It was the same, but different. Nevyn marveled at Aubrey's memory. It had taken him all afternoon, but he had found what had eluded him for so long. The reason he could not possess Derek. It was so similar to how his abnormality had come to be, yet the result had been completely different.

The similarity forced Nevyn to recall what had happened to him as a child. He thought he might have been 11 or 12, it was so long ago and he had stopped counting the years. But now the details seemed painfully relevant. He had been playing in the fields with his brother and they had not heeded their mother's cry to come inside. Before they knew it, the sky had darkened around them. As the wind had picked up, they turned their feet towards home, but too late as lightning split the air, striking Nevyn where he stood.

He remembered vaguely the fleeting sensation of pain, but also a profound weightlessness, as if gravity no longer held sway on his body. His brother rushed to his side and took in Nevyn's charred visage. He put a hand on Nevyn's arm, and from where the point of contact was made, Nevyn's soul forged a bridge into his brother's body, leeching on to the soul inside. This had resulted in a massive shudder that shook his new host from head to toe.

Nevyn resumed consciousness just in time to and see his physical body evaporate in a shower of light before his eyes. He assumed he was dead and now a ghost made to wonder the earth. But as he looked down on himself, he did not feel ethereal in any way, which is how he believed a spirit or ghost would manifest. Then he noticed the clothes he was wearing and understanding started to set in. They were his brother's clothes. He was his brother.

He did not understand what was happening to him or why the body he now occupied was not his own. He was an intelligent child and intuited that it must be because of the lightning strike or his own physiology, or perhaps a mixture of the two. Whatever it was, his soul, sensing the end was near, had been able to escape to a new body when his brother had touched him. Now worried about the fate of his brother, he ran, …