Xia Feng never gets the chance to understand how he died. By the time he regains consciousness, his own body is gone, replaced by that of a sickly teenager named Lucien Evans, a boy living in a small town where hunger is common, medicine is primitive, and people lower their voices whenever the Church is mentioned.
His first days are filled with confusion, but confusion quickly gives way to fear.
A woman accused of practicing witchcraft is dragged before a crowd and executed in broad daylight. It is supposed to be a warning for everyone watching, yet the part Lucien cannot ignore is what happens before her death. The magic is real. So are the miracles performed by the clergy. Whatever world he has entered, it follows rules that have nothing to do with the science he grew up learning.
Accepting that truth is only the beginning.
Lucien has no wealth, no influence, and no one willing to protect him. The tiny house he lives in barely keeps out the cold, finding his next meal becomes a daily concern, and every conversation feels like walking across thin ice. Speaking too carelessly, asking the wrong question, or showing knowledge he should not possess could easily place him in the same position as the woman he watched die.
Oddly enough, he did not arrive empty-handed.
Hidden deep within his mind is something resembling a library, carrying pieces of the knowledge he accumulated back on Earth. Mathematics, physics, chemistry, music, philosophy, history, not everything is available to him, but enough remains to make him wonder whether ideas considered ordinary in his old world might become extraordinary here. The answer comes slowly, through experiments, failures, and observations that most people around him never think to make.
As Lucien edges closer to the world of magic, he notices patterns that refuse to leave him alone. Certain spells behave less like miracles and more like problems waiting to be understood. Ancient theories begin colliding with scientific reasoning of his, forcing him to question whether magic and knowledge have always been speaking the same language under different names in this book.
