2026-01-27 23:46:49Axel stared at his reflection in the grimy mirror above the hospital sink. His trembling hand combed through bangs that were usually jet black, but now a thick lock of hair at his temples had turned completely white. The color looked stiff, like lifeless silver wire.
He rubbed the skin beneath his eyes. Fine lines had settled there. Axel was no longer a fresh man in his early thirties. He looked like someone who had just crawled out of ten years of suffering in the span of a few hours.
The ICU door opened. Arlo stepped out, his face exhausted, but his eyes were shining. “Axel! This is insane! The doctor says Elara is stable now. Her heart stopped for a moment, but now the rhythm is strong. It’s a miracle, Xel!”
Instinctively, Axel pulled the hood of his jacket low over his head. He turned his back on Arlo. “That’s good. Take care of her.”
“Where are you going? You don’t want to see Elara?” Arlo stepped forward, reaching for Axel’s shoulder. “You’re acting strange. Why does your voice sound so heavy?”
“Don’t touch me!” Axel slapped Arlo’s hand away roughly.
Arlo froze, his hand hanging in the air. “Xel? What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?”
Axel was forced to turn slightly. In that instant, Arlo’s breath caught in his throat. His eyes went wide, his face turning deathly pale, as if he were staring at a corpse that could speak. “Dear God, Axel? Your face… why is it so wrinkled? And your hair…?” Arlo took a step back, his trembling finger pointing at Axel’s head. “Xel, what kind of curse did you get? You… you look like an old man!”
“I’m just sleep-deprived, Arlo! Just take care of Elara!” Axel snapped, his voice hoarse and deep. He turned and half ran down the corridor, ignoring Arlo’s terrified shouts calling his name.
An hour later, Axel sat in a private clinic on the outskirts of the city. He paid five times the normal consultation f*e to ensure the doctor kept his mouth shut and examined him immediately. Dr. Darren, a middle-aged man sitting across from him, stared at Axel’s X-ray results with a sharply furrowed brow.
“Mr. Axel, you said you are thirty-one years old?” Dr. Darren asked, his glasses slipping down his nose.
“Yes, Doctor. Is something wrong?”
The doctor let out a long breath and turned the monitor toward Axel. “Your bone density results match those of a sixty-year-old man. That’s not all. Your kidney function and lung capacity are also severely reduced. This makes no medical sense. You are experiencing extremely aggressive cellular aging. Your body is very fragile, Axel. Think of it like a machine. Your components are worn out long before their time.”
“What’s the solution?”
“Stop working. Avoid stress. Complete rest." Darren said gravely. “If you push yourself, your organs could fail at any moment.”
Axel left the examination room with unsteady steps. In the empty corridor, he stopped and closed his eyes.
“System! Answer me!” he roared inside his head.
[Request detected. What would you like to know?]
“You said Elara’s cost was only two years! Then why does my body feel like it lost twenty?!”
[System cost is an absolute value. However, the biological response to lifespan extraction is subjective. You were in a state of malnutrition and chronic stress before system activation. The damage you feel is the ‘interest’ on your already poor health.]
“Bastard!” Axel cursed. “Then how do I get back to normal? You said money earned through real work can add lifespan.”
[Balance Principle: $10,000 earned through legitimate labor equals +1 month of lifespan.]
Axel laughed bitterly in the empty parking lot. Ten thousand dollars earned through sweat and labor for just one extra month of life. Meanwhile, the system could rip five years from him in a blink for instant money. Fairness truly did not exist in this entity’s vocabulary.
“You damn loan shark.”
[Balance must be maintained. Destruction is easier than construction. Taking lifespan is an instant transaction. Building lifespan is a process of growth.]
He pressed a hand to his tight chest. His choices were now only two. Live in luxury as a dying rich man, or start working like a slave just to extend his life month by month.
But his thoughts were cut short by his phone vibrating. A message from an unknown number appeared:
“Axel, we know you have the money now. Gerry failed to bring you back to the Boss. Now it’s not just your fingers we want, but your mother’s life back in the village if you don’t hand over your entire balance tonight. Come to the old warehouse at the harbor at midnight.”
Rage burned through the last of Axel’s vitality. Pain stabbed his heart, yet his eyes sharpened. He was no longer the weak Axel who could only beg a landlord for mercy. He looked toward the system panel still floating at the edge of his vision.
“System." Axel said coldly. “I’m not working a normal job today. I need a solution for this trash.”
[Tactical Option Available: Hire Professional Intervention. Permanently eliminate the threat and cleanse all criminal traces.]
[Cost: $50,000 and one year of remaining lifespan.]
[Balance deducted]
[Remaining balance: $20,000]
Axel coughed violently. Fresh blood dripped from his nose, splattering onto the motorcycle’s fuel tank. He could feel death drawing closer. If he took that option, he might look like a seventy-year-old man by tomorrow morning.
[Additional Option: ‘Temporary Health’. Restore peak physical condition for 24 hours by draining the last reserve of vitality.]
[Cost: 6 months of remaining lifespan.]
Axel stared at the blood on his hand. He knew this was a devil’s trap. The more he fought, the more years he paid. But letting his mother die was not an option.
His hand trembled over the virtual panel. On the edge of death, he finally realized that not knowing how much life remained was far more terrifying than knowing the exact moment of death. Every second now felt like a trigger ready to be pulled.
“Do it.” Axel hissed. “Give me that health. I’ll make sure they regret messing with a man who has no time left to die.”
Instantly, heat surged up his spine. The tightness in his chest vanished, his withered muscles snapping back into strength. Axel stood tall, even though he knew that beneath his skin, time was racing toward zero at a horrifying speed.
He started his motorcycle engine, not to run away, but to end this blood contract on his own terms.
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CHAPTER 11. PROBABILITY OF DEATH
"You think I would kneel just because you threaten my best friend’s life?” Axel muttered sharply beneath his helmet. His voice was swallowed by the roar of the motorcycle engine he was forcing past its safe limits on the empty streets of Vancouver. At the corner of his vision, the system interface flickered wildly, spewing unstable strings of code. The junk data injection he had executed at the apartment earlier had worked. The system now appeared overwhelmed, like an old computer forced to process thousands of commands at once.[SYSTEM ERROR: EMOTIONAL DATA ANOMALY][CALCULATION PROCESS DELAYED]A faint smirk curved Axel’s lips. The crushing pressure that had gripped his chest slowly began to ease. The overload had not destroyed the system, but it had bought him time. He leaned his bike at an extreme angle as he tore around the curve toward the central hospital district.“You can read statistics, but you cannot write destiny,” Axel hissed. A new warning appeared, the text unstable, a
Chapter 10. A New Threat
Morning on the outskirts of Vancouver greeted Axel with a dull ache in his joints. He woke on the thin mattress of the rented apartment without looking toward the mirror. The laptop on the table was still on, lines of code glowing from the analysis he had done the night before. Axel rose quickly and pulled on a thick jacket to conceal his frail body. He left the laptop and his phone locked inside the room. Today, he would do one thing forbidden by his new logic. He would move without a digital plan.Axel’s steps carried him to a small coffee shop on the corner of a run down street. In front of the door, a middle aged man was kneeling beside an old car that had broken down. Smoke rose from the open hood. The man wiped his oil smeared face with an expression of despair. Axel stopped right beside him without making a sound.“Need help?” Axel asked shortly.The man looked up and studied Axel’s aged face with hesitation. “The engine’s completely dead. I have to deliver this catering order
Chapter 9. The Fatigue Algorithm
The air on the fourth floor of the parking structure suddenly froze, as if time itself had been violently pulled by an invisible gravity. A transparent shockwave erupted from Axel’s body at the exact moment the tip of Goran’s black stone knife touched the skin of his neck. The gaunt man was flung backward, his body slamming into a concrete pillar hard enough to send cracks spidering across its surface. His strange knife flew free, clattering across the damp cement floor before disappearing into the darkness.Axel did not fall. He stood rigid, but inside his head, the sound of bones cracking echoed in rapid succession, like dry branches snapping one after another. His joints were forcibly hardened. He could feel the hydration beneath his skin evaporating, leaving behind wrinkled, lifeless tissue. The calcium in his bones shrank dramatically. He stared at his hands as the skin slackened, its pigment fading into a pale gray within seconds.[DEFENSE MODE ACTIVE][COST: 5 YEARS OF REMAININ
Chapter 8. Traces of the Same Man
Morning at Vancouver General Hospital felt like a broken simulation. Axel woke with nausea churning his stomach. He tried to sit up, but his joints felt stiff, as if the hinges of his bones had rusted solid. He glanced at the mirror on the wall. His white hair looked even more real under the cold neon lights, emphasizing the lines of aging now permanently etched into his face.He reached for his phone on the bedside table. The GPS coordinates to an old downtown parking structure were still blinking. The message felt like a knife pressed against his throat.“Axel? Where are you going?”Arlo’s voice broke the silence. His friend entered carrying coffee, his eyes red from lack of sleep. Arlo froze when he saw Axel forcibly pulling the IV line from his arm.“I have to go, Arlo. Something urgent came up.” Axel said shortly. His voice was heavy, far deeper than it used to be.“Urgent? Look at yourself! You just cheated death!” Arlo slammed the shopping bag onto the table. “Elara refuses to
Chapter 7. The Aging Hero
The hospital lights felt like they were burning Axel’s retinas as he slowly opened his eyes. The sharp stench of antiseptic and the soft hum of the ventilator beside his bed were the first things to greet him. His head felt heavy as lead. Every time he tried to move his fingers, an unfamiliar stiffness and joint pain struck him, pain that had no place in the body of a man in his early thirties.In the corner of the room, a small muted television displayed the local news, a bold headline stretched across the screen:“"PIER WAREHOUSE TRAGEDY: HUMAN TRAFFICKING SYNDICATE EXPOSED.”The image shifted, showing Gerry with his face mangled, and the Boss tightly handcuffed by the Vancouver police. The reporter looked animated, then the footage cut to blurry amateur video capturing the moment the hostages were freed.“Xel? You’re awake?”The voice was hoarse, cracked by tears. Axel turned his head slowly. His mother, Lena, sat beside the bed, gripping his hand tightly. Behind her stood Elara an
Chapter 6. Blood and Decisions
[Temporary Health: Active. Duration: 23:59:59.][Remaining Lifespan: Classified.]Axel no longer cared. He pushed his motorcycle through the freezing Vancouver night, heading toward the isolated outskirts of the harbor. Behind him, two black SUVs pursued at high speed, an elite escort unit he had hired at the cost of one year of his life. They were not just men in suits, they were killing machines sent by an entity that knew no mercy.The old warehouse on the northern pier loomed ahead. Axel stopped, the engine growling low before cutting out. He dismounted, his body feeling unnaturally light, an effect of the Temporary Health deceiving his nervous system.Inside the warehouse, the stench of diesel and rust greeted him. Gerry stood in the center of the room, casually flipping a folding knife with a mocking grin. In a leather chair behind him sat the Boss, the loan shark who controlled the harbor’s black routes. But Axel’s eyes locked onto only one thing, his mother, bound to a wooden
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