The mountain wind bit at his face, sharp and real in a way that made no sense. He'd been dying—he was sure of it. The poison had worked its way through his veins like ice water, and then there was nothing.
Now there was this.
He looked down at his hands. Solid. Warm. He flexed his fingers and felt the response in his muscles. A cruel trick, maybe. Another layer of whatever hell awaited him.
"You're wondering if you've lost your mind."
He turned. The woman sat at the small table like she'd been waiting for him all along. Her suit was charcoal gray, expensive but not flashy. Her face was calm—the kind of calm that came from seeing things others couldn't. She gestured to the empty chair across from her.
"I haven't," he said flatly. "Lost my mind."
"No. You haven't." She smiled, and for just a moment something flickered behind her eyes—ancient, patient, kind in a way that made his chest hurt. "You're dead. I'm an angel. And I'm here to offer you a choice."
He should have laughed. Should have told her she was insane, that this was brain death, final dreams, chemicals firing in a dying mind. Instead, he sat down.
"My name is Cassiel," she continued, sliding a contract across the table. The paper looked ordinary—cream colored, edges crisp. "I work for the upper echelons. The ones who run things. They've been watching you."
"Watching me?"
"You were interesting," Cassiel said simply. "You loved people who didn't deserve your love. You worked yourself to death for people who killed you. And in your last moment, you cursed them with such feeling." She tilted her head slightly. "Most people die bitter. You died angry. That's rare. That's valuable."
He stared at the contract without reading it.
"What do they want?"
"Entertainment," Cassiel said. "The upper echelons are old. Very old. They've seen most things. But a human with real stakes, real passion, learning to survive in ways his old life never taught him—" She leaned back.
"That entertains them."
"You want me to be a show."
"I want you to live," she corrected. "Fully. Without the weight of people who never appreciated you. The contract gives you power."
He picked up the contract. The words were clear enough.
He thought about his mother's cold eyes when he'd brought her tea.
He thought about his sister and how quickly she'd forgotten who paid for her wedding.
He thought about his wife's hands counting his money while he bled out on the kitchen tiles.
"If I sign," he said slowly, "I can be like superhuman or what?"
"Anything you want," Cassiel said.
"And they just... watch?"
"They watch," Cassiel confirmed. "The way we might watch a story unfold. They don't interfere. They don't control you."
He read through the contract more carefully this time. It was binding, he could feel that—the weight of it seemed to press against the paper itself. But there was nothing in it that asked him to be someone he wasn't. It asked him only to live.
He'd spent thirty years being what other people needed. Being small. Being grateful for scraps of acknowledgment. Being patient while they took and took and took.
He picked up the pen Cassiel offered him. It was warm in his hand.
"What happens to them? My family?"
"They fight over your business. Some of them might feel guilty, but not for long. They'll live their small lives and die their small deaths, and no one will remember them. But you—" She smiled. "You'll become a legend in this world."
He signed.
The moment the pen left the paper, the world changed. Colors sharpened. The wind tasted like copper and possibility. His body felt lighter but stronger, like he'd shed a weight that had crushed him his whole life. Power flooded through him—not overwhelming, but present, waiting, like a sword strapped to his back.
"What now?" he asked.
Cassiel stood, and the world seemed to stand with her. "Now you will wake up in your new body."