Chapter 1: THE AWAKENING
The hands weren't mine.
I stared at them, trembling against white bedsheets that smelled of lavender and something sharper—ink, maybe, or old paper. Long fingers. Calluses on the fingertips in patterns I'd never earned. My heart hammered against ribs that sat wrong in my chest.
Breathe. Just breathe.
But even the breath came differently. Shallower chest, different lung capacity. I pushed myself upright and the room spun—stone walls, a window letting in pale morning light, a desk cluttered with parchment, and in the corner, a lute.
A lute.
The memories crashed into me like a wave breaking against rocks.
Julian Alfred Pankratz. Viscount de Lettenhove. Twenty-two years old. Third year at Oxenfurt Academy. Studying the Seven Liberal Arts with a focus on poetry and music. Parents disappointed in his choice of career. Debts accumulating at three different taverns.
And underneath all of that, like sediment at the bottom of a river, my own memories. A different name. A different world. Screens and keyboards and a life spent watching stories unfold on television. A car coming too fast around the corner. The crunch of metal. The taste of blood.
Then nothing.
Then this.
I swung my legs over the bed and stood. The floor was cold against bare feet that weren't mine—longer, narrower. I crossed to the small mirror above the washbasin and a stranger looked back at me.
Cornflower blue eyes. Brown hair sleep-tousled and sticking up at odd angles. A face that was handsome in a sharp, expressive way—good cheekbones, a mouth made for smiling or singing. Young. Younger than I'd been when the car hit me.
Jaskier.
The name surfaced from both sets of memories. What Julian's friends called him. What he'd become famous as, in a story I'd watched unfold across three seasons of television.
My legs gave out. I sat down hard on the bed, hands gripping the mattress.
This was impossible. People didn't just—wake up in fictional universes. They didn't inherit the bodies of characters from Netflix shows. This wasn't how death worked. This wasn't how anything worked.
But the calluses on my fingers were real. The ache in my lower back from a lumpy mattress was real. The cold morning air raising goosebumps on my arms was real.
I looked at the lute in the corner.
In the show, Jaskier had been talented. More than talented—the kind of bard who could fill a tavern and empty nobles' purses with equal ease. Those skills lived in my fingers now, muscle memory layered over my consciousness like a second skin.
I stood and crossed to the instrument. It was well-made, polished wood with pearl inlays around the sound hole. My fingers—Julian's fingers—knew its weight before I picked it up.
The first chord came without thought. E minor. The strings vibrated against my fingertips, and something stirred in my chest.
I played a simple melody, one that existed in Julian's memory but not mine. A folk song about a miller's daughter and a traveling knight. Nothing special. The kind of tune any bard-in-training learned in their first year.
But as I played, the room seemed to brighten. Just slightly. Just enough that I stopped mid-phrase, heart pounding.
That wasn't normal light.
I tried again. A slower tune this time, deliberately reaching for that strange sensation. The music poured from my fingers and I pushed, willing warmth into the melody.
The morning sunlight through the window intensified. The cold retreated from the stone floor. And I could feel something—a pull in my chest, a resonance between the music and... something else. Something outside myself.
I stopped playing. My hands shook.
This isn't just Jaskier's talent. This is something more.
I set the lute down carefully and went to the window. Oxenfurt spread below—spires and rooftops, the river glittering in the distance, the famous Academy with its towers and libraries. A medieval city in a world of monsters and magic.
A world I knew.
The Witcher. I'd watched every episode, read the discussions online, argued with strangers about plot points and character arcs. I knew that in roughly three years, a bard named Jaskier would walk into a tavern in Posada and meet a white-haired witcher named Geralt of Rivia. I knew about Cintra's fall, about Ciri, about Yennefer and the Wild Hunt and Nilfgaard's wars.
I knew the future.
And somehow, impossibly, I had power. Something in the music that went beyond normal performance. Something supernatural.
My stomach growled. Loud. Embarrassingly loud for a moment of existential revelation.
Right. Bodies needed food. This body hadn't eaten since... I checked Julian's memories. Dinner last night. A disappointing bowl of lukewarm stew in the Academy dining hall.
I should eat. I should figure out how the dining hall worked and where Julian's friends sat and what classes he had today.
I should survive.
Because that's what this was now, wasn't it? Survival. I was alone in a world full of monsters, political intrigue, and approaching war. I had three years before the story I knew began—three years to understand this strange power, to build a reputation, to prepare for what was coming.
The car that killed me had taken everything. But somehow, something had given me this.
I grabbed Julian's clothes from the trunk at the foot of the bed. Simple student garb—a cream-colored shirt, brown trousers, boots that pinched slightly at the toe. His purse held a handful of coins that I couldn't immediately quantify. Enough for food, probably. Maybe.
I opened the door and nearly walked into a young man with ink-stained fingers and a harried expression.
"Jaskier! Finally awake? Professor Willemer is furious—you missed his morning lecture on poetic meter."
The name came from Julian's memories. Henrik. Fellow student. Casual acquaintance. Currently staring at me with the expectation of a response.
"I..." My voice came out rough. I cleared my throat. "Overslept. Rough night."
Henrik snorted. "Too much wine at the Golden Grape again? Look, just tell Willemer you were composing. He's soft on students with 'genuine artistic temperament.'" He made air quotes with his ink-stained fingers.
"Right. Good advice. Thanks."
Henrik was already moving past me down the corridor. "Dining hall's serving breakfast for another half hour if you hurry."
I watched him go, then leaned against the doorframe.
I can do this. I can figure this out.
The dining hall. That was the next step. Food, then information. Then, when I had privacy, more experiments with the lute and whatever strange power lived in the music.
I had three years. Three years to become someone who could survive what was coming. Three years to understand what I'd become.
I closed my eyes and thought of Geralt—the monster hunter, the reluctant hero, the man who would need a friend whether he admitted it or not. I thought of Ciri—the child of destiny, the lion cub of Cintra, running from an empire that wanted to own her.
I thought of all the people who would suffer, who would die, if the story played out the way I remembered.
Not if I can help it.
I pushed off from the doorframe and walked toward the stairs, toward food and answers and the first day of my impossible new life.
The lute sat in my room, waiting.
Tomorrow, I would begin to learn what I could really do.
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