Julian's breath caught in his throat.
Visions.
They slammed into his mind like a crashing tide—fragmented, raw, and jarring. Images and emotions that weren't his. A burning village. Screams echoing in the night. The taste of cheap ale and blood. The sharp, panicked gasps of a dying man. A woman's terrified face staring up before the blade came down.
Julian gasped, falling forward onto his hands, the contact with the corpse broken but the torrent of memories still burning behind his eyes. His stomach churned. He gagged but nothing came out.
What the hell was that
His heart pounded against his ribs as if trying to break free. The world around him seemed distant now, no longer the moonlit battlefield, but that flickering, chaotic storm of stolen memories. The bandit's final moments, his sins, his pleasures, his regrets—every vile shard of who he had been—forced into Julian's skull like jagged glass.
But then, just as suddenly as it began, it stopped.
The system rang once more.
