The faint sound dispersed into the void, almost swallowed by the silently flowing undercurrent.
Yet those four syllables rang out with striking clarity.
Gavin froze where he stood, still half bent over.
The features mere inches away from him, even the faint black mole at the right temple, matched the face he had seen in the mirror for three years exactly.
Only the boy before him was far thinner and frailer, his cheeks pale and tears still clinging to the corners of his eyes. Huddled in the shadows, he looked like a terrified specter.
In the sky above, the white whirlpool, shrunk to the size of a washbasin, turned slowly, without a trace of the Obscurus's savage black aura.
His heart sank slightly.
When he had awakened in that bright London bedroom three years ago, everything had gone almost eerily smoothly.
There had been no agonizing collision of souls, no resistance from the body's original owner or onslaught of fragmented memories like those in transmigration novels.
He seemed to have taken over this body naturally. Its life, parents, and surroundings had accepted him wholesale, without even the slightest physiological rejection.
Over the past three years, as a researcher with rigorous modern scientific training, he had occasionally entertained a private doubt—
How could a transfer of consciousness go so smoothly? Where had the original owner's consciousness gone?
He had always left that question buried in his heart.
Until now.
Had he never truly overwritten the original owner's consciousness?
Had his mature soul merely forced the body's young, native consciousness deep into the darkest recesses of its mind?
Had the massive Time-Turner explosion scattered the Obscurus and, in the process, blasted this native consciousness awake after three years of sleep?
Gavin straightened and took a step forward.
Watching his other self tremble