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Chapter 1 - Last Pages of the Triad

Rain leaned against the window, steady as breathing. The world beyond was reduced to a wash of color — red tail lights smearing across puddles, the faint blue pulse of distant signs. Kai sat inside that blur, cocooned by the hum of his cheap desk lamp. In front of him lay an old manga, its corners softened from years of rereading: Tri-Party System.

He had found the series when he was sixteen, back when everything still seemed possible. The story followed three heroes, bound by fate and greed. The first bore the Roulette System, a power that spun each dawn, dealing fortune or ruin at random. The second commanded the 20x Amplifier, magnifying every gain and every wound twentyfold. The third wielded the Loot System, stealing the talents and memories of those he defeated. Together, they built an empire of miracles — and destroyed it, too.

What fascinated Kai wasn't their power but their collapse. Each chapter peeled another layer off their humanity, until what remained was obsession dressed as destiny. Still, even at their worst, they chose. Every action, every mistake, was theirs. Kai admired that. His own life felt more like a loading screen that never ended.

He was twenty-seven now, jobless again, bills stacked like enemies he couldn't beat. Reading was the only time the noise in his head went quiet. So he read. The rain thickened. The room pulsed with the rhythm of thunder.

In the manga's final chapter, the heroes met at the edge of a dying world. The Roulette spun one last time; the Amplifier cracked under the strain of its own excess; the Looter smiled, bleeding, as he claimed a fragment of both. Their dialogue had always hit him harder than he wanted to admit:

"Even if fate breaks us," the Looter said, "we still choose how to fall."

Kai exhaled a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. Outside, a car engine revved too fast, tires slipping on the slick road. The noise barely registered. He turned another page. The panel showed the three heroes standing before the light, ready to die on their own terms.

Then the world blinked.

There was no warning — only the shriek of rubber, the burst of glass, the flash that swallowed everything. His lamp went dark. The window disintegrated. The rain came rushing in, carrying the smell of metal and electricity.

For a heartbeat, Kai saw the pages of Tri-Party System lift into the air, their ink smearing into spirals of color.

Then silence.

He was on the floor, the manga beside him, its cover soaked and curling. The city outside blurred into nothing. He tried to move but couldn't tell if he still had a body to command.

And then — soft, detached, almost gentle — a voice echoed through the dark:

[System Detected. Host Transfer in Progress.]

The rain stopped. The world unspooled.

Somewhere beyond the breaking noise of life, a new page turned.

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