Who Am I?

This time awakening from blackout felt much easier for him, and when he looked around, it turned out that he still was in his room. The only difference was that his blackout lasted only for four hours, whereas before it took him about six to eight hours. When he thought about it, the first one took him eight hours, the second only six, and the third took him four hours to wake up.

He was starting to see a pattern here. First he loses his power from the previous day, then he blacks out, and after waking up, he has new power that he can use for the next 24 hours.

He couldn't wait to see what his abilities were for this day. So to find out what he could do, he decided to use the same breathing technique as yesterday; maybe it could help him with other powers as well, not just one.

Even though Jaremi didn't know it, the fact that he knew how to properly use breathing techniques was a blessing from the gods for him. Since it was something that could help people calm themselves down and clear their heads. For mages, this was a vital skill since magic was connected to one's cognitive abilities.

Once he started using his breathing technique, he started to feel strange goosebumps on his face that spread to his whole body. Once he opened his eyes to see what was wrong, he almost screamed. It was caused by his mirror. When he looked in it, he saw not his reflection but some unidentified humanoid creature with no face. He was terrified of this and didn't know what to do. He tried breathing, but this didn't work as well as before.

He then touched his face to try to see if maybe this could break the illusion, but this time everything felt real and not as it was before. It was like his own skull had been changed to be different. There were neither marks nor curves that could help anyone identify Jaremi in his current state.

He looked around and saw a picture of him and one of his friends. This was enough to make him feel that tingling again, and when he looked in the mirror, he was surprised rather than terrified now. He was starting to understand his new power now, and therefore he was more confident in himself since he was starting to control his abilities better each day.

He decided to call it shapeshifting, since it reminded him of this action from the point of "erasing" his face and "creating" a new one instead of it.

Even though Jaremi was getting used to the powers he was now getting and this was causing him less stress, it was still a cool ability to have, even if only for a day.

The first thing that came to his mind was how to get back to his original look. Should he do the same thing as he did when changing his appearance, or was he simply wishing to get back to his original appearance?

Then came other questions as well. Was there any limitation on how many times he could change himself to look like a certain person? Was there a time limit for presenting as someone else?

These were his main questions. So to test all the theories that were born from his situation, he decided to start with the first question: how to get back to his original appearance.

The only thing that came to his mind was to simply wish for going back to the original Jaremi. To do so, he started imagining how his body was going back to its original state. The images of this process flooded his mind.

Not long after that, the familiar tingling came back, and when he opened his eyes, Jaremi saw how his body was changing back to being a 185-meter-tall, black-haired boy with freckles on his cheeks and an earring in his right ear.

That was one thing less to figure out now. Since he could change and go back now, all that was left to do was see if it was possible to shift in a person that he could just imagine in his mind and not see physically.

He started imagining a person who had never existed, so he could turn into that person. Also, to satisfy his curiosity, he decided that this person should have been female. Since there were no known limitations for him to shapeshift for now, he wanted to see all the boundaries he could to gather more information in the most time-efficient way possible.

Once he was settled on how he would like to look, he started the process of transformation, and all went well. When Jaremi looked in the mirror, he saw neither himself nor that scary no-man, but a young, beautiful woman with long, bright blonde hair that was reaching her knees.

She (Jaremi) was now a short, 160-cmish woman; she looked like she was in her twenties. Once Jaremi was sure that not only his face was changing but his height and other attributes could be "customized" as well, there was only one thing left to check.

He decided to see if not only his body but his clothes were able to change too. A young man tried to do the same as he did to look like a woman, but he was destined to fail as he did. There was no way to change his clothes since they were not part of his body.

There was no way to use this ability for anything that he could find useful at the moment, so he just decided to wait for an opportunity to have fun with it. But it never came. All he did that day was simply spend time with his parents, who seemed worried about his recent blackouts.

There was something strange about Jaremis mom. This time, her expressions looked like they were her genuine response to his health condition. This started to mess with his brain. Since the first time of his blackout and hearing Caroline's thoughts, he felt cautious with his mother, but she was acting as any normal mother who was worried about her child's wellbeing would.

It all seemed like a prank that was designed to mess with his own perception of everything, but it wasn't. Since Jaremi was still unaware of the existence of magic, mages, and all the other aspects that came with them, he had no knowledge about the soul swapping that had happened to his mom.

What it meant was that someone who could use magic decided to possess her body to either pretend to be her for some uncertain reason or to do something that was easy to do for Caroline but relatively hard for someone else.

The truth was darker than Jaremi could ever imagine. It wasn't his mom who tried to kill him—well, actually, it was, but it wasn't her decision or wish. She was a simple puppet with magical strings attached to her body in this scenario.

But for now, he had no information about all of this, and as they say, ignorance is bliss. He was not burdened with all that was happening in the shadows of the world, and the monsters he was meant to fight were only his doubts and maybe the ones in his videogames.

The rest of the day went like a normal Saturday. He and his dad were playing a game while mom was sitting next to them, waiting for one of them to fail in the game so she could take their place and enjoy the game herself.

Jaremi decided to just take a rest from the craziness that was actually going on with his life and at least pretend to still be a normal teenager who was graduating high school and getting ready for college exams. This worked for the rest of the day until it was late at night. Even though it was a weekend, he still had to rest for the night. So he went to bed. But before falling asleep, he heard something that made him cautious.

This was the same feeling as the first day. A mysterious voice was sounding in his head. The voice was calm, soothing, and soft. Judging by its tone, it is most likely that this was the woman whose voice he heard.

And yet there was something different about her voice. It wasn't like others. Just her random thoughts and also as Jaremi knew his telepathy ability was gone two days ago and he wasn't entirely wrong about it.

The difference in her voice was the sole fact that it was directed towards Jaremi, like she was talking directly to him.

"Listen to me and trust no one," said a mysterious voice.

"What!? What's happening? Who are you? Where are you? How..." He wanted to ask a few more questions, but the voice stopped him.

"Enough! I came here to help you not be annoyed by some kid who has barely learned how to walk." Even though her words were harsh, just the sound of her voice made Jaremi want to comply, do as she said, and just keep listening to it. "The main thing you need to know now is that you are being targeted by those who want to kill you for your powers," said the woman.