imagination, his expression was soft and full of sorrow. His blue eyes had become a toxic color of green, his skin several shades paler.

The feeling of being unable to breathe made me want to thrash and writhe. I reached up, hovering my hand over my chest, but my magic just tugged, not doing anything.

I felt like I was constantly in the very first moment of choking.

“You cannot use magic, you’re dead,” Valentine de Notos said as he grew closer. Each step seemed to echo in my ears.

I reached out, and put his hand where mine was. My heart needs to beat.

Valentine’s magic reacted to my equations, and soon my lungs were forcefully breathing using his magic, heart pounding as fast as it could. It didn’t have much to work with, though.

The taste of air was sweet.

“Interesting. You should not be able to move outside of my will.”

“Did you attach my soul to my body?” I asked, ignoring Valentine’s jolt backward, taking a step forward to continue breathing. To keep my heart beating.

If I could still think, could I still bring myself back to life? I mean the only reason we couldn’t bring people back on Earth was because their brain refused to work, right? I could think just fine.

“Y-you,” Valentine sounded like he just lost twenty years to his life, “Corpses aren’t able to speak.”

“Cool. Are you the only one who knew I died?” I wondered, “How much magic do you have?”

I didn’t have enough magic to heal myself, but Valentine de Notos certainly did.

“Is my soul still attached to this body? Like, if I heal this body until it’s alive again, will I go back into it?”

Valentine looked faint, “Your heart is already beating again.”

“Yeah. If I release your magic it won’t,” I agreed, reaching up with my free hand to wipe the dried blood and vomit from my mouth, “Anyway, I’m very glad I went to college. Circles are my nemesis, but I know quite a lot about them. Equally, I had an interest in how the human body works, so as long as you can ensure my soul won’t be like, detached, I can probably bring myself back to life.”

I mean I was able to bring Kairos to life, right?

A haze filled my mind at how unrealistic that was, but Valentine’s magic was wrapped around me, protecting me from the haze that haunted my first days here.

“I can ensure you can control the body,” Valentine mentioned with a sigh, “But your soul is rejecting the body you’re in.”

I hummed, “That’s probably a giant magic drain on you, then, if you have to constantly prevent my soul from, what, killing Persephone?”

Valentine stared at me for a long time, and I stared back at him. My mind was empty of disbelief thanks to him. I suspended all doubts I had, because I was dead. If I didn’t succeed in fixing whatever went wrong, then…

“Everyone with the ability to see souls would see that you do not belong in the body,” Valentine mused.

I sighed, annoyed, “Are you going to answer my questions, or do you just want to grope me in your sex dungeon for a few hours first?”

Valentine didn’t react as I expected him to, or react at all, “Do you truly believe you can bring her back to life?”

“Well she’ll be brain-dead,” I muttered, “But yeah, everything else is stuff I’m already doing. I just gotta convert fat and muscle stores into blood so that oxygen can reach my brain. Once that happens,” I hesitated, thinking, “I’ll either pass out, or I’ll need to shock the body with electricity.”

Eventually that would work, right?

Earth doctors were quite spectacular, but they didn’t have literal magic. It wasn’t like there was a precedent for bringing a thinking corpse that could move back to life.

“Use this magic circle, then,” Valentine mused, the spell carefully switching to the one he wanted me to use, “It is a much better healing spell.”

I stared at it for a long time, memorizing the complex lines. Then I started doing the equation.

“I’m just going to assume you have the magic,” I muttered, “If you don’t, tell me.”

So the one that brought Kairos back to life was five feet. That means that to bring someone literally dead back to life, I would have to, what, do ten feet?

…

Hm…

Well. Hopefully Valentine had the magic.

“Twelve times ten, one-twenty,” I muttered, starting the calculations.

I listed everything off in my mind that I knew of circles. From the degrees within a circle to the circumference all the way down to how many inch-long circles would fit within the 120 inch diameter cast.

“This will exhaust me,” Valentine murmured after I stopped speaking aloud, “If it doesn’t work—“

“Negativity breeds failure,” I interrupted, thinking aloud again so he didn’t interrupt, “What do I know of the human body? There are many different intricate systems, from the nervous system to the cardiovascular system to the respiratory system and probably others. How it works…”

“The human body gathers energy from eating and drinking, the purest form of energy being the sun. The sun gave life to all the small things that bigger things feasted on. The most energy consuming and the most energy wasting species is carnivores, with humans somewhere in between.”

Not useful, but a thing that might help the magic.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

“It breaks down that energy and sends it to all parts of the body through the use of the blood vessels. I’m pretty sure. The blood vessels carry everything that need to be carried throughout the body, from energy to oxygen. Blood flows due to the heart, and it gains its oxygen through the lungs. The lungs have fibers in them that gather the oxygen and other airs and converts them into carbon dioxide, or CO2, which consists of one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms, and other useless things and breathes it out. That carbon and those other atoms can be converted into energy with which the body can use to further be healed, however, which magic can do…”

I hummed, shaking my head.

“Regardless, the most important part of this whole system is the brain, which connects to all the nerves in the body. All of the nerves in the body, send signals to the brain, and the brain processes these signals and sends out commands, some automatic and some manual, which cause everything I just said before. So the brain needs oxygen and water to survive, and it uses electricity to form connections within the brain. Those connections are vital to a functioning human being, specifically in the area around the cortex, or the part of the brain in the central area near the spine. So the purpose of this spell is to reapply all of these functions until the body is able to complete the functions on their own. The diameter of the circle is one hundred and twenty inches, the radius is sixty, the circumference of the circle is three hundred and seventy-six point eight, the.”

I took a breath, having run out of air.

“Area is 45,216 inches squared. A circle as seen through angles is 360 degrees, and…”

I continued muttering to myself for what felt like hours, Valentine’s eyes focused as he listened to what I was saying.

Then I had nothing more to say.

“Okay. Heal,” I muttered.

Magic poured into me. I kept all of the knowledge at the forefront of my mind as best I could, my every nerve screaming at me. Everything suddenly hurt, and I felt like writhing. My hands were shaking, both of them holding Valentine’s wrist.

The magic circle was bigger than the room. The world went dark after what felt like an eternity spent in torturous pain.

“I am glad it is I who was sent to retrieve you,” A vaguely familiar voice murmured.

I groaned, curling up further in the cold pile of blood and bile.

“… She died,” The familiar voice said.

“Shut up,” I managed, holding my head, “Ugh, fuck. Where’s Valentine?”

“Unconscious next to you,” The man mentioned.

I hesitated, “Wait, what?” I got up, looking around.

The room was dark, a single lantern lighting things up. A man in a servant’s suit stood at the door, the flames reflecting off of glasses. I blinked, rubbing at my dress then at my eyes.

Then I looked up again, and around. I breathed in, and it… didn’t feel fake. My entire body suddenly jerked at the foreign feeling of not being the body I expected it to be, and I started choking and gagging, nothing escaping my lips. My entire body trembled.

“Ugh, fuck,” I collapsed back down, “Say he’s trying to heal my soul. That a small part of it broke off or whatever. Make something reasonable up. No disturbance for… fuck, I don’t know. However long mana exhaustion knocks powerful people out for.”

“… Of course,” Kairos agreed, hesitating, “May I know what happened?”

I laughed, “Fuck, man, I don’t know. The last thing I remember is Silas and Val leaving. Then I was standing in front of Val and dying or whatever.”

“You knew he was Valentine before he healed you?”

“Uhhh yeah. Remember when I called him Val at our first meeting? That was blackmail, so I wouldn’t get ousted and killed,” I muttered, curling up as I shook.

My body felt foreign. My limbs started flailing out.

“B-best leave now,” I managed before I started gagging on the feeling of a tongue not my own.

I struggled for hours, barely managing to drag myself away from Valentine so I didn’t hurt him in my struggles.

The body was foreign to me in a manner that my entire being hated. It was getting harder and harder to breathe.

My solace only came after Valentine woke up, a cold feeling washing over me as his hands shoved my shoulders down.

I stared up at him, both of us panting.

…

Not even some gods could revive a person. Valentine and I just did something some thought of as impossible.

Something twisted in my stomach. I found myself laughing.

“What’s funny?” Valentine breathed, clearly exhausted.

“S-s-sorry,” I managed, wanting to explain, “G-g-g-god—“ I couldn’t breath with how hard I was laughing, tears streaming down my face as I grinned, “Some gods can’t—“ I gasped for air, “Agh.”

I giggled at the noise I made.

“Is this the… death kemkals that you mentioned?” Valentine wondered.

I couldn’t stop laughing to explain, “I’m alive. Y-y-you’re,” I kept laughing.

Valentine could now claim he was so good at necromancy that it could now be called late healing. I giggled at my own joke.

Eventually I calmed down, giggles still occasionally happening.

“Have the chemicals run out?” Valentine asked, causing me to giggle as I recalled the joke I made.

“N-no,—I mean maybe—but I’m laughing because—“ I giggled, “L-late h—“ I broke down again, gasping for air, “In my world, there’s a—oh my god, I can’t breathe, it’s not that funny.“

I took a moment to calm myself down, body still shaking with laughter, voice trembling with mirth, “There’s a joke, that necromancy is just late healing. Agh. What you did is beyond what some gods are capable of, s-so... Fuck, finally, I got it out.”

I was able to breathe after what I was laughing about was said aloud. Valentine met my gaze. It was too much, we both broke down. We started laughing, him collapsing on me as we both died of laughter.

Our arms were wrapped around each other, and every time we glanced at each other we started laughing again.

Eventually we were able to calm down, our giddiness not at all failing. I stared up at the ceiling, still grinning.

“My existence hurts.”

“Yes, mine as well,” Valentine agreed.

I sighed out, both of us taking a long time to recover. Soon enough, I was sitting up. The moment I tried, my arms gave out, though, and Valentine had to reach out as I started seizing again.

That erased my mirth. My sigh was much wearier.

“So what happened?”

“Your soul rejects the body you’re in,” Valentine explained, sitting up and staring at me. His shirt was red, blazer looking black.

“Okay, that tells me nothing,” I muttered, sitting up.

I got scared when Valentine’s hand tried leaving. I reached out, holding his hand with both of mine. I stared into his blue gaze, the necromantic energy around him fading now that he was no longer actively using necrotic magic.

“Don’t let go,” I begged. I was surprised, feeling my face burn as I looked down, “I-I mean…”

I couldn’t let go of his hand, though, my hands shaking like a chihuahua who had seen war. I took deep breaths, trying to calm myself down.

The feeling of the stone beneath me and of the cold blood and vomit soaking into my clothes and the dress beneath it came to mind. More than ever before, I could feel just how real this was.

I was holding a stranger’s hand in some dark basement, surrounded by another woman’s blood. I was in her body. My entire body shivered.

Swallowing thickly, I felt along my new body. It wasn’t someone else’s. It was just… mine. Mine. It was a body given to me by some god. Yeah. And no one resided in it before.

So the aching toes and feet that felt broken and the legs that were bruised and bleeding were mine. The knees that were hardly functional due to my wild flailing. The thighs. The…

I brought Valentine’s hand to my forehead, still shivering. The in between. It was mine. The waist. The hips, the ass. The aching stomach and back. The spine that smarted with every minuscule movement. The shoulders. My biceps and triceps. Elbows. Forearms. Wrists. Fingers. Neck. Head. Chin. Lips. Teeth. Tongue. Throat. Nose. Lungs. Eyes. Brain. Hair.

It was mine. It wasn’t someone else’s. It was mine. I swallowed, and the foreign movements of my throat felt slightly less foreign.

Closing my eyes, I imagined a skeleton with blazing purple eyes telling me in a raspy voice that he’d created the body for me.

Slowly, carefully, I managed to release Valentine’s hand. Then I stood up, reaching out and pulling him to his feet by his hand. And I held his hand. Not because I was afraid, but because it felt nice.

“So, uh, what-what does that mean?” I asked, “The, uh, soul-thing.”

“It means you are panicking because you’re not in your own body,” Valentine explained further, voice quiet, “And by doing so, cut your connection with it. Due to how well your soul fits into the body, however, it acted as if its original soul was being torn from it. When I was observing your soul, it must have slowed down the process. So by leaving, that would have allowed it time to decay to the point your soul tried tearing itself from your body.”

I thought through what he was saying. So it wasn’t like an organ rejecting the body. It was like a person dying because of a series of body-dysmorphia related panic attacks that over-stressed the body and caused it to give out.

Essentially I, the soul and the memories of me, needed to accept the body. The body already accepted me as its.

Does therapy even exist in this world?

What the hell was I supposed to do with that?

Oh god. This world. Fuck, that was… that was… I was in another world.

I was in another world. I was—I was repeating myself. But I was in another world! … No. No, wait, I was in a world with gods and magic and terrifying Fae. And the apocalypse was coming.

Fuck me. What—I mean, sure, I asked to be transmigrated as much as any other trashy fantasy romance reader, but here?

“Ah, fuck,” I muttered, “I think my world spoiled me.”

“How so?” Valentine wondered.

“Because it was safe,” I sighed, looking at the ground, still avoiding looking at him, “Or, well, not safe, but everything was a known factor. Except weird shit like religion and the occult. This world has a bunch of unknowns and is dangerous no matter where you go.”

This was weird. Being in a new body I could maybe accept, but… I was standing in front of the Valentine de Notos.

“Are you afraid?” Valentine de Notos asked me.

What a totally bewildering concept.

I thought about his question, staring at the red, black, and light browns of his pants. Staring at my hand, still holding his. Staring at the carved magical circle in the ground.

Was I?

How many powerful people were there whose death I’ve read about? There were hundreds of characters written about, and fifty of those had on-page deaths. None of them died peacefully.

I took a deep breath, sighing it out. It wasn’t a question I should think about.

“There’s no point in thinking about it. It’s not like I can go back to my world, if I would even want to. All I can hope for is to accomplish my goal. Then maybe get out of dodge,” I said, more to myself than him as I looked up. My stomach twisted.

He saved my life. He saved my life. He saved my life. He…

I repeated the thought on repeat as I met his blue gaze, holding his hand in both of mine, all three hovering in front of my lips.

He saved my life.

“Get out of dodge?” He asked.

“Yes, it means leave,” I agreed, glancing down at myself, “Speaking of, we’re both covered in blood and vomit.”

“Yes, I had noticed,” Valentine said, “Shall we go get ourselves cleaned up?”

I hummed, thinking. I kind of wanted a fuck ton of water to pour over my head and erase everything in my nose and mouth.

I dreamed of it, closing my eyes and imagining the thing I missed most.

A shower.

How wonderful. It would be simple. There would be a square within a cube, and warm water would come out. It could be carved everywhere. It would be so nice. The equation would be easy, too. The fire would be a 2x2x2 inch cube, the water would be a 4x4 inch square. Eight and sixteen, easy—

Sploosh!

“Pfft,” I spit out, dropping Valentine’s hand as warm water tried drowning me. I coughed and spluttered. Then I did it again, rubbing at my face.

Valentine stepped closer, but I just doubled the values. Sixteen and Thirty-two. Soon we were both scrubbing at ourselves, the warm water very nice.

I blew water out of my nose and swished it around in my mouth. My hands reached up, and I scrubbed at my hair until I felt clean enough, increasing the fire’s value a few times until it was 27 inches cubed to the water’s 32 inches squared.

I stepped out of the shower, waiting for Valentine to finish. He spent a long time relishing the shower before stepping out. The magic circle vanished when he did.

His magic reached out. Both he and I were dried.

“That was nice,” I sighed out.

I was feeling so much better now that I’d taken a shower for the first time in several months. Baths just never felt as clean. They weren’t as satisfying. The cold of the room didn’t affect me much more than it had previously.

“That was wonderful,” Valentine agreed, “Could you give me the spell for that?”

“Absolutely,” I vehemently agreed, “Showers are the best.”

I was looking at the ground, carefully stepping into the dried blood to avoid the puddles of vomit and other weird substances I didn’t quite want to know the contents of.

Walking out of the room, I saw Kairos standing there with a few others.