Borrowed Last Breath

Stats

• Cost: 2 MP, 1 Sanity
• Casting Time: 1 minute

Effect

By uttering a lilting chant and tracing the faint sigil of a winding clock on the corpse’s forehead, the caster slips into the dying person’s final minute as a translucent observer. The scene plays out exactly as it did, complete with the victim’s lingering thoughts and the ticking of the clock that never stopped. The caster can watch, hear, and feel the moment, but cannot intervene. When the minute ends, the vision collapses, leaving the caster with the echo of the corpse’s last heartbeat and a faint, second set of measurements—an older, ghost‑written schedule—etched in the caster’s mind.

Consequences

Each use frays the caster’s grip on linear time. After three castings the caster suffers a cumulative -10% penalty to Spot Hidden and loses one hour of personal time each night, which never returns. Sanity erodes at a rate of 1d4 per use as the thin veil between life and death is repeatedly torn.

Deeper Magic

If the caster spends an extra minute focusing on the hidden schedule, they can extract a single piece of forgotten knowledge from the corpse’s past—granting a one‑time bonus of +20% to any Knowledge (Occult) roll related to the victim’s last days. The price rises to 2 Sanity for this deeper insight.

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