Chapter 3: Blood Memory

Silay made his way back to the comms desk. He still had a few things to clear before calling it a day.

First was Suliyao.

Before he could even settle in, the test results came in. He was pulled back into motion.

He informed the hospital personnel that the man would need to be transferred to another attending physician starting tomorrow, ideally one with both critical care experience and psychiatric clearance. His lab results were inconclusive, and the clinical presentation didn’t match what they had on file. Better to be cautious.

Silay had already instructed the attending nurses to monitor Suliyao closely over the next several hours. When he left the room earlier, they had already prepared something warm for him.

He appeared to be suffering from mild hypothermia. His core temperature was lower than normal, clearly indicating the initial vitals report. And yet, Silay remembered: the man wasn’t shivering when they spoke. He had seemed clear headed. Still, numbers didn’t lie. His hydration status was also suboptimal, borderline dehydration.

Hypothermia. Could’ve been from the storm. Had he been out in the cold that long?

And the dehydration… That forest was remote, far from any obvious water source. If he’d wandered for hours without shelter or fluids, it made sense. Collapse seemed inevitable.

Silay also didn’t rule out the possibility of hallucinations either, especially after Suliyao claimed the forest had spoken to him. The younger man was comprehensible enough to talk but maybe still confused about the surroundings.

He handed over a note he had scribbled on his clipboard. “His name’s Suliyao Laya. Twenty-six years old,” he told the staff. Since the admitting personnel hadn’t collected the basic information, he’d taken it upon himself.

The personnel nodded and began inputting the details into the hospital database. A few keystrokes in, the typing slowed, then stopped.

“There’s no patient under that name in our records,” the staff said. “Not even in our Cavite branch. You said he was from there?”

“I assumed. I picked him up from the outskirts,” Silay said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I haven’t recovered any ID.”

The staff tried again, entering just the first name.

“There’s a match for someone named Suliyao Lipol. The age match. Facial recognition… somewhat aligns. Should we flag this as a potential match?”

Silay paused. The surname is different…? Did Suliyao lie?

“Maybe he changed his surname or gave the wrong one. If the photo and emergency contact line up, go ahead and file it under provisional status. Mark it for follow-up verification.”

The personnel nodded and resumed typing.

“He has no hospitalization records.”

“Not even for his birth?”

“No. According to the file, he was delivered at home.”

“Oh.” Silay gave a small wave. “Thanks. Please take it from here.”

“Yes, Doc.”

* * *

The Laboratory

The scan was already printed by the time Silay reached the lab.

He took the sheets in silence.

Lesions along the lower spine. Disruptions in thalamic activity. Sleep-wake signals firing erratically, like tangled threads of a broken circuit. The paralysis wasn’t trauma-related, just as Itel suspected. Her diagnosis was right. A slow failure in communication between the brainstem and the limbs.

But even that didn’t explain everything.

The sleep symptoms weren’t simple exhaustion. They behaved like sudden system shutdowns. Narcolepsy didn’t match. Neither did epilepsy or any standard pediatric disorder. Lirika’s vitals stayed steady but she slipped into unresponsiveness in the span of seconds, like a switch flipped in her mind.

What could he do?

Silay leaned on the counter, tapping the edge of the printout with one finger.

Maybe a short-term fix. Light stimulants to manage drowsiness. Supplements that support neural repair, if her metabolism could take it. Physical therapy to slow the muscle atrophy. He scribbled down a note for that.

But deep down, he knew.

This wasn’t just medical. No textbook matched the full picture. No medicine could realign something so fundamentally… misaligned.

Room 110

Expecting another eerie one-sided conversation with the teenager, Silay knocked lightly.

The door opened before he could touch the knob.

Finally, an adult. A woman in her late twenties, maybe early thirties. Long dark hair tied neatly at her nape, and an air of alertness in her eyes, even if worry softened the edges.

“You’re the new doctor?” she asked.

“Silay Manawari,” he nodded, showing his ID. “Are you Lirika’s family?”

“I’m her aunt,” she said, extending a hand politely. “Hiraya. Hiraya Luan.”

He took it, grateful not to be facing cryptic mutterings this time. At least someone could hold a full conversation.

“She’s stable, but we’ve finished her scans,” Silay began as they stepped aside to let him in. “I want to walk you through the results.”

Hiraya sat beside the bed, nodding.

“There’s no external trauma, no injury that caused her paralysis. It’s something she was born with, I’m sure the family is already aware of this. The nerves between her spine and limbs aren’t sending signals properly. They’ve likely been deteriorating for a while.”

Hiraya didn’t interrupt. Just listened, her brows drawn in thought.

“As for her sudden sleeping episodes…” Silay hesitated. “That’s where things get harder to explain. It doesn’t behave like narcolepsy or any disorder we normally diagnose. Her brain shows bursts of abnormal thalamic activity, like it’s struggling to regulate her sleep-wake cycle. But all her other vitals stay normal during these blackouts.”

“So she just... shuts off?”

“In a way, yes.” He exhaled. “The most we can do right now is manage it. I’ll prescribe a low-dose stimulant to help regulate alertness. Physical therapy for her muscles. Possibly a course to support neurogenesis, depending on how she responds. But this isn’t something we can fix overnight.”

“Will it get worse?” Hiraya asked, voice soft.

Silay didn’t sugarcoat. “If we don’t intervene carefully, yes. But with consistent therapy, we can slow it down. That said…” He trailed off, eyes on the girl. “There are parts of this that don’t fit. We’ll need to keep watching. There may be… underlying causes we haven’t identified.”

Hiraya nodded. “We’ll cooperate with everything. Just tell me what to do.”

“I’ll send someone from neuro to brief you further. In the meantime, make sure she stays hydrated. Keep track of how often these blackouts happen—date, time, how long they last. Anything unusual, even dreams she mentions. Log it all.”

Hiraya stood with him as he turned to leave.

“We’ll do our part, Doctor.”

Silay offered a faint smile. “That’s all we can ask. We’ll see this through, together.”

As the man walked out, Hiraya sharply turned to Lirika. The teenager raised her eyebrows, “What?”

Hiraya laughed. “I thought modern machines would just spit out errors when it came to you. But the doctors sure try hard to reason it out.”

Lirika hummed in response.

“Okay, enough of playing sick. The hospital won’t be able to treat this. You know that.” Hiraya stepped closer. “Now tell me, why did you suddenly want to be admitted here? In Manila, of all places?”

“I had a dream,” the younger girl said. “I need to meet someone here.”

Hiraya leaned in and pinched her cheeks, earning a groan.

“What, pretending to be a Katalonan again? Just because our surname happens to match that of some ancient folklore—”

“I’m not lying!” Lirika snapped, her fingers clutching the sheets. “I did see it!”

“Humans don’t receive oracles from spirits or gods. Those are all myths,” Hiraya said as she sat down beside the bed, softening her tone. “We’re just going to waste money here. Do you even know who you’re looking for?”

Lirika stayed silent.

“See?” Hiraya sighed, exasperated.

The Luan family of today were no longer the feared and revered Katalonan of old. No scratch that, Hiraya believes that everything from that “Great Luan Clan” was a make believe of the older generation. Just to stroke their superstition.

They don’t exist! We are not them either! Is something she had shouted since she was a kid.

Although they were folk healers, their bloodline brushing against the unseen, Hiraya didn't vouch for their effectiveness. Okay sure, they may sense “ghosts” but who knows, maybe most of the family members were just delusional?

Maybe she’s the only one born normal here!

The countless beliefs did not end there. Their elders once called the generations after them Alagad—those who served quietly, humbly, as keepers of forgotten rites. In the present day, Alagad meant those who offered simple prayers, performed small ceremonies, and preserved scraps of memory from the time of spirits.

Them and Lirika herself claimed that she was one of the rare children who could see spirits, not just sense them. Their elders also believed she might be a blood memory of Saniha of the Luan Clan, an ancestor lost to undocumented time.

Hiraya crossed her arms. “You people are so stuck in the past. Sure, declare all you want that we’re descendants of someone not even in the history books. But how can we be sure?”

“I am her blood memory,” Lirika muttered, eyes darting away.

“So you really believe that nonsense they told you,” Hiraya raised her voice. “They’re just saying that to comfort you because you can’t walk!”

“No. It’s because Saniha had this too!”

“There’s just really no getting through you!”

Hiraya was already having a headache. 

Blood memory… was another concept beyond science.

It’s the faith that a descendant could remember, or inherit, a sliver of an ancestor’s spirit or power. Not reincarnation in the strictest sense, but a living fragment that flickered through generations.

Children who inherited it often carried strange dreams, unexplained talents, unique marks, or mannerisms that mirrored the ancestor. Some called it divine. Some saw it as a burden.

That’s why Lirika had always been indulged, from the time she could walk—until now that she couldn’t.

But to Hiraya, it was all a myth dressed in ritual. A comfort story. A cult.

A lie.

“You think they’re settling your bill?” Hiraya snapped. “I’m the one paying for this experiment of yours!”

Seeing the heat rise in the room, she clenched her jaw and abruptly turned away, stepping out—perhaps just to breathe, before she said something she’d regret.

* * *

Manila, Near Hospital

Just like Itel promised, they ended up dining at a Samgyupsal spot tucked in a busy street. Yellow lights warm against the steel tables, the clatter of plates and sizzling meat blending into the cozy chaos of after-hours Manila. The air was thick with the scent of grilled pork, kimchi, and smoke that curled lazily between them, fogging up their faces and the scent clinging to their clothes.

As the hot pot bubbled beside them and steam wafted up like a veil, Silay hesitated, then quietly asked, “Itel… would you believe me if I said I can hear the patient in Room 114 inside my head?”

“Wow, buddy…” Itel didn’t look up as she flipped a slice of belly meat with practiced ease. “Want me to hire a psychiatrist? I know a guy. Very gentle with first-timers.”

“I’m serious.”

“I’m seriously concerned.”

Silay stared into his bowl, absently poking at the rice like it held answers. “I’m not losing it, right?”

“Could be stress. Or guilt.” Itel pointed at him with her chopsticks. “You do love adopting other people’s trauma or solving their problems like stray cats.”

“I’m not talking about feelings.” Silay tapped his temple. “Actual words. Full-on sentences. I knew his name. He said it to me. But his mouth wasn’t moving.”

A pause.

“Silay, you still want that psychiatrist’s number?”