If before Fate felt like he was lit ablaze, now it was the opposite.
A deathly chill took hold of him, as if he was dropped into water only a few seconds away from freezing over into ice.
He breathed in a shuddering breath, the unknown person above him watching as frosty steam wafted from his mouth.
Each cell within Fate felt lifeless and devoid of purpose. It was a horrible, empty feeling, feeling his brain start to shut down.
Before it could do so, the heat returned.
This time it was gentle, almost motherly in its warmth. The intense heat followed by the cold had made Fate forget what it felt like, but this was his normal body temperature.
He sighed contentedly as his dead cells flashed to life, multiplying and returning to death soon after, cannibalizing the decayed and damaged cells to sustain the process perpetually.
For the first time in almost twenty minutes, his heart beat.
Blood rushed through his limbs, filling him with a warmth that felt almost euphoric. One by one, his nerves flared to life, the tactile sensations of the world slowly coming back to him.
He frowned at the feeling. Somehow, the spot where his heart should sit felt… vacant. And his head felt hollow as well. And his stomach. Even weirder, his eyes felt… powerful?
He could feel a Kernel of something within his mind, connected to his eyes. It almost felt like his Facet, but he knew for certain that it wasn't. Such a basic thing as identifying one's Facet was the easiest thing for a Mage to do.
Moreover, he was now 44% through the Journeyman Stage, a massive leap from the 8.5% he had been sitting at before.
What happened to him?
There were two terms for what he had just undergone, each something he had read about in passing during his independent studies: Jhana and Deviation.
The first, Jhana, was the mutation he had triggered.
Jhana was a conscious change to one's Skill, and involved deep thought and a solid understanding of what one wished to accomplish and how their Facet could produce the result.
It required thorough introspection of one's self and their desired result, as one could very well end up with something worse than one had before.
Jhana was typically reserved for Masters and Arch-Mages, as the physical strength of a Master Body was the minimum requirement for surviving the process. They were also limited to one Jhana per Stage, or else they'd tear themselves apart.
"Why did one have to circulate their Mana within their body to change their Skill?" One might ask.
The simple answer was that a Mage couldn't access their Facet in that way.
The long answer was that one's Facet didn't have a tangible location in one's body. It existed on a separate plane of existence, much like the Kernel within Fate's mind now, and couldn't be directly interacted with.
The solution, then, was to stimulate it artificially, using one's comprehension to shape Mana within themselves in a way reminiscent of Imprints.
If done with the proper knowledge, a change would trigger within one's body, which in turn would cause one's Skill to react and change.
This was the reason you needed to be a Master at the minimum to attempt this and survive, as it would result in a change of your Master Body as well, sometimes a small one but other times a large one.
This change was what made Fate feel like he was on fire. It was his body breaking itself down and rearranging its parts before clicking back together.
In truth, Fate's Jhana and his survival of it was nothing more than dumb luck.
If it wasn't for his near-death experience, he wouldn't have come up with the necessary information to undergo it, nor would he have been able to work under the excreting pain.
And if it wasn't for the perfect timing of what he assumed was a healing potion, he would've torn himself apart from the inside out, if he had managed to prompt the change in the first place without its energy.
Above all, he had his Facet to thank.
He didn't know why or how he could ever create a Master Body as a mere Journeyman, but he knew his Facet had something to do with it, just like it gave him an aura as an Apprentice, when he should've had the lesser Mana sense.
Now Fate had a Skill that was also partly a Master Body, which wasn't a rare occurrence per se. Well, it wasn't rare for Masters.
A Master Body would usually have traits that played off of or were derived from their Skill, or the Master would receive a buff to their Skill that helped or bolstered one's Master Body.
Sometimes this would make the two indistinguishable from one another, much like Fate's was.
But due to the unique circumstances of his Jhana, he didn't gain the superhuman strength or speed of a Master, as his Master Body was created by the much weaker Journeyman Mana he possessed.
As the understanding of the basic principles of his new Skill was bequeathed to him by his Facet, he considered this a worthwhile trade-off.
For starters, that hollow feeling he felt wasn't imagined. His heart, brain, lungs, kidneys, and digestive system were all in a constant intangible state.
This intangibility worked like his previous Skill, making his organs untouchable by all nonmagical things and anything magic at or below his Journeyman Stage in power.
The organs and his blood cells were alive more often than not to keep his body functioning properly, and he'd still suffer greatly if they were damaged, though it would be more of a long-term effect than a short-term one, as his body slowly broke down.
His brain was the exception, as it was still the center of activity for his body. Destruction of his brain would mean death shortly after. On the bright side, its new intangible state meant he was more resistant to Mental Skills within his Stage.
He also no longer needed to go to the bathroom, and blood loss or lack of oxygen wouldn't kill him, although without the last two he wouldn't be able to heal naturally, as his cells wouldn't have the means to spark to life.
He still needed to eat and sleep and felt pain, but the last one was dulled.
As for his active, full-body intangibility, he still had it, but it was a lot weaker.