Chapter 10

Archaic.

Emergent.

The remnants of power still lingered in my thoughts, echoes of what had transpired. A shift, undeniable and irreversible. And now, I woke to something new.

I woke up on the floor. The cold, hard stone of the first floor, to be precise. Two empty bottles of brandy lay beside me like fallen comrades, silent witnesses to a campaign fought and lost. My head throbbed with the kind of pain that suggested I had not only offended common sense but waged an all-out war against good decisions—and lost spectacularly. Not just in magic, but in life choices across the board.

I groaned, pushing myself up. My limbs protested. My brain protested louder. The shifting mark on my left palm pulsed—faint but present. A reminder. A problem for another time.

I sat up, trying to steady my bearings. Pesky hangover. I needed my faculties in perfect condition—or at least functional enough to get back on my feet, make it to the fifth floor, and figure out my next move. My head throbbed in protest. Groggily, I got up. Then suddenly, I remembered the experience of the probing and the branding. My teeth chattered from terror. I bit down, bile rising from my stomach. I almost hurled. Hands on my knees, I closed my eyes tightly, trying to forget—but really, I couldn't. Taking several deep breaths, I made my way back to the library archive.

Sitting down at the long table, I frowned. My spells. I had used a cleansing spell before, and it had worked fine. I had even prided myself on my efficiency in dealing with consequences of my own reckless indulgence. So why now, when I reached for another spell to dull this splitting headache, did nothing happen? The magic was there—I could feel it—but it slipped through my grasp like sand through my fingers.

I tried again. Reached for the arcane, reached out, imposed my will—yet the response was sluggish, distant. Like grasping at an echo of a spell long past, buried beneath layers of dust and disuse. It slipped just beyond my grasp, elusive and indifferent. Not a flicker. Not a spark. Not even the barest ember of warmth, as if fire itself had become an outdated concept and I was the last fool still believing in it.

This was bad. A slow, creeping realization, settling like a lead weight in my gut. I wasn't just cut off from my usual magic—I was untethered from the very framework I had always known. Like realizing the ground beneath me wasn't as solid as I had believed. A mistake. A fundamental miscalculation. A blunder of such magnitude that even my past self, the one who had made countless questionable decisions, would have winced in sympathy. Somewhere out there, past-me was shaking his head, muttering, "Oh, you absolute idiot."

I staggered to my feet, rubbing my temples. The room felt... different. Not just the room—everything felt different. Not just because of the bottles or the vague sense of existential dread that had been following me since yesterday. No, something else had changed.

Something fundamental.

Magic, as I had always known it, had rules. Structure. It required a foundation—symbols of power meticulously woven into circles of precision, incantations that shaped intent into reality, enchantments bound by the weight of tradition. Every spell was a delicate formula, an intricate dance between knowledge and will. A single mistake—an errant stroke in a rune, an offbeat syllable—could lead to failure. Or, if one were particularly unlucky, a grand and unforgettable disaster of arcane proportions.

But now? The system I had relied on was gone. Poof. Just like that.

I reached in. Not outward to command, but inward—toward the power now settled within me. My fingers brushed against a massive, unseen force, something vast yet contained, pressing against reality itself, a ripple in existence. The sensation was foreign—unlike anything I had encountered before. This wasn't the structured magic I had known, bound by symbols and incantations. This was something older, raw, unshaped. It had been waiting, watching. It pulsed ever so slightly, like a heartbeat just beyond perception, shifting with my intent but resisting full control.

The Nexus.

That was the difference. The shift I had felt. Not just a change in magic, but in the very foundation of how I interacted with it. It wasn't simply gone—it had changed. Rewritten itself into something new, something I hadn't yet learned to navigate.

I exhaled sharply. Just a brush against that power, and reality had... shivered. Only for a moment. But I had felt it.

That was definitely not good.

Emergent.

My magic had followed rules. This thing—it didn't seem to care about rules.

"Oh, that's never a good sign."

I was going to need another drink. Possibly several. And a moment to sit down—preferably somewhere that didn't feel like reality itself was on the verge of filing a complaint against me.