Darkness surrounded him. Where his body once felt increasingly heavy, he now felt as light as a feather. Jon found himself floating in space with a head full of questions. Where was he? How did he get there? Why should he care?

Something had him alarmed before, but now it was out of his mind. If he couldn’t remember, then it probably wasn’t all that important. 

He went on floating like that for… days? Year? Seconds? The concept of time didn’t seem to exist in that completely dark void—

A tiny light popped up far above. Or maybe it was down. He couldn’t tell. The light flickered once as if acknowledging him, and Jon was immediately captivated. That’s where he belonged. It flickered again, and a second light popped up by its side. And then a third, and a fourth. The lights multiplied themselves until they shined like thousands of stars in the night sky.

They drew him closer, ready to welcome him in their warm embrace. To turn him into one of their own. To consume him.

Jon was scared on an instinctual level, unlike anything he had ever felt before. He wanted to pull back but was powerless to resist their pull.

“...!” Something echoed far away, and Jon came to a halt. The lights turned brighter as they increased their pull, to no avail. Weight seemed to return to his body and he began to fall away from the lights.

“...up… wake up!”

Jon’s right eye snapped open to discover Professor Willow kneeling over him with a wooden ceiling covered in soot behind her. She had a distressed look on her face and an empty vial in her hands, its opening against his lips. Whatever had been in that vial, its contents were now burning like fire inside his mouth. 

“Thank Beilyn, you’re back. Drink up, it’ll help.”

Jon swallowed, and the liquid wreaked havoc all the way down to his stomach.

“Hurry with that dried root!” she yelled to someone before turning back to him. “Damn it, look at you. I told you not to take that concoction.” 

Hard soles clicked against the wooden floor. An elder woman appeared in his field of view, a mortar and pestle in hands.

“Finally.” The professor took the mortar, dumped its contents into a handful of leaves, and shoved them all inside Jon’s mouth, too much for him to swallow at once. Not that he was inclined to. Whatever they were, it tasted rancid like rotten meat. He barely held back the urge to vomit. “Chew on it. And whatever you do, do not fall asleep again.” She lifted him back up, thanked the old woman, and soon they were back on the street, weaving through pedestrians and carriages with ease.

The next moment they were speeding through the academy gates, and the moment after they were running up a flight of stairs. He couldn’t recall anything that happened in between, as if the memories had been erased from his mind. They burst through a door. The room was somewhat large with six beds lined up against a wall to the left. A man, previously napping on one of the beds, woke up with a startle and jumped to his feet.

“His brain is bleeding. A backlash from breaking through with a potion,” she said as she laid Jon down on the nearest bed.

The man arrived with a large blob of water floating above him. It descended towards Jon’s face, enveloping his head and the pain finally subsided to an almost bearable level. Barely a minute passed before the water was replaced. After another minute it was replaced again.

Jon kept on chewing the leaves until his vision flashed white and the leaves disappeared from his mouth. Both the professor and the healer were nowhere to be seen. Did he forget again? Another flash and the room was now mostly dark. A healer, different from the one who first treated him, now sat at a distant corner with a single lightstone shining at the wall as he read a book.

Dozens more images flashed through his mind. Sometimes day and others night. More often than not he was alone in bed, but he saw his friends in some of them. Bella and Nevil appeared only twice, both times accompanied by Deon and Aeron who came more often. He also saw Professor Willow once. She looked tired, even more than usual. When she visited, Jon noticed a silver band on her wrist with the image of a scepter with a crow on top. It looked familiar, though he couldn’t remember from where.

***

Jon woke up alone in the same bed as before and with no idea of how much time had passed. Hopefully not long, though the healers had left and there was no one he could ask. The disconnected images were all he could recall, and that pointed to at least a few days having passed.

Just trying to sit up left him light-headed, so he resigned himself to lying there. Thankfully he was still alive and the pain had stopped.

The incident left his memory extremely choppy, but at least he seemed to remember everything from before it happened. His night with Lily, the payback against Garrel, and even his arrival at Alistown were all still fresh on his mind. Events became more muddled the further in the past he tried to recall, but Jon chalked it up to the passage of time rather than damage to his brain. So overall, he might not be completely screwed.

The door opened with barely a sound. Professor Willow walked into the room. “Good, you are awake. Do you recognize me?”

“Professor.”

“Professor…”

“Willow.”

“That’s good.” The professor came closer and sat by the edge of the bed. “After the Final Feast and you receiving Kollion’s Concoction, I feared you would end up either here or outright dead.”

“I didn’t drink it.”

“I’m aware.”

“You are? How?

“Besides the fact that the healer found both potions inside your robes? You already told me as much when I visited you before. Seems that you don’t remember.”

“I guess… wait, my robes?” Jon pulled down the sheets and found that his clothes had been changed to a white nightshirt. He immediately brought a hand to his neck and was relieved to find the necklace still there.

The professor chuckled. “Funny, you had the exact same reaction before. That necklace must mean a lot to you.”

“It was my mother’s,” Jon answered, hoping that he hadn’t given any important information before. “One of the few things I have left of her.” 

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

He wanted to change the subject. “How long have I been here?”

“Five days. Do you remember anything from this period?”

“Bits and parts only. My memory began to fail before we arrived at the academy. I remember when you brought me here and the healer took care of me. After that, there are only random images. Sometimes, my roommates… my friends came to visit. You too, once. There was this silver band on your wrist.”

With a smile, the professor reached for the pillow under his head. Behind it was the same silver band he saw before. “The scepter of Beillyn, goddess of healing springs,” she said, pointing at the inscription. “I’m usually not one to pray, but the moment called for it. The fact that you remembered such a small detail is an encouraging sign.”

“So I’ll be able to leave soon, then?”

“Depends on how you recover and what you mean by soon. If you hope to be cultivating like usual in the next few days, then you will be sorely disappointed. You might be able to leave the infirmary in four or five weeks.”

“Five weeks? That’s practically the entire vacation.”

“That’s how serious your injury was. And for that matter, how exactly did it happen?”

“It… it happened after I woke up and discovered that I had become an Archmage.”

She gave him a questioning look. “Just like that? You went to sleep and woke up an Archmage?” Jon nodded yes, and so she asked, “Was there anything out of the ordinary that night? Any strange dreams, perhaps?”

He shook his head. “No dreams. After the last feast, Deon suggested that we should go out into the city. We went to… to a brothel.” Jon felt somewhat nervous about telling her the rest. “I drank some wine and spent the night with a courtesan.”

“And you broke through the morning after or during it?” she asked, likely to sate her academic curiosity. “Strong emotions have been known to influence a breakthrough in rare cases. I can’t recall a time when someone advanced through sex, but in theory, it shouldn’t be impossible.”

“If it happened during it, then I didn’t notice. I had more things to worry about at the time,” he said with an awkward shrug.

“And then what?”

“After realizing what had happened, I began to think of all the new spells that were now available to me… that’s when I had the idea of trying to become invisible.”

Professor Willow frowned. “How did you get your hands on a diagram for that spell?”

“There was… no diagram. I figured that with enough mana the light could be forced to pass straight through my body.”

“No diagram.” She put one hand against her forehead. ”How can you be so intelligent and yet so dumb? Actual invisibility is a Warlock spell, a particularly taxing one at that. Even I can’t maintain it for more than a few moments. No wonder you almost killed yourself.”

In hindsight, Jon agreed that he had been reckless, but at the time he had no way of knowing by how much. At worst he figured he might become very fatigued rather than almost frying his brain. “I’m sorry, it was a terrible mistake on my part.”

“Yes, it was.” The professor sighed before standing up. “No more stunts like this, you hear me? Focus on your recovery and pray that there won’t be any permanent damages.”

“I will,” Jon said. As Willow turned to leave, he then added, “You were wrong by the way.” 

She looked back with a frown. “About?”

“About how I would die from being obsessed with cultivation.” He grinned. “I’m still alive.”

“Because I saved you.”

“True, but my point still stands.”

The professor shook her head, the hint of a smile on her lips. “I will see you again tomorrow.” Having said that, she left the room.

Jon’s gaze turned towards the ceiling. Five weeks stuck in this room doing nothing. That’s going to feel like an eternity.