The first thing Riri registered was the cold.
Not the ambient chill of a drafty apartment or a failing heater. This was bone-deep and sterile. The kind that radiated up from expensive marble pressed flat against her cheek. She peeled her face off the floor, her skin sticking slightly before pulling away with a faint tack.
A blade of sunlight cut through floor-to-ceiling windows and straight into her eyes. She winced. Her head felt packed with wet cotton, and when she tried to move, her limbs responded with the enthusiasm of borrowed equipment.
She pushed herself up. Her palms slid against black marble that gleamed like the inside of a crow's wing. The motion sent a cascade of hair swinging across her shoulders, and she registered two things in rapid succession: it was silk-smooth, and it was not hers.
Her hair had been chin-length. Perpetually frizzy. It had smelled like instant ramen steam and the particular brand of desperation that came from a 3:00 AM editing deadline. This hair hung past her hips.
What the hell.
Riri forced her vision to focus. This wasn't her apartment. Her apartment smelled like mildew and old takeout containers. This room smelled of ozone and bergamot, expensive and clean in the way that cost money to maintain. The space was severe: black marble floor, floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, furniture that looked chosen for intimidation rather than comfort. A penthouse.
She staggered upright. Heavy boots caught on the hem of a black leather jacket pooled around her ankles, and she grabbed it on instinct. The leather was new-oil soft, supple in a way that meant quality rather than age. A cropped, hooded tactical jacket. She shrugged it on. It fit like it was made for her, because it was, though not for the her she remembered.
Her breathing was too shallow. She counted it down. One breath. Two.
Think. Last thing you remember.
The monitor glow. The flat energy drink going warm at her elbow. The webnovel she'd been beta-reading: Overpowered, Handsome, and Building a Harem in an Unlimited Flow World. She'd been mid-annotation, typing a scathing margin note about how the NEET protagonist, Marty Miles, read like cardboard while the actual interesting character, the antagonist with System #1, was getting five lines of page-time per chapter.
The author has no idea what they have with Santoro, she'd written.
Then the world folded.
The window caught her reflection. She stopped.
The girl in the glass had a heart-shaped face, porcelain skin so pale it looked like it would mark from a strong opinion, and straight-cut bangs framing eyes so large they belonged on a Studio Ghibli poster. Amber irises. Thick dark lashes. Features that were sharp and soft at once, the particular combination that made people instinctively want to stand between her and anything with teeth.
Riri raised one hand. The girl in the glass raised hers.
"Oh, that's bad," she said. Her voice came out soft and melodic, the kind of sound that made people want to lean in and protect the source of it. She cleared her throat. It didn't help.
The tactical gear hanging off her small frame looked ridiculous and right at the same time, like a hummingbird wearing body armor.
Then the world flickered.
A translucent notification materialized in the upper corner of her vision, honey-gold and glittering with tiny particles that moved like light through water.
[Welcome, Host. System #2: Creation and Luck has successfully integrated.]
Riri's stomach dropped. The interface rippled with something that felt aggressively cheerful.
[Host Location: Penthouse Suite 2A, Apex Towers. Blue Star, Year 3065.][Current Identity: Riri Lee, Age 19. Status: Transmigrated.][This unit has selected you as Primary Host! Congratulations on your second life!]
The exclamation point landed like a shoe thrown at a wall.
"System #2," she said carefully. "Creation and Luck System."
[Precisely, Host! Your probability of long-term survival currently exceeds all standard Player benchmarks by a considerable margin. This unit is very pleased with its selection!]
She read it again. The words didn't change. Her back teeth pressed together.
In the original manuscript, System #2's host had been a nameless side character, a "porcelain beauty" the protagonist Marty observed from across a courtyard before she was killed off-page in the first Mandatory Mission to demonstrate the world's stakes. No dialogue. Just a footnote describing the blood on the stone.
Wasted potential, Riri had written in the margins. Why introduce a god-tier System at all if you're not going to use it?
She pressed her forehead against the window glass. Cold bit into her skin. Below, the city was silent in a way cities shouldn't be, towers and transit lines and pedestrian walkways all standing perfectly intact and completely empty. The Stasis Event had just ended. Somewhere out there, three hundred thousand people were waking up on the same stone floors, reading the same gold notifications, having the same quiet crisis.
[Host, would you like to open the Starter Quest menu? This unit recommends beginning immediately. There are 89 days remaining in the Preparation Period!]
Riri breathed out against the glass. A small cloud of fog bloomed and faded.
Somewhere in this city was Samael Santoro. System #1. She'd left seventeen annotations in that manuscript about what he could have been, and every single one of them ended the same way: this character should be the protagonist.
She pushed off the window. Rolled her shoulders until something in her neck cracked, loud and satisfying.
The gold interface pulsed, patient and bright, waiting.
"Open the Starter Quest," she said.