Chapter 1: RESURRECTION
The ceiling was wrong.
White tiles. Fluorescent lights. The smell of bleach and something underneath it—something sick and copper-sweet.
I blinked. Tried to move my hand.
Not my hand.
Thick fingers. Calluses I didn't earn. A hospital bracelet that read FRANCO, PAUL A. in faded typewriter ink.
"What the hell is this?"
My voice came out a croak, dry and rusted from disuse. Not my voice either. Too deep. Too rough. A stranger's throat vibrating with sounds that weren't mine.
A door banged open.
"He's awake! The Franco boy is awake!"
A nurse in a white cap rushed to my bedside. Young face. Scared eyes. Hands shaking as she took my pulse. Her name tag said MARTINEZ.
"Stay calm, Paul. You're safe. You're in Hartford Hospital."
"Hartford. Connecticut. Why does that matter?"
It mattered. Something in my skull was screaming that it mattered enormously, but the thoughts scattered like startled birds.
I died.
The memory slammed into me without warning. Rain-slicked highway. Headlights too close. The crunch of metal and the world spinning, and then—
Nothing.
Until this ceiling. These hands. This body.
"Doctor!" Nurse Martinez was shouting. "Get Doctor Hendricks!"
I tried to sit up. My arms trembled. Whatever this body had been through, it hadn't moved in a long time. Weeks. Months. The muscles had gone soft and unresponsive.
An older man in a white coat pushed through the doorway. Wire-rimmed glasses. Gray at his temples. He shone a penlight in my eyes and I flinched.
"Remarkable."
He said it like a prayer.
"Paul, can you hear me?"
I nodded. Speaking seemed dangerous. The wrong words might come out. Words from a dead man in the wrong decade.
"Wrong decade."
I'd seen the calendar on my way to work that morning. November 15th, 2023. Now there was a wall calendar behind Doctor Hendricks's shoulder. January 1968.
Fifty-five years backward. Into a stranger's body. In a hospital bed in a city I'd never visited.
"You were in a car accident," Hendricks said, speaking slowly like I was simple. "You've been in a coma for eleven days. Your parents—"
"Where are they?"
The words came out before I could stop them. Parents. This body had parents. Family.
Hendricks exchanged a look with Martinez. Something passed between them that I couldn't read.
"They're on their way. We contacted them as soon as you showed signs of waking. Paul... you're a miracle. The damage you sustained—" He paused. Chose different words. "We didn't expect you to wake up at all."
I understood then. The original Paul Franco had died. The accident had killed him, same as it killed me. The difference was that someone—something—had shoved a different soul into the empty space he left behind.
"I need water."
Practical. Start practical. Fall apart later.
Martinez brought me a cup with a straw. The water tasted like chlorine and paradise. I drank until she pulled it away.
"Slowly. Your stomach isn't ready for much."
The rest of the day blurred. Doctors. Tests. A couple in their fifties who looked at me with red-rimmed eyes and called me their boy. I let them hold my hand and tried not to feel like a thief.
The Francos were good people. I could see it in the way Mr. Franco kept clearing his throat, fighting back tears. In the way Mrs. Franco smoothed my hair with trembling fingers.
"We thought we lost you," she whispered.
"You did."
But I didn't say it. I just nodded and squeezed her hand and waited for night to come.
[Hartford Hospital — January 15, 1968, 11:47 PM]
The ward was dark except for the dim glow of the nurse's station down the hall. Everyone had finally left. The Francos. The doctors. The parade of faces I couldn't put names to.
I was alone with the body I'd stolen and the life I didn't understand.
I stared at the ceiling and tried to piece together what I knew. I was twenty-three when I died. Data analyst. Single. No kids, no pets, apartment I couldn't afford in a city I didn't like. Nothing special. Nothing remarkable.
No reason for this.
"Why me?"
The question hung in the darkness. No answer came.
I was starting to drift—exhaustion dragging me toward sleep—when something changed.
A pressure behind my eyes. Like a headache, but deeper. In my skull. In my thoughts.
Then the blue light came.
It materialized in the center of my vision, visible only to me. Words forming out of nothing. Floating in the air like a warning or a promise.
[WARREN LEGACY PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]
[WELCOME, HOST]
[INITIALIZING HUB ACCESS...]
My heart pounded. I sat up too fast and nearly blacked out. The blue text flickered but held.
[INITIALIZATION COMPLETE]
[ACCESSING MENTAL INTERFACE...]
The hospital room dissolved.
Not disappeared—I could still feel the bed beneath me, the scratch of cheap sheets against my skin—but overlaid. Another space opening up inside my mind.
A study. Cramped and dim, lit by guttering candles that threw dancing shadows on warped wooden walls. A desk sat in the center, covered in papers I couldn't quite read. The walls were carved with patterns—branching lines that pulsed with faint golden light. Like tree roots. Or neural pathways.
Floating near the ceiling, a constellation of pins glowed on an invisible map. Case files, something whispered in my mind. Current threats. And in the corner, a locked cabinet with a brass nameplate I couldn't make out.
The desk drew me forward. Papers arranged themselves as I approached, and words became clear:
[HOST STATUS]
Name: Paul Anthony Franco (INHERITED) True Age: 23 Body Age: 21 System Level: 1 Awakening Level: 0 (DORMANT)
Soul Integrity: 100/100 Psychic Stamina: 50/50 Faith Resonance: 10 Essence Points: 0 Faith Points: 0
"What is this?"
The words formed in my mind, and the system answered.
[WARREN LEGACY PROTOCOL: A SUPERNATURAL DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM]
[BONDED UPON TRANSMIGRATION]
[PURPOSE: COMBAT SUPERNATURAL THREATS. INVESTIGATE PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. SURVIVE.]
Survive. At least that was clear.
But Warren. I knew that name. Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Conjuring movies. Real-life paranormal investigators who'd spent decades hunting ghosts and demons across America.
This was their universe. Their world of hauntings and possessions and things that went bump in the night.
And I was in it. Alone. Level one. No idea what I was doing.
"Perfect."
The study flickered and I was back in my body, in my bed, in the hospital that suddenly felt a lot less safe.
That's when the temperature dropped.
It happened fast. One second I was sweating under thin blankets, the next my breath was fogging in front of my face. Ice spreading across the window. Frost forming on the metal bed frame.
I turned my head.
A child stood by the window.
A boy. Maybe eight years old. Hospital gown like mine. Bare feet on the cold tile floor.
Gray skin. Hollow eyes. A face that should have been a face but was somehow wrong. Too still. Too flat. Like a photograph of a person instead of the person themselves.
The ghost looked at me.
I looked back.
My heart was hammering so hard I could hear it in my ears. Every instinct screamed to look away, pretend I hadn't seen, pull the covers over my head like a child.
But children die in hospitals. This child had died. And he was still here.
[SUPERNATURAL PRESENCE DETECTED]
[ESSENCE GENERATED: 5]
[ENTITY CLASSIFICATION: RESIDUAL SPIRIT — HARMLESS]
Harmless. The system said harmless.
The ghost's mouth moved. Words that made no sound. His eyes—empty but desperate—locked onto mine.
He knew I could see him.
And then, between one blink and the next, he was gone. Just me and the frost and the pounding of my stolen heart.
The temperature crept back toward normal. The ice on the window began to melt.
I lay back against the pillow and tried to remember how to breathe.
Green jello sat on my bedside table. Leftovers from dinner. I grabbed the cup and ate it with shaking hands, not because I was hungry but because I needed something normal. Something human. Sugar and chemicals on my tongue, artificial and perfect.
The first thing I'd eaten in this new life.
"Whatever this is, whatever I'm supposed to do—I'll figure it out. One step at a time."
The clock on the wall read 3:07 AM.
The ghost appeared again. Same spot. Same stare.
This time, I stared back. I didn't flinch. I didn't look away.
Something changed in those hollow eyes. Recognition, maybe. Or hope.
The spirit raised one gray hand and pointed. Across the ward. An empty bed with rumpled sheets.
Then he vanished.
[CASE AVAILABLE: D-RANK — UNFINISHED BUSINESS]
I sat up in the dark, the system's notification glowing in my vision.
"Alright, kid."
I threw off the blankets.
"Let's find out who you are."