My first sensation wasn't a thought. It was the taste of copper and the smell of decomposing organic matter.

  I tried to inhale, but my lungs felt like they were filled with lead. My chest spasmed, and I rolled over, my cheek dragging against a cold, gritty floor. I wanted to ask where I was, but my vocal cords only managed a wet, pathetic wheeze.

  Then the "Inertia" hit.

  It wasn't a vision. It was a violent surge of data—sensory files being forced into a drive that wasn't partitioned for them.

  The smell of cheap ink. The weight of a heavy iron key in a pocket. The stinging shame of a father’s disappointed gaze. The name—Aris. Aris. Aris.

  I curled into a fetal position, my fingers clawing at the wooden floorboards. My modern mind—the part of me that understood the speed of light and the structure of an atom—was being drowned by the mundane, terrified memories of a boy who had spent his life hiding behind paper because he couldn't handle the "mana" everyone else seemed to possess.

  "Stop," I whimpered, the word muffled by the floor. "Stop it."

  The memories flickered like a dying film reel:

  A stone library. The village of Oakhaven. The crushing silence of a life spent alone. The terror of the 'Awakening' ceremony where his mana circuits remained dark as charcoal.

  I laid there for what felt like hours, my body trembling in a cold sweat. Every time I tried to think about my life—the lab, the textbooks, the cold logic of a world governed by equations—it collided with Aris’s memories of "the Goddess’s breath" and "spirit-whispers."

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  It was a cognitive dissonance so sharp it felt like a migraine.

  Slowly, the trembling subsided. The two lives didn't merge; they just... settled. Like oil and water in a beaker, separate but occupying the same space.

  I pushed myself up onto my elbows. My vision was blurry, but the analytical part of my brain was already instinctively scanning for data points to stabilize my breathing.

  Light source: Apertures in the stone walls. Estimated angle: 35 degrees. Time: Mid-morning. Atmospheric conditions: High particulate matter (dust). Temperature: Approximately 12°C. Low thermal retention in the building.

  I looked at my hands. They were pale, thin, and shaking. Aris’s hands.

  "I’m in a library," I whispered. My voice sounded higher than I expected, cracked and dry.

  I looked around the room. It was a disaster. Thousands of books were piled haphazardly on rotting shelves. Some were open on the floor, their pages yellowed and curling from the humidity. To Aris, this was a graveyard of useless lore.

  To me... my eyes landed on a massive stone fireplace in the corner.

  There was a "Heat Stone" sitting in the hearth. It was a dull, pulsing orange, supposed to keep the room warm. But the room was freezing. My skin was pebbled with goosebumps.

  I stared at it, and for the first time since waking up, the "Librarian" memories and the "Physicist" logic clicked together.

  Aris’s memory told me: The stone is dim because the Goddess is displeased with my lack of faith.

  My brain told me: The stone is dim because it’s placed on a damp stone floor that’s acting as a massive heat sink, drawing the thermal energy away before it can even begin to radiate.

  I let out a shaky, hysterical laugh that turned into a cough.

  "Idiots," I rasped, rubbing my aching temples. "You’re all... literal idiots."

  The door to the library creaked open, letting in a gust of even colder air. A heavy set of boots thudded against the floor.

  "Aris? You still alive in here, you rat?"