Rumination's Separation

This spell is a part of the Flashback spell chain and is found in the Flashback rune stone.

Within every runic element's affinity - an expression of that runic power - lies two symbols. These are the two parts of that affinity that all magic of the affinity is connected to, and for each there is a light symbol and a dark symbol. Some dark symbols are cruel, some are punishing, some are devastatingly patient. Rumination none of these. Rumination is the symbol of not letting go, not moving on, not allowing for growth or change. Rumination is simply fear of progression, of what is, and what could be. Rumination's inability to move forward causes it to retreat further back when pressured, looking for that point where its obsession cannot let go. Sometimes that point is before the target of Rumination's obsession has yet to be born. Rumination often wonders, how can the target let go and move forward it the target was never even allowed to exist?

When this spell is cast Rumination reaches backward through the target's entire existence - past the present, past every memory they carry, past their earliest recollections, past childhood, past birth - to the time before they were anything at all. And it takes hold of the spirit and pulls it toward that time, toward the moment before the target existed, where the spirit would have nowhere to be and nothing to be. And more importantly, unable to move forward. 

Each round for three rounds Rumination attempts to complete the separation - the spirit pulled further back toward the time before its birth, the body left behind without the connection that animates it. The target must make a Hard Vitality Save each round to resist, their physical existence asserting itself against what Rumination is attempting to undo. Three successful saves and the target survives, Rumination's hold broken, the spirit snapping back to the present where it belongs. Fail even one and the separation completes. Their spirit is sent to before its existence, the body left behind, and the target dies not from injury or magic in any conventional sense but from simply ceasing to have ever been present in this moment. Rumination does not celebrate. It simply notes that the question it was always asking has finally been answered, and knows now the target can no longer move forward.