> System Initializing…
Rebuilding memory fragments…
Assigning Origin Class…
Welcome back, Player 000. You died. Again.
The voice was crisp, genderless, and smug. Kade Elaris cracked open one eye, half-expecting to see hospital lights or some afterlife propaganda poster. Instead, he was greeted by a sky too neon to be real and buildings that defied physics like gravity was just a suggestion.
Skyscrapers spiraled into infinity, covered in glowing ads that flickered between languages faster than his brain could process. Some towers floated, others rotated lazily, and a few were upside down—anchored to nothing but logic-defying tech and audacity.
He was lying on something smooth and metallic, the texture somewhere between steel and silicone. Warm to the touch, humming faintly beneath him like a sleeping beast.
No pain. No blood. No broken bones.
Just a vague throbbing in his skull… and a voice in his head that refused to shut up.
> System Status:
Origin: Reincarnated (Glitchborn)
Class: ???
Level: 0
Credits: 500,000 C
Trait: [Glitchborn]
— Reality may bend in your favor. Side Effect: Karma might too.
Kade blinked at the floating interface in front of his eyes. "Okay," he muttered, "what the hell does that mean?"
> New Quest Unlocked:
Objective: Survive Day One
Reward: 1,000 EXP + coffee (actual)
Failure Consequence: Permanent death. Again.
"I love how 'coffee' and 'death' are weighed the same," Kade muttered.
He stood, his movements smooth—too smooth. His new body felt enhanced, lighter, like someone had buffed his bones and upgraded his reflexes in the settings. His clothes shimmered with nanothreads that shifted color with each step, moving from obsidian black to oil-slick violet. Fresh. Sleek. Dangerous.
He scanned the street. No one gave him a second glance. Not the drone-taxi AI arguing with a customer in three accents. Not the synth-cat prowling along the ledge of a floating cafe. Not the man walking past with a literal holographic crown above his head.
Welcome to Virelia—the gleaming city of tech, towers, and terrifying transactions.
Kade didn't remember dying. Not yet. But his gut said this wasn't his first rodeo with reincarnation. The glitch trait proved it. The System didn't hand that kind of bug out for free.
A new message pulsed in the corner of his vision:
> Incoming Transmission [Anonymous ID: 𝘍𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵]
"If you can read this, you've already triggered the loop. You're the variable. Don't trust the System. Don't level up yet. Find the Obsidian Gate before your credits run dry."
"What the hell is the Obsidian Gate?" Kade whispered. But the message blinked and vanished.
No sender. No trace. No backup.
Great. He'd been reborn in a glitched-out mega city, with a broken memory, a sarcastic system, a ticking credit clock… and now cryptic messages from a digital stranger named Fragment.
Still, 500,000 credits wasn't a bad start. The average newbie, according to the info-pulse he mentally pinged, got 50. Five-zero. Just enough to buy a street noodle and cry into it.
So why him? Why this balance?
And more importantly… what the hell was the catch?