The night spiraled slowly into darkness for Joel, until sleep swept him away without warning. This time, it wasn't a life of glorious battles or elaborate strategies, but something much simpler and crueler. He was a peasant, a family man, in a forgotten village in the mountains. A man fearful of the gods and obedient to the whims of an authoritarian government that crushed any dissent. Day after day, he bowed before tax collectors, watched his neighbors punished without cause, and watched crops seized down to the last root.

  The world he knew slowly crumbled. First it was his friends, then his wife, then his children. Authority took everything, without remorse, and only when he had nothing left, when his soul was parched with pain and resentment, did he pick up a wooden weapon and join a rebellion—a rebellion that failed before it began. He was captured, tortured, and executed dishonorably. He died with his eyes open, staring bitterly at the sky, wishing he'd acted sooner, when he could still have made a difference.

  Joel woke up drenched in sweat, his heart pounding angrily. The images were still burned into his closed eyelids. A part of him knew that this bitterness was not foreign to him, that these emotions were his own as well. What if he was destined to make the same mistakes? To hesitate too long?

  A month had passed since his arrival at the Cult of the Glowing Dawn, and everything he had experienced seemed clearer every day. The explanations offered by the cultists were beginning to fit together like pieces of a puzzle: empires, sustained by immutable caste systems, control over magical knowledge, and an obsession with blood purity. As he had been taught, noble bloodlines were not only powerful by inheritance, but also because they consumed ancient secrets, purifications, and artifacts that gave them an advantage.

  Joel was introduced to the truth of how great mages become what they are through the so-called "blood potions." An extremely rare and controlled tool used to enhance the bodies of mages, raise their level, and purify the magical essence flowing within them. The principle is too strange, but basically, these potions are concocted using the blood of a magus from another world—that is, from enemy empires. An extremely complex art, known only to the right people, because when done incorrectly, it usually ends in the death of whoever drinks these potions. This perhaps explains the constant wars between empires. Why does it have to be the blood of a magus from another world?

  It all boils down to hunting great mages, at least from the perspective of those who want to level up and don't possess the necessary blood purity. To become a level 2 magus, one must consume the blood of a level 2 magus or higher, and the same applies to advancing in the future. The problem arises when reaching higher levels, from level 6 onward, as one encounters two major obstacles, often insurmountable for most. The first is a person's natural affinity, as not everyone is able to withstand the purification of their blood at such levels, ending up dead at best, or transformed into a mindless beast at worst. The second, and most important, is that it is not easy to access the blood of a level 7 magus or higher, as we are talking about the Elite of the empires, individuals capable of facing armies alone and with unquestionable political power. The only known methods of accessing the blood of a high-level mage from another empire are during great wars between worlds, or through the black market, at exorbitant prices and often without guarantee.

  Joel remembered the red liquid he had drunk after the battle. Since then, something in his mind had changed. It was as if the fog that covered his thoughts had dissipated, as if the emotions of his other lives had become clearer and more present. It unsettled him, as if an invisible barrier were breaking within him.

  That morning, Deyar called him to one of the training chambers. There, he offered him another of those reddish glass bottles.

  "You mustn't consume it now," he warned him. "Your body is still absorbing the effects of the first one. These potions should be taken at long intervals, and only when you are ready. Impatience can destroy you from within."

  Joel nodded silently. Deyar continued, observing him with a look that wasn't reproachful, but rather studious.

  "You're a rare case, Joel. You can't channel magic, but your blood has purity. That's why you respond to the potion... You're very similar to what some call a physical mage."

  "What does that mean?" Joel asked.

  "That you may be stronger, faster, and more resilient than a common mage. But you won't manipulate the elements or summon fires from your hands. However, that doesn't make you any less valuable. In real wars, physical mages can become pillars in battles and in the shadows, using their agility and strength to ambush individuals even higher in level than themselves, killing them before they can use magic. The vast majority are capable of using a rudimentary form of magic within their bodies, further enhancing their physical power... Perhaps in time, you will be able to do the same."

  Joel didn't respond. He stared at the bottle and thought of the peasant in his dream. Of his failure, his pain, and the line between acting in time... or acting too late. A line he himself, sooner or later, would have to cross.

  A few days later, Joel knew his body was ready. He could feel it: his heartbeat was steady and strong, his breathing fluid, his mind clear as water. He had understood something else about those potions: the cultists explained that they weren't created with brutal methods, like those the empires supplied to their soldiers. The Cult of the Dawn had interplanetary reach. Their networks extended across the four known worlds, and they obtained magi's blood clandestinely, negotiated, or even donated by dissidents of the empires. Joel had seen the procedure and accepted it as practical, far better than the other alternatives.

  When he finally uncorked the bottle and let the red liquid flow down his throat, he felt that inner flame again, a raw, pure energy coursing through his veins, sharpening his perception and expanding his understanding. But this time it wasn't just clarity; he also felt the weight of past emotions, the memories of other lives beginning to push forward from within, sharper, more painful. His body burned from within, not from fever, but from transformation. The blood coursing through him seemed to rewrite itself, reconfiguring every fiber and every cell.

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  Joel fell to his knees, taking a deep breath, feeling his entire being vibrate in a new rhythm. And although part of him feared change, another part—deeper and quieter—knew this was only the beginning.

  Since their arrival, Liria had been taken in as Kael's direct disciple, which meant Joel had barely seen her since. She was immersed in a new world of magical training, strategic plans, and ancient secrets. Joel didn't mind... at least he didn't openly admit it. But there were times—especially on quiet nights or between training sessions—when he found himself thinking about her. There was a strange dependence he couldn't fully understand, a need for her presence that he could only assuage by immersing himself in grueling training sessions or in the dusty books of the underground library.

  He was grateful, from the bottom of his heart, that they had taught him to read at the orphanage. Now those books were his refuge, a way to distract his increasingly confused mind. He read about magic, history, and legendary battles. But on every page, in every word, he still felt the emptiness that Liria had left, as if her absence reminded him that something inside him no longer belonged entirely to him.

  As the days passed, Joel began to notice that something inside him wasn't right, adding to the long list of things that felt different. The mental clarity he had gained with the second potion was indisputable; his mind worked like never before. He could remember details with pinpoint accuracy, understand complex texts on the first reading, anticipate the movements of his comrades in combat, and perceive changes in the environment with an ease that bordered on the supernatural. His body also responded better: faster, more resilient, and more precise.

  But there was something else, something unsettling. At first, there were small lapses, brief moments where he couldn't remember what he had said or done seconds before. Minutes that faded as if they had never existed. Sometimes he would find his gaze fixed on a spot on the wall for no reason, his body rigid, his breathing slow, as if he weren't there. When he regained consciousness, he didn't feel panic... only a strange sensation of having been someone else for a moment.

  Then came the worst. During one of those episodes, he heard himself speaking in a language he didn't recognize, in an authoritative, firm tone. And it wasn't his own voice he heard, but that of another man. A memory, or a dream life that, without explanation, had taken over his body for a few seconds.

  Confusion ate away at him. Was this part of the process of magical evolution? Was it normal for so-called "physical magicians"? Deyar hadn't told him anything like that.

  He decided to hide it, because something told him it wasn't wise to tell just anyone. He simply trained harder, read more, slept less. But the episodes became more frequent and more intense. Sometimes he woke up feeling like a different person, with thoughts that weren't his own, impulses he couldn't control.

  One night, as he walked through one of the cavern's corridors, he stopped dead in his tracks. He'd been absolutely certain he was somewhere else. For a moment, he thought he was leading a column of soldiers through a snowy gorge. He could feel the icy wind, the tension of impending combat, the orders in his tongue, the gaze of his men upon him… and then, again, the silence, the damp stone of the cult's tunnels, and his labored breathing.

  He began to feel afraid, and that fear took root deep. He spoke to no one, not even Liria. Because he didn't know if these fragments of other lives were mere residue… or if they were beginning to replace him. How long would it be before he couldn't tell them apart? How long before he stopped being Joel? It was an unanswerable question.

  But something, deep within him, whispered that this was the price of his power. That the dreams that had marked him so deeply… weren't just memories, they were doors… And he could no longer close them.

  One early morning, he was discovered muttering in an unknown dialect, his eyes glassy, ??his back tense like a bow about to break. He managed to convince the sentries it was just a nightmare, but that same night, he locked himself away and forced himself—literally pressing his fingers against his temples—to ground his consciousness to the present.

  That brutal act of will worked. His mind stopped sinking into voids; the episodes became manageable, mere flashes he could lock behind a wall of iron discipline. And in the forced calm, Joel thought, his intellect, sharpened by the potion, dissecting each symptom, cross-referencing memories and sensations.

  He came to a conclusion as elegant as it was terrifying: the lives he experienced were neither fictions nor metaphors. They were authentic memories of real people, extinct souls floating in some spiritual ocean, and he was the beach where they ran aground. Each time he lived one of those existences, he brought back a sliver of that deceased's strength, a surge of will, courage, or pain that he injected into his very being.

  That was why he ran faster, hit harder, thought more clearly than any physical mage on record. This wasn't just purified blood; he was building himself from the scraps of other people: a mosaic of spirits, a prism made of other lives. And though he could contain them, he couldn't let them go. How many more pieces could his identity hold before it splintered? Perhaps he wasn't just a physical mage; perhaps he was something that had no name in the books of the Dawn. Perhaps he was building himself from the remains of many souls, a kind of composite soul, one that continued to grow with each dream.

  Joel lived his life without problems for a while longer. His routine within the Cult of the Dawn remained stable for a few weeks: dawn training, studies in the underground library, occasional brief meetings with Deyar to check on his progress. Everything seemed to fit together with an unusual, almost artificial perfection.

  Until one morning, he woke up like any other. He got up, dressed, and walked through the stone corridors lit by floating crystals. He greeted a couple of cult apprentices who passed by, but they looked at him strangely, as if they had seen a ghost. One of them even took a step back.

  "Joel? Are you... okay?" he asked, not hiding his discomfort.

  Joel frowned. "Yes. Why wouldn't I be?"

  The apprentice didn't answer, but then another looked at him and commented, almost cautiously:

  "You disappeared for several days. They said you hit your head in training... but yesterday you were acting strange, and you were in the High Circle room. Don't you remember?"

  Joel froze; it felt as if the floor had tilted beneath his feet. His stomach sank, and his mind tried to search through recent memories... but found nothing. Nothing after the third day since the second potion, nothing since he finished reading the basic alchemy book, nothing at all.

  "What day is it today?" he asked, his voice quieter than he intended.

  "The seventeenth of the solar cycle. It's been seven days since you disappeared," the younger of the two replied.

  Joel turned around, his face white as snow. He walked with heavy, slow steps to his room, closed the door, and sat down on the bed. He rested his elbows on his knees and covered his face with his hands. He had never felt fear like this, not even on the battlefield.

  He had lost a week of his life. Not like when he dreamed entire lifetimes and woke up in his own body. No, this time, he had experienced something different. Someone inside him had used his voice, his hands, and his body. He had spoken to others, done things, and Joel remembered absolutely nothing.

  His breathing became rapid, and his heartbeat pounded in his temples. The room seemed small, insufficient. Every corner seemed to push against him, as if the air were being consumed by an invisible presence watching him from within.

  A part of him—the most logical, the coldest—tried to maintain control, to analyze. But another part—more human, more vulnerable—wanted to scream.

  Where had he been that week? What had he said? What had he done? And, most importantly: Who had he been?