The hum was the first betrayal. Not the familiar, comforting thrum of the university archives' climate control, nor the distant city symphony he usually tuned out. This was a deeper, resonant thrum, felt more in the bones than heard with the ears. It vibrated up from the cold stone floor, passing through the worn leather of his shoes to settle like a lead weight in his gut.
He'd been alone, or so he'd thought, hunched over the newly acquired piece—a fragmented basalt plinth, covered in glyphs that defied easy categorization. Early Brythonic, with unsettling, almost visceral undertones that hinted at something far older, something that writhed just beneath the surface of understanding. His specialty was the liminal spaces of history, the points of societal collapse and brutal reconstruction, the eras where old gods died and new ones were hammered into shape on the anvils of war and necessity. This artifact sang of such times.
His fingers, stained with the dust of centuries, had traced a particularly deep groove. That was when the hum had intensified, the air in the sealed restoration lab thickening, the lights flickering as if starved of power. A scent, acrid and metallic like thrice-struck flint and ozone, had pricked his nostrils. He remembered a sudden, impossible cold, then a searing heat that seemed to boil the very marrow in his bones. His last coherent thought was a detached, academic observation: "Fascinating. A psychosomatic reaction to…?"
Then the world had torn itself apart.
Darkness. A screaming vortex of non-sound and impossible colours that his brain refused to process. A sensation of being unmade, atom by atom, then violently re-stitched into something… other.
Now, pain was his only anchor in a sea of bewildering sensation. A dull, throbbing ache pulsed behind his eyes, each beat a hammer blow. His throat was raw, as if he'd swallowed embers. He tried to lift a hand, to clutch his head, but the limb that responded felt sluggish, heavy, and strangely unfamiliar. The texture beneath his fingertips wasn't the smooth, cool glass of a fallen display case or the polished linoleum of the lab floor. It was rough, coarse, like animal hide or crudely woven wool, damp and clinging.
A groan escaped him, a ragged, pitiful sound that didn't quite feel like his own voice. It was weaker, laced with a tremor he didn't recognize.
Slowly, blinking against a gritty film that coated his eyes, he forced them open.
Light, or what passed for it, was a miserly grey wash filtering from a high, narrow slit in what appeared to be a rough stone wall. The air was thick, heavy with the cloying stench of unwashed bodies, stale sickness, woodsmoke, and something else… something primal and rank, like damp earth and offal. His stomach churned, a wave of nausea so potent it almost sent him back into the merciful dark. This wasn't the sterile, antiseptic smell of a hospital. This was… medieval. The thought struck him with the force of a physical blow, absurd and terrifying.
He was lying on something low and unyielding. A pallet? The blanket—if it could be called that—was a greasy, felted mass that reeked. He could hear sounds, too. The snuffling grunt of an animal somewhere nearby, the distant, mournful lowing of cattle, the harsh caw of a crow, and closer, the shallow, rasping breaths of someone else in the dim space.
Panic, cold and sharp, began to prickle through the fog of pain. This was wrong. All wrong. He tried to sit up, a monumental effort. His muscles screamed in protest, weaker than he remembered, joints stiff and protesting. When he finally pushed himself upright, his head swam violently. He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting another wave of sickness.
When the dizziness subsided, he dared to look at his hands.
They were not his hands.
These were thinner, the knuckles more pronounced, the skin bearing a tracery of faint, silvery scars he'd never seen before. Dirt was ingrained beneath broken, blunt fingernails. He flexed them, watching the alien movement with a detached horror. They obeyed, but the connection felt… buffered. Delayed.
A fragment of memory, sharp and vivid: a hushed room, candlelight flickering on tapestries, a stern-faced man with eyes like chips of winter ice, a woman weeping softly into a piece of embroidered linen. Whose memory was that? Not his. The body's, then. This flesh he wore had a history, a life.
He tried to recall his own name, the familiar syllables that had defined him for over three decades. It was… there, on the tip of his tongue, a phantom sensation, but it dissolved like smoke when he tried to grasp it. The harder he tried, the more it receded, replaced by a rising tide of… something else. A dull ache of a different kind, a weariness that felt bone-deep, a lingering taste of bitter herbs.
A shuffling sound nearby. He tensed, every nerve ending screaming alarm.
A figure materialized from the deeper shadows of the small, suffocating room. An old woman, her face a roadmap of wrinkles, clad in drab, shapeless wool. She carried a steaming wooden bowl, the aroma of which – something vaguely like boiled grain and pungent herbs – did little to soothe his roiling stomach.
She approached, her bare feet silent on the packed earth floor. Her eyes, surprisingly sharp and clear in that weathered face, scrutinized him. She muttered something, a stream of guttural sounds and unfamiliar cadences. Not Latin, not any Germanic or Romance language he could readily parse, though elements felt distantly, disturbingly familiar, like a corrupted echo of something he should know.
He could only stare, mute, his 21st-century mind reeling, grappling with the impossible.
The woman reached out a calloused hand, surprisingly gentle, and pressed it to his forehead. She grunted, then spoke again, slower this time, more distinct. One word, repeated, almost a question, yet with an undercurrent of weary expectation.
A name.
It resonated through the unfamiliar flesh he inhabited, a cold shock that cleared some of the fog from his mind, not because he recognized it as his own, but because some deep, dormant part of this borrowed body stirred in faint, aching recognition.
"Cadogan?"