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# Mentalists

Story
The tavern was quiet except for the hum of rain outside. The fire had burned low, shadows trembling like smoke caught in glass. A man sat alone at a table, his hands wrapped around a cooling cup of wine.
Across the room, a stranger watched him. Not staring, not quite, just looking with the stillness of someone listening to something only he could hear.
The man frowned. He knew that face. He was sure of it. From the market that morning, perhaps. Or the gatehouse. No, earlier. The stranger had been there when he woke, sitting by the bed, silent as a statue. The thought was absurd, but it arrived with the crispness of memory. He could see it: the pale figure at the edge of the bed, watching him breathe.
His pulse quickened. He blinked hard, and another memory bloomed unbidden. The same man, standing in the steam of his morning wash, eyes reflecting the water. Then again, sitting across the table at breakfast, unmoving, smiling faintly.
The memories multiplied. The stranger's face was everywhere, in the crowd, on the road, at his mother's grave, whispering from behind the veil of every recollection. His heart thundered. The cup slipped from his hand, spilling red across the wood. He stumbled back, choking on his own breath.
When he fled into the rain, the stranger did not move.
He sat still, shaking slightly, the echoes of the other man's panic still stinging at the edge of his mind. It always happened this way.
He had not meant to intrude. He never did. But minds were not doors; they were mirrors, and when you looked into them, you were always reflected back.
He rubbed his temples, trying to silence the fading noise, the anger, the shame, the sudden memory of a woman's hand he had never touched. For a moment he could not tell which thoughts were his. The faces blurred together, laughter and fear braided into one.
The taste of wine lingered on his tongue, though he had not drunk any.
He took a slow breath, gathered himself, and rose to leave. Outside, the rain was still falling. In every droplet, he saw his own reflection, and for an instant, another face smiled back.

The watcher inside my head

Story
The room was empty except for two chairs, a table, and the scent of burned incense. The mind mage sat in one chair, eyes half-closed, fingers pressed together. Across from him, the prisoner glared, chains clinking softly with each breath.
"I will not speak," the prisoner said.
"You already are," the mage replied.
He reached out-not with his hand, but with thought. It began as a thread, fine as a spider's silk, cast into the air. He felt it brush against the man's fear, tasted the bitterness of it. Then came the rest, the flood.
The room was gone.
He was standing in a narrow alley under a red moon. Soldiers were shouting. The prisoner, no, he, was running. The sting of sweat in his eyes, the thud of boots behind him, the taste of copper in his mouth. He turned a corner, saw a gate, saw freedom. Then pain. A blow to the skull, the world cracking open.
The mage gasped and drew back, clutching his head. The echo lingered, the weight of another man's terror pressing against his own ribs.
Across the table, the prisoner stared, eyes wide. "You saw it," he whispered. "You were there."
The mage nodded slowly. "Yes."
He stood, dizzy, and turned to leave. But when he reached for the door, he hesitated. For a moment, he could not remember which one of them had been struck down in the alley. He could still feel the blood on his hands-warm, sticky, real.
Outside the chamber, the guards bowed as he passed. He did not return their gaze. His shadow walked beside him, half a step behind, whispering things he could not bear to listen to.

No secrets

## The Weavers of Thought

Mentalists, called mind mages or thought-weavers, do not command flame or shadow. They command perception itself. Their power lies in the folds of thought, the invisible landscape within the mind.

They can plant ideas, twist memories, conjure illusions so vivid they wound. They can calm madness or ignite it, heal a broken mind or shatter it beyond repair.

But the mind is not clay, it resists. Each act of intrusion leaves a mark on both the victim and the mage. When a mentalist peers into another's thoughts, the path goes both ways.

## The Taint of Reflection

To touch another's mind is to open one's own.

When a mentalist reads a memory, they do not simply see it. They live it, feel it, become it for an instant. Fear, grief, rage, whatever burns in the target passes through them. Most mages recover after moments of confusion, but some fragments linger.

A child's terror, a murderer's joy, a lifetime of regret, these can take root and bloom like infections. A careless mentalist may wake screaming with another's nightmares, or find themselves craving what their subject once desired.

The worst cases lose their identity entirely, their minds a collage of borrowed memories and stolen voices.

## The Price of Knowing

Illusions and thought manipulation draw from the mind's own energy, both the caster's and the target's. The stronger the emotion, the easier it is to twist, but the more dangerous it becomes. Rage, guilt, and love are the most potent conduits, and the most corrosive.

Each intrusion frays the mage's sense of self. Faces blur, names fade, and sometimes they cannot remember which memories are theirs. Some carve sigils into their skin or wear iron charms to anchor the mind. Others tattoo their own names across their wrists so they do not forget.

It is said the most powerful of their kind no longer dream, for they cannot tell where their own thoughts end and others begin.

## The Ethics of Thought

Because their art erodes trust, mind mages are feared even by kings. To have one's thoughts laid bare is worse than torture, it is desecration, it is rape.

Yet rulers still employ them, in war, in justice, in secrets. A mentalist can extract truth where steel cannot, uncover betrayal before it happens. But no one forgets what it feels like to be seen in that way.

Those who serve in courts live isolated, given fine quarters but forbidden to speak to others unsupervised. No one shares meals with them. They dine alone, surrounded by silence.

## The Unreliable Mirror

Illusions are the visible half of mental magic. A skilled weaver can bend the senses of whole crowds, altering color, sound, even pain. But illusion always risks inversion, when a spell fails, it can turn on the caster.

Some mages become trapped in their own visions, unable to tell whether they are awake. They see the world shifting like glass, familiar faces melting into strangers. A few forget entirely that there ever was a world beyond their own mind's walls.

## The World's View

Mentalists are distrusted more than feared. People can tolerate the idea of a summoner summoning demons or a necromancer raising corpses, but to lose ownership of one's own thoughts is another thing entirely.

Priests call them soul-thieves, scholars call them parasites, and yet every ruler keeps at least one. In times of war, their value outweighs every moral.

It is said that when a mind mage dies, their last thought does not fade but drifts into the nearest dream, whispering to be remembered.

## Theories and Fears

Some scholars argue that mentalists are not touching minds at all, but spirits, the same essence shamans commune with. The difference, they say, is that where shamans ask, mind mages force.

Others believe thought itself is a form of energy that can echo forever once disturbed. Every illusion, every planted idea, may linger in the unseen, infecting others who think the same thought.

A few whisper that the first mentalists were born during great wars, when pain and fear saturated the air so strongly that it left imprints, minds learning to speak to minds through suffering alone.

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