Scarlett jolted awake and immediately hugged her head, bracing against the countless mental sparks that electrocuted her mind like a piece of barbecued ribs. Earth, modern technology, student debt? Foreign concepts assimilated with her thoughts, bringing her ever closer to utter confusion.

She could only sit still with glazed eyes and a half opened mouth, as the strange memories fought within her mind to make space like a bunch of mice fighting over a tiny slice of cheese.

It took a good half hour before light returned to Scarlett’s eyes. She groaned and laid back down. At first, she thought those strange memories were delusions from the shock of losing her wing, but they felt more real and detailed than her uneducated self could ever come up with. One doesn’t simply make up three years of science studies, she concluded.

However, obvious gaps remained, it seemed at least half of the new memories were missing. She could recall Tom’s father but not his mother, and only half of the faces of his friends were retrievable.

Yet, every time she recalled the life of Tom when he was a child, a warm and cozy sensation settled within her chest, synchronizing with her heart beat. She gazed deep within those memories, at the days when Tom’s parents would give him words of encouragement after he passed a test, or when they’d childe him for playing games too much.

In all of her short life as an orphan, she had always wanted know what it’d be like to live in a family. There was no such warmth back at the overcrowded and rundown orphanage. She wouldn’t say that the staff there had no heart, but even if they did show any signs of compassion then it’d be like scooping a small handful of water from the ocean of neglect.

But Tom’s family was by no means a perfect one, despite knowing their love for each other, his parents often argued over trivial things and there was always some short of financial problem that forced them to cut down cost.

But any family was better than no family for Scarlett. A faint smile formed on her thin lips as she cherished the memories like her own.

Her hypothesis was that her soul, or consciousness in this world was originally Tom’s after he got blown through the portal. For some reason or another, part of her memories as Tom remained dormant in her new body and reactivated when she encountered the deeply traumatizing event.

With a deep breath, she decided to embrace the new memories, to take shelter in her old identity - Tom, and to blissfully ignore the harsh reality for just one moment.

Then reality caught up with her, as the sweet moment of remembrance was interrupted by a distant roar of the massive dragon.

Scarlett snapped out of her trance and reassessed her situation. Despite being a birdkin whom were known for their ability to thrive in the dreadful forests of the frontier, she knew little about the surrounding ecology, since no one was kind enough to teach her. Tom’s memories proved little to no use as he knew nothing about the forest of this world.

All she could do then, was to find a temporary shelter and make sure to hide her scent with a thin film of mana surrounding her body. She had no food or water, having dropped her supplies during the frantic escape to fly faster.

At least I finally get to know what having a family felt like. A sad smile lined her lips.

Scarlett cautiously walked through the forest grounds, ignoring the dull pain on her back that occasionally flared up with increasing intensity. A part of her whispered softly that she should find the most painless way to die, for she was completely helpless in that brutal wilderness. The expanding ladybirth would send out dreadful corrupted monsters throughout the surroundings, and those were far more terrifying than the local fauna.

She shook her head, now wasn’t the time to die, not after she had found such a big missing a part of herself. Besides, she couldn’t hold back the anticipation to use the newly gained knowledge from Tom to really study this world from a scientific point of view. She wanted to know how magic worked and what rule of physics it was a part of, she wanted to find out more about the ecology of the forest with countless new species.

She wanted to live.

As if responding to her resolve, something deep within the depths of her soul started calling out to her. She stopped walking, leaned on a nearby tree and closed her eyes. Then she tugged at the pulsating connection cautiously. It started to widen, feeding her mind with more of the missing memories. Slowly, the gaps within Tom’s memories began to close.

Suddenly, the connection seemed to open even more as it fed her the rest of the information at once. She clenched her teeth and endured the massive rush of memories. After a few seconds, Scarlett tiredly plopped on the ground and let out a sigh. Finally, it’s over.

However, something remained in the still open connection. She could feel some sort of emotion streaming out of it, from confusion to satisfaction and even fascination.

“Who are you?” An unknown voice sounded through the link, startling her.

“Same question to you, strange voice.” Scarlett replied.

“I am Ryan Valentine, United Empire’s fifth prince.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet your highness. I am Scarlett, no last name. May I ask what is your highness doing inside of this humble orphan’s mind?” She tilted her head.

“I was about to ask you the same question, actually. Since it is your voice that is coming from the inside of my head.”

The cautious side of Scarlett warned her that the man could be up to no good. Yet she found herself lacking the desire to put up any mental guard against the mysterious connection. What if he is hijacking my mind? Mind control magic do exists, or so she heard, but they were supposed to be extremely forceful and damaging to the victim’s psyche. This link seemed very faint and in a sense, friendly.

“Don’t panic, I don’t have any intention to harm you.”

“Did you just read my mind?” Her voice had a hint of anger.

“I cannot, but I do seem to sense a faint emotion from the other side of the link. I suppose you can do the same.”

“I guess you’re right.” She recalled feeling some of his emotions spilling out from when the link first opened. “Were you also the cause for my previous rush of memories?”

“Don’t tell me, you experienced it too?” His voice shook with anticipation.

“Seems so.”

“Listen, I know this is a really unreasonable request coming from a total stranger, but would you mind telling me more about yourself?”

“Well, I almost got roasted by a corrupted dragon earlier, if you’re interested.” She gave a dry laugh.

“Are you alright?”

“For now, I think. I doubt I’ll live for long though.”

“Scarlett, please tell me what is happening.”

##

After a brief exchange of information, both Ryan and Scarlett came to a few conclusions:

The reawakening of Tom’s memories within the two had been triggered by their recent life threatening events - Ryan and his assassination attempt, Scarlett and her encounter with the corrupted dragon. They both were able to access Tom’s memories fully They cannot, however, directly read each other’s minds. They can only send direct thoughts or sense the emotions of one another through the link.

It was much harder to deduce the reason why the two became linked in the first place. Ryan proposed that after Tom’s body flew through the portal, it ended up in this world. Due to the appearance of an unknown entity within the world, whatever process the world used to ‘recycle’ his soul encountered problems and ended up not only leaving the memories intact, but splitting Tom’s soul into two pieces after the soul reuse cycle. Then these two pieces developed their own life, turning into Ryan and Scarlett. Scarlett chuckled at the idea and called it ludicrous, but she couldn’t come up with a better theory.

More questions remained. Should they be considered the same entity, or two different entities that developed from a common source? Were they really two different persons, or just one person split into two?

Ryan shook his head, we got more urgent problems right now.

“I’ve read around 14 books of accounts where adventurers had to survive an extended period in the frontier. I’ll see if there’s anything of use to you.”

“Glad to know there’s a full blown nerd backing me up.” Scarlett laughed.

“I got a feeling that we’re not the same person, it seems.”

“Ya think? Anyway, be quiet for a bit. I’m gonna do a quick scan of the area.”

Scarlett closed her eyes and began circulating her mana around her body, forming a thick bubble. Then the bubble popped, sending waves of mana into the surroundings. She kept her eyes shut and strained her large furry ears to listen to the fluctuations of the mana waves.

The spell essentially acted as a mana radar, giving her a rough outline of the surrounding terrain and the presence of nearby enemies, if any.

“No hostiles detected, I did notice a nearby cave though. I’m going to check it out.”

“Hey, I felt my mana being drained just now, what did you do?” Ryan asked in a hurry.

“I performed a mana scan of the surrounding area. Holy crap, don’t tell me, are our mana pools being shared?”

“It appears so.”

“Could you perform a spell on your end to see if I can feel the change?” She asked.

Then she felt a very small portion of her own mana being pulled into the link.

“Its confirmed then.” She nodded to herself. “Are you good with me using your mana though?”

“Feel free to drain me dry, if that would help keep you alive.”

“Thanks.”

“If I recall correctly, birdkins don’t have very good mana detection ability. How did you perform the spell then?”

“My ears are a lot bigger than normal birdkins. I got teased alot as a kid because of that. It apparently gives me very enhanced hearing sense but also slow me down during flight by stopping the airflow though.” Scarlett stated matter of factly.

The detected cave was well hidden behind very thick foliages that covered the entirety of the opening. Without her sword to cleave a way, she had to pull the vegetation out with her hands and using a little strength boost spell.

With the foliage finally cleared, she entered the dark cave. “Looks like I can probably spend the night here, I doubt anything could detect me through the thick vegetation.”

But then movements from deep within the cave stopped her cold.

The creatures quickly showed themselves before her, with white fur, white claws and very large canine teeths.

“Shit, how did I not detect the wolves?”

The wolves weren’t very big, compared to the size of the local specie. But still they could outsize a large German Shepherd. “These are probably wolf cubs.”

Upon catching sight of her, however, the cubs completely ceased growling and began nestled closed to her while sniffing at her clothes.

Completely befuddled, Scarlett could only let them sniff and lick all over her body. The sensation was strangely comfortable.

“What is going on?” She asked with a dubious voice.

“Scarlett, those cubs probably thought that you are their mother. Listen, you need to get out of there right now, before the mother arrives!” Ryan nearly yelled through the link.

Not wasting a second, she bolted towards the opening. But it was too late.

Standing at the opening, the mother wolf growled viciously with its teeth bared in full view, glaring at the intruder.