The fluorescent hum of the "Quick-Stop" supermarket was the last normal thing Elias ever heard.
He stepped out into the humid evening air, the plastic handles of his grocery bags digging into his palms. It was a mundane Tuesday. In his head, he was already mentally organizing his refrigerator milk on the top shelf, eggs in the door. He was a man of quiet habits, a face in the crowd that no one noticed, and he was perfectly fine with that.
Until he heard the scream.
It was sharp, jagged, and tore through the quiet of the parking lot like a razor. Elias looked up to see a blur of motion. A man in a dark hoodie was wrenching a backpack away from a teenage girl, his movements frantic and violent.
Elias didn't have a hero complex. He didn't have martial arts training. He simply had a momentary, fatal impulse that he couldn't stand by and watch.
"Hey! Drop it!" Elias shouted, dropping his groceries. The sound of a glass jar of pasta sauce shattering against the asphalt echoed like a gunshot.
He lunged forward, intending only to grab the man's arm, to be the "middleman" who ended the scuffle. But as he closed the distance, the snatcher turned. In the dim glow of the streetlights, a sliver of silver flashed.
Cold.
That was the first sensation. Not pain, but a sudden, intrusive coldness that bloomed in the center of his chest. Elias looked down, confused, seeing the hilt of a kitchen knife protruding from his windbreaker. Then came the heat, a searing, white-hot agony that buckled his knees.
He hit the pavement hard. The snatcher fled into the shadows, a coward fueled by adrenaline. The girl was screaming, her voice a frantic wail as she fumbled for her phone to call for help.
Elias tried to breathe, but his lungs felt like they were filled with broken glass. He clutched at the knife, his fingers slick with something warm and dark. Three minutes, he thought distantly, watching the stars above the city blur into long, weeping streaks of light. I think... I'm out of breath.
The world faded. The girl's voice became a dull hum, then silence. The pain vanished, replaced by an absolute, crushing weightlessness.
The Void and the Interface
Elias floated in a sea of ink. There was no body, no heart, only a consciousness drifting in the Great Nothing.
Is this it? He wondered. A grocery trip and a knife? That's the end of the book?
[CALIBRATING...]
A voice cold, melodic, and resonant vibrated through his very soul.
[SOUL COMPATIBILITY: 99.8%]
[CRITERIA MET: UNSELFISH SACRIFICE / UNFINISHED DESTINY]
[INITIATING REBIRTH PROTOCOL: GALAXY DRAGON SYSTEM]
In the distance, a pinprick of light appeared. It wasn't the white light of an afterlife; it was a swirling, cosmic blue, pulsing like a heartbeat. Elias felt himself being pulled toward it, stretched thin like taffy across the dimensions.
[SELECTING VESSEL...]
[MATCH FOUND: ASTRAL GREY TABBY]
[AWAKENING...]
The New Dawn
The first thing Elias felt was the grass.
It wasn't the manicured turf of a suburban lawn; these were thick, vibrant blades that felt like velvet against his skin. Wait, not skin. Fur.
He opened his eyes, and the world exploded into a kaleidoscope of impossible detail. He wasn't looking through human eyes anymore. His vision was wide, sharp, and infused with a crystalline blue tint that made every shadow glow.
He looked down at his limbs. Instead of pale, blood-stained hands, he saw two dainty, powerful paws. They were silver-grey, marked with charcoal-black tiger stripes that seemed to hum with a faint, rhythmic light.
He caught his reflection in a nearby crystalline pond. A small, regal grey tiger cat stared back. But it was the eyes that stopped his heart if he still had a human one. His eyes were no longer hazel; they were glowing orbs of deep sapphire, swirling with the mists of a distant nebula.
[GALAXY DRAGON SYSTEM: ONLINE] Host: Elias Form: Juvenile Galaxy Dragon Cat Level: 1 Status: Healthy / Confused Current Mana: 100/100
Elias let out a breath, but it didn't come out as a sigh. It was a high-pitched, melodic chirrup.
I'm a cat, he realized, his whiskers twitching as he caught the scent of a thousand flowers he couldn't name. I died over a jar of pasta sauce... and I woke up as a cosmic housecat.
He flexed his claws. They didn't just extend; they shimmered with the edge of a dying star.
[QUEST ALERT: SURVIVE THE FIRST NIGHT]
The journey of the Galaxy Dragon Cat had begun.