Consciousness returned slowly, like mana trickling back after complete exhaustion. Merlin's first thought was that something felt... off.

  Different.

  Wrong.

  His second thought was that he couldn't open his eyes.

  Strange. Very strange. The last thing he remembered was the ritual circle, the demon summoner's lair, the reversed flow of mana. Had something gone wrong? Had he been captured?

  Merlin tried to move his hands to his face, to check if something was binding his eyes shut. Nothing happened. His arms remained still, though he could feel them resting against something soft. Very soft, actually. Softer than anything he'd felt before, even in the finest inns of the Crystal Cities.

  Come on, body. Wake up!

  But his body refused to respond. He could feel it—a young, strong form without the familiar aches of his centuries-old joints—but he couldn't control it. Like being trapped in a flesh prison.

  Alright, old friend, he thought to himself, let's try the basics.

  Merlin gathered his mana, preparing to cast [Refresh Mind], the simple cantrip he'd used countless times to clear away grogginess. It was such a basic spell he could cast it in his sleep.

  Nothing happened.

  No familiar surge of mana. No tingling sensation of magic flowing through his pathways. Nothing.

  What in the abyss?

  He tried again, pushing harder, focusing his will with the precision that had made him an archmage.

  Still nothing.

  A tendril of panic began to curl around his thoughts. Merlin forced it down, drawing on centuries of experience. He'd been in worse situations. Probably. He just needed to think clearly.

  Time for something stronger.

  [Unveil World] was a mid-tier divination spell, one he'd developed himself for situations exactly like this. It would show him everything within a hundred-foot radius, regardless of physical barriers or magical concealment.

  He gathered his power, shaped the spell matrix in his mind, and...

  Nothing. Not even a whisper of magical energy.

  Like the time Castusas caught me in that nullification field in the Greentooth mountains. Except worse. Much worse.

  Merlin rapidly cycled through half a dozen basic spells: [Light], [Detect Magic], [Shield], [Force Push], [Mage Hand], [Arcane Sight]. Spells so fundamental to his existence that casting them was as natural as breathing.

  Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

  The panic was getting harder to suppress.

  Alright, let's do this properly. He focused his thoughts and spoke the command that had been part of his life for centuries:

  "Status."

  He waited for the familiar blue screen to appear, showing his stats, skills, and status effects. It had never failed him before, not even in the nullification field.

  Nothing appeared.

  "Status!"

  Silence.

  "IDENTIFY! SPELL TREE! SKILLS!"

  The void where his system interface should be felt like a missing limb. Wrong. Impossible.

  Before the panic could fully take hold, something new happened. Thoughts that weren't his own began drifting through his consciousness:

  ...mmmm five more minutes...

  ...so comfy...

  ...stupid morning wood...

  The foreign thoughts were hazy, dreamlike, as if whoever was thinking them was only half awake. Merlin tried to focus on them, to understand what was happening, but they slipped through his grasp like water.

  Then the body he inhabited began to move on its own.

  He felt muscles stretch, felt lungs draw in a deep breath, felt the shift of weight as the body sat up. All without his input or control.

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  ...need to pee...

  ...meeting at nine...

  ...should text Sarah back...

  The thoughts were becoming clearer now, more coherent. They belonged to someone else. Someone young. Male. Someone whose body Merlin now apparently shared.

  The eyes finally opened, and Merlin's world exploded with visual information. He was in a small room, but unlike any room he'd ever seen. The walls were perfectly smooth, painted in a soft gray color. The floor was covered entirely in some kind of soft material—not a rug, but something similar. Strange objects cluttered a desk: a thin black rectangle, some kind of crystal or glass screen, various items he couldn't begin to identify.

  The body stood, stretching again, and Merlin felt every movement as if it were his own. Except it wasn't. He was just along for the ride, a passenger in someone else's carriage.

  By all the gods, what happened to me?

  The body—his host—walked toward another room, and Merlin's confusion only grew. Everything was wrong. The construction methods, the materials, the level of craftsmanship... none of it matched anything in his experience. The doors fit their frames with impossible precision. Light came from glass bulbs that contained no flame. The air was perfectly temperature-controlled, neither too hot nor too cold.

  Then they entered what appeared to be some kind of washing room, and Merlin's mind nearly broke.

  A massive mirror covered almost an entire wall, its surface clearer than any he'd ever seen. In it, he saw his host for the first time: a young man, perhaps twenty-five years old, with short brown hair and sleepy green eyes. He wore strange, soft clothing—some kind of sleeping garment, Merlin assumed.

  The young man reached toward a silver protrusion mounted over a white bowl, and with a simple twist of his hand, water began flowing as if by magic. Clean, clear water, appearing on command.

  Impossible, Merlin thought. Such a simple movement, yet it summons water more efficiently than any [Water Creation] spell I've ever seen. What manner of enchantment is this?

  His host splashed water on his face, and Merlin felt the cool sensation against their shared skin. Then the young man dried himself with the softest towel Merlin had ever experienced, the material strange and wonderfully absorbent.

  Everything here spoke of incredible wealth and power, yet it all seemed... mundane. As if these miraculous conveniences were everyday occurrences.

  Where am I? What realm is this? And how in the name of all that's arcane did that ritual circle send me here?

  As his host moved through his morning routine, Merlin's mind raced with questions. He needed answers. He needed to communicate with this young man whose body he now shared. He needed to understand this strange new world he found himself in.

  But most of all, he needed to figure out how to get back to his own world, his own body, his own life. His friends were still fighting that demon summoner, and here he was, trapped in another realm, in another body, without his magic or his system.

  Well, he thought as his host began to relieve himself, at least the equipment is familiar, even if I'm not the one operating it anymore.

  Sometimes you had to find humor where you could, even if you were an ancient archmage trapped in a young man's body in what appeared to be some kind of parallel realm of impossible wealth and convenience.

  Merlin had a feeling this was going to be a very strange adventure indeed.