The pain had dulled, but the confusion hadn't. I stood in the hallway, barefoot, wrapped in a towel that clung to this unfamiliar body. The walls were quiet — too quiet. Even silence has its own sound.
Each step felt like walking on glass — my muscles strained, my joints protested. But I moved anyway. I had to. If I stayed still, I'd drown in questions.
There was a photo on the wall. A man — tall, broad, clean-shaven, smiling with teeth that weren't mine. His arm was around a woman. She had kind eyes but tired ones.
I moved past the kitchen. Dishes in the sink. Mail piled up. One envelope caught my eye — blood had soaked through the corner. Dried, but still red enough to say something happened here.
The living room was worse. Overturned chair. Broken lamp. Carpet stained near the wall. Not wine.
I crouched — this body didn't like that — and touched the edge of the stain. Cold. My mind flickered. A flash: metal glinting in low light. A grunt. A body falling.
I reached for the chair, and as my fingers grazed the worn fabric, a sudden flash split through my mind like a blade through fog.
Two figures.
Arguing.
Their faces were indistinct, as if smeared by time or memory — but the atmosphere was unmistakable. Rage. Hurt. Desperation.
One wore a plain black shirt, sleeves rolled past the elbows. The second... a blue shirt — folded just like mine. The same build. The same posture. It was this body.
The argument had been heated, brutal even — though I couldn't hear their words. Just silence. Crushing, loaded silence. Then — nothing.
The vision vanished as quickly as it came.
I staggered back, breathing hard. My fingertips still tingled. These weren't just hallucinations. They were fragments. Memories trapped in the air, clinging to objects like ghosts refusing to leave.
Clues.
But too many pieces, and no way to fit them together.
I stood, ignoring the aching joints and sore muscles that weren't entirely mine. If I wanted answers, I had to dig. My instincts the ones I trusted in my old life, told me there'd be something useful here. A study, maybe.
I moved cautiously through the house, touching surfaces along the way. Each contact brought more flashes.
Laughter with someone unseen.
A bottle being raised in a silent toast.
The sharp flick of a lighter. Smoke swirling in cold air.
Faces — never clear — but always watching.
These moments were from different times. Summer, winter, daylight, rain. My mind tried to stitch them together, but they didn't form a story. Just echoes. Shattered fragments of a life once lived.
Then I saw the door.
Partially hidden behind a faded curtain.
I stepped forward and grabbed the knob, bracing for another surge of memory.
Nothing.
No vision.
The knob was cold. Still. Real.
That unsettled me more than the flashes.
I opened the door.
It was a study — neat, polished, unnaturally untouched. Everything was meticulously in place, like someone had prepared it for inspection.
I resumed my inspection. Each touch still brought visions — silent fragments of the man's past.
Books. Bottles. An unfinished game of chess.
Nothing felt lived in. It was like he only came in here on rare occasions, or maybe… avoided it altogether.
A cold chill brushed the back of my neck.
Odd. I was dead — technically. Should I even feel cold?
I glanced at the open window and moved to shut it. The breeze stopped, but the chill remained, deeper, heavier.
That's when I noticed the file.
It lay neatly placed on the table brown, clean, too fresh to have been forgotten. A single sheet sat on top, barely clipped.
One word.
"Victoria."
The moment I read it, pain erupted in my skull like shattered glass. This vision was nothing like the others.
I couldn't breathe. The air was ice.
A voice screamed from my mouth — his voice. Desperate, broken.
"VICTORIA!"
The sound echoed in the dark of my mind as the vision dragged me under. I saw a dim cabin. A storm. The man or this body collapsed on the wooden floor, trembling. Then, everything shifted.
A girl.
Running barefoot through a meadow, sunlight catching in her hair, laughing freely like the world hadn't ended yet.
Then — it stopped.
The warmth vanished.
My body began to shake violently. My fingers dug into the wood of the desk to ground myself. The wind outside picked up — suddenly and violently — slamming against the walls, rattling the glass, as if the entire house had just remembered something it was trying to forget.