Night duty changed the personality of places. During the day, hospitals felt crowded and noisy, filled with hurried footsteps and impatient voices, but at night they transformed into quiet mechanical organisms that breathed through ventilation systems and flickered softly beneath artificial lights. Aeris Vael had worked enough graveyard shifts to know this rhythm well, yet something about this particular night pressed heavily against his senses.
He moved through the corridor with his tablet in hand, scanning patient charts and updating routine data while maintaining the detached focus he had trained himself to keep. Emotional distance was not cruelty; it was survival. When people spent enough time near illness and death, attachment became a liability.
Room forty-seven appeared ordinary at first glance. An elderly patient lay motionless beneath thin blankets, chest rising faintly with the help of machines. The diagnosis listed multiple organ failure with low recovery probability. Aeris adjusted the IV line, checked oxygen levels, and prepared to leave without unnecessary delay.
The moment he turned away, a sudden pressure wrapped around his wrist.
The grip was weak yet desperate, driven more by will than physical strength. Aeris turned back instinctively and saw the patient's eyes open wide, unfocused but burning with urgency. Lips trembled as the man tried to speak, struggling against shallow breath and failing organs.
Fragments of sound escaped, broken and incomplete, carrying the weight of fear and longing. The words did not form clearly, but the meaning reached Aeris without translation. The man did not want to be forgotten. He did not want his life to end quietly without acknowledgment.
Before Aeris could respond, alarms triggered across the room.
Medical staff rushed in, pushing him aside as procedures began. Movements became rapid and mechanical, guided by training rather than emotion. Within minutes, the chaotic effort ended in silence. The heart monitor flattened into a straight line, and the doctor declared the time of death with practiced calm.
A white sheet was pulled over the patient's face.
The room returned to stillness.
Staff exited, already moving on to the next task, and the corridor absorbed their footsteps. Aeris remained standing near the doorway, unable to shake the strange heaviness lingering in the air.
That was when reality shifted.
At first, it felt like a sudden change in temperature, subtle but noticeable. The space above the covered body distorted faintly, rippling as if invisible heat waves moved through it. Aeris blinked repeatedly, suspecting exhaustion, but the distortion persisted.
Slowly, unfamiliar symbols formed within the air.
They were not projected lights or holograms. They possessed depth and presence, existing slightly out of alignment with physical space. A faint pressure radiated from them, creating discomfort behind Aeris's eyes and tightening his chest.
Information surfaced inside his mind without sound or voice.
REGRET ECHO DETECTEDCONTRACT AVAILABLETYPE: UNFULFILLED PROMISEREWARD: MEMORY CORE – FAMILY ANCHOR
His breathing became shallow. No one else reacted.
Nurses passed by the open door without pausing. Security cameras remained idle. The phenomenon existed only within his perception, responding exclusively to him.
Aeris took a step backward, heart pounding, yet the symbols drifted forward as if drawn toward his presence. Panic tried to rise, but another sensation emerged beneath it, something deeply familiar and unsettling.
White silence. Cold emptiness.
The same sensation he remembered from years ago.
When he had been pronounced clinically dead after a transportation accident and revived minutes later, doctors called it a miracle. Aeris had always felt something was incomplete afterward, as if his existence had been stitched back together imperfectly.
Now he understood that whatever broke inside him that day had never fully healed.
Against logic, training, and instinct, his hand lifted slowly.
The moment his fingers touched the floating symbols, the hospital corridor dissolved.
The world shifted violently.
Aeris found himself standing inside a cramped apartment illuminated by warm yellow lighting. Dust particles floated through air illuminated by a hanging bulb. A small kitchen occupied one side of the room, cluttered with mismatched utensils and cheap furniture.
A woman stood at the sink washing dishes with tired yet practiced movements. Nearby, a young girl sat at a table drawing stars across worn paper with blue ink.
The same man from the hospital bed stood beside Aeris, younger and stronger, smiling softly as he spoke about coming home early and fixing the leaking roof.
The girl looked up and asked for a promise.
He gave it immediately.
The moment carried warmth and sincerity, then fractured without warning.
The apartment shattered into fragments of memory that surged violently into Aeris's consciousness. Faces, voices, emotions, and unfinished moments flooded his mind in overwhelming detail. When reality reconstructed itself, he found himself kneeling on the hospital floor, breathing heavily as sweat soaked through his uniform.
The glowing symbols faded.
A new internal awareness formed instead.
Coordinates embedded themselves into his thoughts. Names surfaced. Dates aligned. The emotional residue of the dead man's regret remained present like a lingering echo.
Aeris forced himself to stand.
He did not speak about what happened. He finished his shift silently and left the hospital before sunrise, carrying weight that did not belong to him.
Two days passed.
Sleep came in short bursts interrupted by vivid dreams that were not his own. Images of family dinners, broken promises, and quiet loneliness invaded his rest. By the third morning, the internal pressure became unbearable.
Following the implanted memory trail, Aeris arrived at a worn residential building located several districts away. He climbed the stairs slowly, stopping outside apartment four-C. His hand hovered near the door before knocking.
The door opened cautiously.
A middle-aged woman stood inside, eyes guarded and posture tense.
Aeris introduced himself with minimal explanation and delivered the final message exactly as it had been preserved in his memory. Every word flowed naturally, carrying the emotional tone of the original speaker.
The woman's expression shattered.
Tears filled her eyes as her composure collapsed, and she gripped the doorframe for support. Gratitude escaped her lips in a trembling whisper.
The moment she spoke, Aeris felt a subtle internal shift.
Pressure lifted from his chest.
His breathing steadied.
A faint warmth spread through his thoughts, accompanied by a sensation of structural stability inside his mind.
Invisible information surfaced again.
CONTRACT COMPLETEMEMORY CORE STABILIZEDMENTAL RESILIENCE INCREASEDEMOTIONAL STABILITY PATTERN ACQUIRED
This time, the effect was not overwhelming.
It felt permanent.
Like a piece of another life had integrated itself into his mental framework.
Aeris left the building under falling rain, walking slowly through wet streets illuminated by neon reflections. He stopped beneath a streetlamp and stared at his reflection in a glass storefront.
The face remained unchanged.
Yet something fundamental inside him had shifted.
The dead had not disappeared.
They had transferred their unfinished weight onto him.
Aeris finally understood that this ability was not a coincidence.
It was not a gift.
It was the result of a broken boundary between life and death that now flowed through his existence.
And the worst realization settled in quietly.
If one contract existed, others would follow.
If he could see these echoes, then someone else might be searching for them too.
The silence of death had broken.
And Aeris had become part of what replaced it.