It was like all his bones had been broken. Each of them. down to the tiniest one.

Air was burning his throat.

He opened his eyes. It was dark.

When his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could distinguish wooden roof beams and some kind of gray spots.

To trust his feelings, he was lying on a stone floor stark naked. The pain began to subside, yet his body seemed alien to him, like a hand-me-down jacket.

Ryan sat up with some effort. His last memories were the burning towers of the citadel, the triumphant face of the royal archmagus, and the claws of the manticora piercing his flesh. He reflexively placed his right palm on his stomach and rubbed it.

Did he really survive, and was he in a dungeon now?

He felt no trace of any wounds or scars; his abdomen was soft, his skin was smooth and tender.

A suspicion began to crystallize into an understanding,

He touched his face with the left palm. A pointed chin without any signs of stubble; plush lips, a small nose. The hair was long.

He put both hands onto his breast. And indeed, so it was: instead of firm muscles, he found two soft hillocks.

"May Nuth take you!"

It took him several minutes to cope with the panic.

"Sure, that's right. I couldn't have survived after that stuff. Nobody would have. And yet I am alive. But this means..."

It could mean only one thing.

Ryan stood up and made some familiar gestures with the left hand. The spell worked, but the effect was weak. One could rather call it feeble.

Instead of a brightly illuminated room, he saw a tiny luminous sphere smoldering on his fingertip, while a wave of exhaustion rolled over him - as if he were digging graves for half a day.

Yet this source of light was enough to discern an ornate red tattoo-like mark on the hip. It was a Sign of the Contract. A Blood Contract.

A dumb little girl who used to own this body has summoned him for revenge on someone. She must hated that someone very much indeed, as she decided to use one of the most dreadful spells of the Dark Path and to sacrifice herself.

In the faint light, he noticed a magic circle on the floor. Somewhere in the middle of that circle the name of the targets must have been inscribed. Or names of targets.

But there was nothing there.

"May Nuth take you!" He recalled the Dark Goddess for the second time in the last half-hour.

The Blood Contract gave him one lunar month to exact the revenge. After that time, having complied with the request of the spellcaster, the summoned spirit would acquire the body for permanent possession. Or else he would be dissolved in the Abyss. Forever. With no possibility of Reincarnation.

Ryan sat down on the floor, clutching his head.

How was he supposed to find the target for the revenge now? Just keep slaughtering everyone he meets? The prospect of disappearing forever offered no joy to him.

He noticed a book next to the diligently drawn magic circle. The small tattered volume turned out to be a collection of spells of very diverse kinds, from primitive fire-making and love-binding to curses and summoning of small familiars. The Blood Contract was also to be found there, both the circle and the spell, except that the latter was incomplete. And in the description there was not a single word of the fact that the spirit summoned from the Abyss swaps places with the spellcaster.

Ryan sighed. For a moment he felt pity for the girl who lost her life so early because of a ham-fisted book-compiling mage or a neglectful typographer. But then he remembered the situation in which he now found himself.

"What happened to this world if arcane knowledge of the Dark Path became accessible to any random charlatan?"

It was necessary to act. To find out more about the previous owner of the body and her possible enemies. But first of all it would not hurt to get dressed.