Surviving by Borrowing from the Supernatural

Terminally ill, with my life on a countdown. The System ordered me to travel across the world and collect echoes. Echoes are reverberations formed from the fears and obsessions of all living things. Real-life tragedies can give rise to them, and widely circulated fictional ghost stories can also become real through the retelling of countless people. They take many forms, from auditory and visual hallucinations to monstrous nightmares made flesh. Recording and sealing away an echo earns me a brief extension of my life. In desperate situations, I can borrow an echo's power to escape, but the price is irreversible damage to my body and mind, compounded by my terminal illness. Cults, priests, and keepers of secrets obstruct me at every turn, while transnational secret organizations track me from the shadows. I have no intention of saving the world. I just want to stay alive. Sealing away the uncanny also erases the memory of a story. If you see a man in poor health, stay far away from him. It might be me, and my appearance means something uncanny is lurking here!!!