The morning sun filtered through the stained-glass windows of the Clock Tower, spilling fractured shafts of light onto the floor like divine judgment passed through a kaleidoscope. Claudius sat alone at one of the long, oak tables of the upper library, surrounded by towers of leather-bound tomes. The scent of dust, ink, and faint mana residue clung to the air like incense in a forgotten chapel.
He wasn't reading anymore. Not truly. His eyes flicked across the page, but the words dissolved into meaningless shapes, as if the paper itself had grown tired of bearing their weight. His mind, once a disciplined fortress of logic, now pulsed with questions he couldn't categorize—questions without reference or ritual.
The scrape of a chair echoed from behind a nearby shelf.
"Claudius."
The voice was soft, but unmistakably firm—measured, like someone testing the weight of something before deciding whether to lift it or let it fall.
Claudius glanced up. Hiroyuki stood a few paces away, arms crossed over his robes, his expression unreadable. There was no visible accusation in his eyes, but there was no warmth either—only the steady regard of someone who had seen too many strange things in too short a time.
"You've been... different lately," Hiroyuki said, taking a cautious step closer. "I didn't think much of it at first. Everyone has their fluctuations. But now you don't sleep. You don't eat. You avoid conversation, and when you do speak, it's like... like someone trying to sound like you."
Claudius didn't answer immediately. His fingers lingered on the edge of the tome before him, tightening until the leather creaked.
"I see," he murmured. "You noticed."
Hiroyuki remained silent, waiting.
Claudius closed the book gently, as if afraid that any sudden movement would make the truth vanish again. He looked up, and for a moment, he didn't wear the face of a prodigy or a Mornveil. He wore the face of someone deeply, existentially tired.
"I suppose," he said, voice low, "you deserve the truth."
He leaned back in his chair, the spines of his shoulders rigid beneath his robes. "I haven't been myself. Quite literally. I don't know how else to put it. At midnight, every night, I change. Or rather—I switch."
"Switch...?" Hiroyuki's brows drew together. "With who?"
"With someone who isn't from here," Claudius said. "A stranger. A displaced soul in my body, and I in his."
The silence hung in the air for a moment, untouched.
"You're serious," Hiroyuki finally said, though he sounded as though he wished he weren't.
Hiroyuki sat down across from him, slowly, like someone unsure if the table was solid. He studied Claudius for a long moment. "And this has been happening since...?"
"The encounter," Claudius said. "The first incident. I thought it was a side effect, a hallucination. But it persisted. It became routine. A nightly transference. And the worst part? I don't know why."
Hiroyuki exhaled. "That's... incredible. Or insane. But I believe you."
Claudius blinked. "You do?"
"You're not the type to fabricate madness just to be dramatic. You hate drama. Always have."
Claudius almost laughed. "I suppose I do."
Hiroyuki leaned forward. "And you said this guy... he's searching for something?"
"The Clock Tower," Claudius confirmed. "He doesn't understand what it is. Not truly. But he's persistent."
"And you think he's dangerous?"
"I think he's desperate. Desperation leads to danger, even if unintentionally."
Hiroyuki was quiet for a beat. Then he said, "Let me help."
Claudius tilted his head, uncertain. "Why?"
"Because whatever this is, you shouldn't be handling it alone. And because if someone's walking around in your skin, asking about things that could get us both killed or worse... I'd rather be in the loop."
Claudius considered him, eyes narrowing. At last, he nodded.
"I could use an ally."
The uninevidatability of midnight struck once again.
The pendulum swung.
And the world exhaled.
Shisan gasped, the familiarity of his own form grounding him. This time, he has a clear a objective. A way to find the clock tower within the next body switch. Without a word, he slipped away from the campus, seeking the alleyway where his ordeal began.
The city, once pulsing with life, were empty. He navigated the labyrinthine streets until he found the alley—a place of shadows and secrets .The alley had not changed—still narrow, still draped in shadow, still tasting of damp stone and unseen eyes. Shisan, now back in Claudius's body, stood at its mouth like a man facing a dream that remembered him too well.
He turned around to examine his surroundings, to look for key buildings to look for when making his way back to the clock tower in his original body. The moment he stepped away, the air grew colder. Shisan turns around to look deep into the shadows of the alley. From the far end, a shape peeled itself from the darkness. Claudius. In Shisan's body.
The irony was a silent echo between them—each wearing the other's flesh, yet moving like strangers.
"Cladius," Shisan turned his full attention to the man wearing his face.
"Don't speak my name as if you know me," Claudius said coldly, stepping forward. His own voice now issued from Shisan's throat—calm, severe, but edged with taut anticipation.
Shisan's jaw tensed. "You knew I'd come back?"
"It was just a hunch but.." Claudius admitted, eyes narrowing. "When someone as desperate and hopeless as you starts grasping at straws, everything you do becomes extremely clearcut,"
Shisan didn't move. "I need answers."
"No," Claudius whispered—and lunged.
The lung seemed almost instantaneous. Claudius blurred forward, the body Shisan once called his own moving with unnatural fluidity. His reflexes were honed, his acceleration like that of a striking hawk. Within seconds, he closed the distance with terrifying speed.
Shisan's instincts screamed. He ducked the first blow—a whiplash-fast elbow meant to daze—and pivoted, narrowly avoiding a sweep aimed at his legs. Claudius was relentless, not wasting energy, each movement sharp, deliberate, rehearsed.
"I see you've started taking a liking to my body" Shisan muttered, weaving beneath another kick that split the air beside his head.
"You left it well trained, a weapon perfect to kill people like you" Claudius replied, circling.
A fist came toward Shisan's throat. He caught the wrist, barely—but the sheer force behind it staggered him. It was like holding back a rolling boulder with a single rope. He stepped aside, redirecting the blow into the alley wall. Brick cracked.
"Why did you switch bodies with me?" Shisan barked, deflecting a punch and rolling back with an acrobatic grace Claudius couldn't replicate.
Claudius's eyes flared. "I should be asking you that question!"
He pressed forward again, chaining blows—one-two-palm-strike-knee—forcing Shisan into a defensive rhythm. Each impact jarred his bones, each dodge cost him breath. The alley felt smaller with every exchange, their footsteps ringing like bells of judgment.
"You'd risk destroying your own body just to hide the clock tower?!" Shisan hissed, parrying high and rolling into a slide that took him beneath a spinning kick.
"You're not supposed to exist here!" Claudius shouted. "I don't even know what you are. An interloper, a distortion—whatever you are, you threaten everything."
A crescent strike grazed Shisan's jaw. He staggered. His blood—Claudius's blood—sang with pain.
"I don't want the Clock Tower," Shisan snarled. "I want to go home."
Another strike—Shisan caught it. Twisted it using Claudius's momentum. A joint lock snapped into place, and with a grunt, he threw Claudius off balance.
Claudius recovered mid-fall, rolling and rising again like a phantom.
They clashed once more. Fist met palm. Knee met shin. Shoulder met rib.
Claudius was faster.
Shisan was wiser.
He let Claudius overextend—baited an upward kick, sidestepped it, and slammed an elbow into the side of Claudius's head. It wasn't enough to drop him—but it created an opening.
With a pivot, a sweep, and a brutal takedown, Shisan drove Claudius into the alley floor.
Dust rose. A knee drove into Claudius's spine.
Shisan wrapped an arm under Claudius's chin.
A clean chokehold.
"End it," Claudius rasped.
"I'm not here to end anything," Shisan panted. "I'm here for the truth."
Claudius writhed—but the angle was perfect. Shisan's body bucked against itself, muscles rebelling as Claudius tried to power out, but technique prevailed. The air fled from Claudius's lungs.
"Don't make me do this, talk Claudius," Shisan growled.
Silence.
Shisan tightened the hold. "You'd rather lose consciousness than give up the Clock Tower's location?"
Claudius's reply was strained, pained. "Yes."
"You're insane."
Claudius's laugh was hollow. "I'm a magus."
Shisan loosened the grip—just enough.
"I don't want your tower," he said, voice low. "I don't want to hurt anyone. I just want to go home."
Claudius coughed, turning his head just enough to look at him—eyes narrowed, defiant. "Liar."
"Why would I lie?" Shisan snapped. "I don't even know where I am."
The alley fell still again. Only their breath moved the night.
Shisan released the hold and stepped back. Claudius sat up slowly, rubbing his throat, watching the other with a mixture of suspicion and something else—conflict.
"I don't want your secrets," Shisan said again, his voice quieter now, stripped of defiance. "This battle is the last thing I would want."
Claudius stared at him—really stared. In the stillness of the alley, with blood on his lip and pain tightening his shoulders, something flickered behind his eyes. Suspicion, yes. But something else too—something tired. Something uncertain.
"You expect me to believe that?" he said at last, voice hoarse. "You expect me to take your word, when everything about this screams sabotage?"
Shisan met his gaze. "I don't expect anything. I'm asking."
Claudius's jaw tightened.
"And you," he said bitterly, "if our places were reversed—would you believe me?"
Shisan didn't answer right away. His eyes dropped to the ground between them, to the broken rhythm of footprints scattered across the rain-dark stone. Water trickled through a nearby gutter, its sound suddenly deafening in the silence.
"I don't know," he admitted. "Maybe not. But I'm not you."
Claudius blinked, caught off guard by the honesty. Shisan lifted his head again.
"I woke up drowning in a place I didn't recognize. I walked through a world that looked like something drawn from memory but distorted. Everyone looked at me like I didn't belong. And they were right."
His voice wavered slightly, but he pressed on.
"Every minute in this body feels like trying to breathe through glass. Your skin—it fits, but it isn't mine. And when I see my reflection, I don't recognize the person staring back. I don't know how I ended up here. I don't know why this happened."
He stepped closer. Not in challenge—but in honesty.
"But I do know that I'm alone. I know that something bigger than us is pulling the strings. And I know that if I don't find answers, I may never get back."
Claudius didn't speak. His expression had closed in on itself—lips a thin line, eyes unreadable.
"I don't care about your tower," Shisan whispered. "Or your secrets. I'm not your enemy. I just want to go home."
The words hung in the air like incense in a crypt.
Claudius exhaled through his nose, the breath shaky. He looked at the body in front of him—his own, bloodied and bruised. In that moment, the idea of doing more damage to it suddenly felt... wrong.
"You talk like a soldier," Claudius murmured.
Shisan gave a hollow laugh. "I used to be one,"
For a moment, the fog of suspicion in Claudius's expression wavered. Then, without a word, he stepped back.
"Explain," he said simply.
So Shisan did.
He spoke of midnight travels with his companions. Of the pulse of the purple flame that pulled him under. Of the brief, burning panic of lungs filled with salt and the quiet horror of waking in a body that wasn't his own. Of his confusion, his flight, the lives he never lived. Of the crimson-eyed woman who so easily introduced him to the simple hierarchy of the world. Of the girl in crimson and the strike that had left him unconscious in an alley that swallowed sound.
He spoke not like a man reciting facts, but like someone recalling a dream he was afraid to wake from. There was something raw in the telling—grit and tremor, but clarity too, as if each word steadied him.
Claudius listened. Not interrupting. Not asking for proof. Just… listening. Something in him shifted. The way his shoulders sat, the way his mouth tightened and loosened. He was thinking—not with the detached precision of a magus, but with something closer to unease.
When Shisan finished, the silence stretched again. A wind slipped down the alley like a whisper.
"I didn't ask for this," Shisan said. "But I think we're both trapped in something neither of us understands."
He extended his hand.
"Help me. Not because you trust me. But because you know what it's like to lose control."
Claudius stared at the offered hand for a long moment.
Then—slowly, deliberately—he reached forward and clasped it.
The handshake was brief. Firm. Real.
Then the air shifted.
A ringing—low, sharp, and metallic—resonated in their bones, like the turning of an unseen key.
Claudius's eyes widened. "Do you feel that—?"
Before Shisan could reply, the alley dissolved.
Darkness surged around them like ink.
And both boys collapsed, unconscious, into the arms of fate.
When Shisan awoke, it was not to sunlight or storm, but to the slow, tick of a clock echoing through the room.
The air was musty with parchment and the faint sting of old ink. Bookcases loomed from every wall, rising like monoliths of forgotten lore, each shelf teeming with tomes bound in leather, sinew, and stranger materials still.
He tried to move, only to realize his limbs were bound—tied firmly to a wooden chair. Next to him, equally restrained, sat Claudius in his own body. Pale, bruised, and scowling.
And then there was the man.
He stood between them with the casual elegance of someone who owned the floorboards, the walls, the very breath in the room. Silver hair flowed down his shoulders in gentle, orderly waves, like moonlight woven into strands. His long coat shimmered subtly, shifting as if alive, its edges curling ever so slightly like burned paper caught mid-incantation.
"Awake at last," the man said with a faint smile, as though they'd all arrived fashionably late to a joke only he understood. "I do love a bit of midnight theatre."
His voice was warm and conversational—but too smooth, too deliberate. It was the kind of tone used by those who never had to raise their voice to command armies.
Shisan stiffened. The man's presence—it wasn't magical in the way Shisan understood magic. It didn't press against his skin or pull at the back of his mind. No, it seeped into the room like a dye, staining the air.
"Who are you?" Shisan asked, voice hoarse. He hated how small it sounded compared to the man's.
The man turned his head, eyes gleaming with mischief and a touch of something unfathomable. "Ah. You're the curious one. Good. Curiosity is what makes the game interesting."
He gave a shallow bow, as if mocking royalty or mimicking some long-dead etiquette.
"Call me Zelretch. Though I suspect the name means nothing to you."
It didn't. But it felt heavy, like a stone dropped into a still lake. The name rippled. Distorted.
Claudius groaned from the other chair. "Lord Zelretch? You—wait, you were watching?"
"Of course," Zelretch replied breezily, striding across the room and pouring himself a cup of tea from a steaming porcelain set. The scent of bergamot and bloodroot filled the air.
"Do you think I'd miss a chance to watch two versions of the same soul beat each other senseless in borrowed skins? Not exactly an everyday occurrence, even by my standards."
"Same soul?" Shisan and Cladius questioned at the same time.
He sipped.
"Now then," he said, eyes flitting between them like twin scalpel blades, "let's get to the part you're both desperate to hear."
He took another sip, savored it, and set the cup down with care.
"Claudius, you lost."
Claudius flinched, face tightening. "What are you talking about? I—"
"You hesitated," Zelretch cut in smoothly. "Your mind was faster, your body stronger. But you hesitated. You couldn't bring yourself to land the finishing blow. Even when you had the perfect setup, a direct confrontation with someone physically and magically less capable than you. Even when you knew what it meant for the Clock Tower."
His gaze drifted to Shisan.
"And you—you didn't win because you were stronger. You won because you were certain. Because you meant it. Every move. Every step. You were dancing with death and didn't blink."
Shisan frowned. "I didn't want to kill him."
Zelretch smiled wider. "Exactly. You cared more about his soul in your body than your own body,"
He stepped closer, bending ever so slightly to meet Shisan's eyes. His irises gleamed—not with light, but with depth, like endless tunnels twisting through glass.
"You fought not to dominate, but to survive. To understand. That, my young wanderer, is a kind of magic all its own."
Shisan swallowed. "Why are we here? Do you know why I am here?"
Zelretch clapped his hands once, delighted. "Now those are quite the demanding set of questions."
He waved a hand lazily, and the ropes around them fell away, unfastening with the sound of unraveling spider silk.
"You are here," he said, pacing again, "because I wanted to see what choice you'd make after the fighting ended."
Claudius stood slowly, rubbing his wrists. "And what did you see?"
Zelretch gave a sly smile.
"Enough to know you'll both need each other. And that you're just barely clever enough to survive what's coming."
He turned to Shisan.
"And you? You still want to go home?"
Shisan nodded, slowly. "More than anything."
"Then let's talk about how."
The room darkened—not with shadow, but with focus—as if the world itself were leaning in to listen.
And Zelretch, Lord of the Kaleidoscope, smiled like a man about to flip a coin not just through time or space—but through truth itself.