Lost in Time

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

Time's Regression began pulling the target backward. Lost in Time completes that displacement. The target is no longer experiencing a slightly delayed present. They are experiencing the past, specifically and precisely one round behind where everyone else stands, and they have no way of knowing it.

What the target sees is real. This is what makes the spell so effective and so difficult to resist. Rumination is not feeding the target lies or hallucinations. It is feeding them accurate information. The enemy was standing there. That space was empty. Their ally was over there. Every perception the target receives is a true memory of what was, delivered with the complete conviction of something being experienced in the present moment. Should the target make a perceive check, they would perceive what was present a round ago. The battlefield has moved on. The target has not.

Each round the target acts on the battlefield state of the previous round - attacking positions that were occupied then but may be empty now, moving into spaces that were clear then but may hold hazards now, avoiding areas that were dangerous then but may have shifted since. A Hard Insight check can be made each round to pierce the temporal lag briefly, acting on the current state of the battlefield for that action. Failure means Rumination holds them in that one-round-ago reality, every action aimed at a world that has already changed. Allies who know the spell is active can use it deliberately - stepping out of last round's position after the target has already seen them there, leaving nothing but empty space where an attack arrives. The praeteriamancer knows exactly what the target now see's, and can act upon that knowledge however they so desire.