Calla Frosthaze was a male character that appeared in the popular book 'Fire & Ice'. He was young and sickly with powerful ice magic but no real control over it due to so often being bedridden from illness. In the end, he died from poisoning when he mistakably ate food from the male protagonist's plate and couldn't fight it off.

In short, he was a cannon fodder.

The truly horrible thing was that the protagonist was never in any danger of dying, as due to his potent and powerful fire magic, any poison that entered his system would simply be burned away. Calla died for nothing in one of the villain's schemes to kill off the protagonists. It was one of the things that made fans of the book cry in despair, because Calla had been quite a popular character due to his delicate looks and intelligent mind. It was just that the male protagonist was his cousin, so he inevitably ended up drawn into the villain's deadly grudge.

And Cale now inhabited that body.

The body that was destined to die from poison.

Well, shit!

Cale stared at the woman as she sniffled to herself with tears of relief. If he remembered correctly, this was the mother of Calla that only showed up at his funeral without a tear to be shed, Mariana Frosthaze, a woman of noble standing who got into a verbal fight with the female protagonist who didn't think she was sad enough at the passing of her son. But if she was crying of relief just because he was outside, that probably wasn't the case.

She sniffled quietly again. "Come, my son, sit down. You need to be careful of your health."

She sat down on one of the chairs, her red dress swishing around her feet and Cale found himself sitting down as well before he knew what he was doing. The chair was comfortable, white wood with a pale blue pillow on it that he leaned back against. It was soft and Cale liked the color.

The woman stared at him intensely with wide searching eyes. Cale was unsettled by the intense look, but he did his best to bear it. He had seemingly taken over the body of her sick son, the least he could do was to get along well with her. "How do you feel? Are you sure you should be outside?"

Cale let his eyes drift back to the beautiful garden as he answered. "I feel alright, mother. And I want to be outside. It's a beautiful day, after all."

She stared at his face and said, "If you are sure. But don't do anything strenuous, dear."

Cale turned his head and looked at her for a moment before he smiled softly and replied, "I won't."

She smiled at him gently and stretched out her arm to squeeze his hand with a tearful gaze.

"Now tell me, how are your magical studies coming along?" she asked.

He gulped and mumbled an embarrassed, "Not that well, mother."

She searched his face and Cale got the feeling that she could see into his very soul. He really hoped that that wasn't the case, because then she would know that something was wrong, but he couldn't think of anything else to say. In truth, he had no idea how Calla's studies were going, that was never revealed in the book; only that he had a hard time controlling his magic. Cale could only hope he had answered correctly.

"Hmm..." she started and continued with, "School will start up again come autumn. Perhaps we should hire you a tutor until then to get you caught up with the rest of your class. This is your final year after all and you're already two classes below your age."

"That... could be a good idea, mother."

* * *

The library was huge.

It spanned two floors, with bookcases pressed into every corner and a massive wooden table in the middle of it on the bottom floor. There was a staircase up to the next one with a railing along the floor on the second as you could stand and look down over the table. Hanging from the ceiling of the second floor was a gorgeous chandelier that lit up everything but the shadowed corners. The entire place smelled of old books and Cale lost his breath as he stared at the wonder of it. It was like something he could only dream of.

But he had no time to marvel at the beauty of it.

He had three days until the tutor would arrive. He needed to catch up on all of Calla's knowledge before that. He could probably get away with forgetting some things, but he needed to have at least a working fundamental base by then.

Which wasn't made any easier just because he had read the book.

According to the book 'Fire & Ice', the magic came from three parts. The body, the mind and the soul. Calla had lost two of those. Who was to say that he could even use magic now? While the body had retained its innate ability to channel ice magic, it was a different soul that occupied it along with a different mind. Cale might as well have tried to learn to swim by watching movies. In short, not a good idea.

But it was all he had to go on.

He started at the basics.

Pure magical power came from the soul. It was shaped into a particular kind by the body and the mind determined how it was used. The body was the same so the kind of magic he used should be as well. He could learn how to shape it by use of a lot of reading, meditation, and feigning of having a tendency to forget to his tutor. It was the soul that was the problem. From the books, by all accounts but control, Calla had been fairly powerful. But for all he knew, he had jack shit of power.

And as mentioned in the books, you could use special items to increase the potency of your power as well as its magnitude, but that wouldn't solve anything. Not to mention that he had no idea where he could find one of these objects and it would also need to be compatible; meaning of the same element as his. It was written in the books that the protagonist, amidst growing up on the streets because his birth family didn't want him, had found one with a fire element and this was where his fate had turned around. He'd also been gifted another one from an ancient fire spirit as a teenager.

There was about a zero chance that he would find one as well.

Cale collected as may books dedicated to magic as he could carry and brought them over to the table. He was alone in the library, which was a blessing because he did not want to also worry about what people would think of his recent fanaticism when it came to studying.

He spread out the books, pulled the notebooks and pen closer to himself and began.