Aira woke slowly, consciousness surfacing through layers of pain and static like light struggling through polluted glass.
For a moment, she thought she was back in her first life—back in that endless cycle of weakness and neglect, where waking up always meant another day of being crushed by a world that never noticed her. The ache in her limbs felt familiar in a way that made her chest tighten.
Then the city breathed.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
The low, omnipresent hum of Neon Eden vibrated through the walls around her, a layered chorus of energy lines, transit rails, and atmospheric stabilizers. The sound anchored her to the present—to this body, this life, this place beneath the city's shining spine.
She opened her eyes.
The hollowed service chamber she had chosen as shelter was unchanged. Fractured panels lined the curved walls. Dim blue light leaked from a damaged conduit overhead, casting long, uneven shadows across the floor. Dust hung in the air, slow and heavy, disturbed only by her breathing.
She was alive.
That alone felt unreal.
Her body reminded her of it immediately. Pain flared as she tried to move—deep, structural pain, the kind that went beyond bruises. Her muscles felt overworked, her joints stiff, her nerves raw from overload. She lay still for several seconds, letting her breathing even out.
Humans were fragile.
Even in Neon Eden, where enhancement was common and systems regulated growth, the human body still had limits.
Limits she had just slammed into.
Aira pushed herself up into a seated position, teeth clenched as pain lanced up her side. She rested her back against the wall, head tilted slightly forward, strands of hair clinging to her damp forehead.
Something felt… different.
Not wrong.
Different.
She reached inward, toward the presence that had once ruled her life and now existed beside it.
The system responded instantly—not as an overlord, not as a cold administrator, but as something aware of her attention.
Waiting.
"Status," Aira said.
The word left her lips quietly, but it carried authority.
The world answered.
Translucent blue light unfolded before her eyes, lines of information cascading downward in a calm, orderly flow. There were no rigid frames, no boxed borders—just clean data layered over reality, visible only to her.
Her name appeared first.
Aira.
Beneath it, her race.
Human.
Still human.
She felt a faint, irrational relief at that, even though she knew what came next.
Her rank followed—Rank One.
Then her level.
Ten out of ten.
Maximum.
She exhaled slowly through her nose. She had reached the ceiling. Not metaphorically. Literally. The system showed it without embellishment—no ambiguity, no room for doubt.
Her stats followed. Strength, agility, endurance, perception—all higher than they had been days ago, forged upward through survival rather than gifts. New lines had appeared as well, faint but present.
Sword mastery existed now, dormant but unmistakable.
Magic resonance flickered beneath it, unstable, as if the system itself was still calibrating what that meant.
At the bottom of the display, a single line pulsed softly, insistently.
Evolution available.
Aira stared at it.
In her first life, evolution had always been a dream other people were allowed to have. A reward for the talented. The chosen. The noticed.
She had never been any of those things.
In this life, she had crawled here through blood, fear, and stubborn refusal to die.
"If I evolve," she said quietly, "my race changes."
The system responded immediately.
Yes. Evolution replaces your current race with the chosen one.
"And I can't go back."
Correct.
Her fingers curled slowly into fists.
Humanity was not just biology in Neon Eden. It was status. Baseline. The assumption that defined how the city treated you, how others measured you, how the system judged your potential.
To stop being human was to step outside that framework entirely.
Aira laughed softly, the sound rough in her throat.
"I've already stepped outside," she said.
She closed her eyes.
"Open the evolution tree."
The air around her shifted.
Not visually—not in a way cameras or sensors could easily record—but in pressure, in presence. The Evolution Tree unfolded within her perception, vast and branching, like a constellation forged from blades and light.
This time, it was clearer than before.
More solid.
Sword-based paths extended outward, each branch a different interpretation of what it meant to wield a blade. Some were physical—frames reforged around steel and edge. Others were abstract—sword laws, sword intent, sword authority.
Magic ran through all of them.
Not as spells.
Not as incantations.
As principles.
Heat folded into arcs. Space bent along trajectories. Force condensed into stillness before release. Magic was not something cast.
It was something the sword did.
And beneath it all, deeper than the visible branches, she felt it again—the unsettling truth that set her apart.
The tree was not fixed.
It was watching her.
Learning her.
Waiting to change when she did.
Her heart beat faster.
She focused on the nearest viable node.
It was not grand. Not overwhelming. It did not promise domination or transcendence.
It promised foundation.
A sword evolution built on discipline, control, and survival—not spectacle.
"This one," Aira said.
The decision settled.
The system did not hesitate.
Energy surged through her body, precise and merciless. She cried out as something fundamental shifted, as her muscles, nerves, and bones were rewritten to support a different way of existing.
This was not augmentation.
It was redefinition.
Her vision fractured, flooded with sensory input she had never been able to process before. She felt angles, distances, vectors. She sensed resistance before motion, weakness before impact.
Her heartbeat synchronized with something sharper.
Colder.
More focused.
Blue light flared briefly around her body, lines of data and magic weaving together before sinking beneath her skin. Her spine arched as the transformation reached its peak, then—
Stopped.
Aira collapsed forward onto her hands, gasping.
The pain faded gradually, replaced by a strange, humming clarity.
The system spoke.
Evolution complete.
She stayed still for several seconds, letting her body adjust, letting the new architecture of herself settle into place.
Then she lifted her head.
"Status."
The display returned.
Her race designation had changed.
Human was gone.
Replaced by a new name—one that did not exist in Neon Eden's registries, one born from her choice rather than the city's design.
Her level had reset.
One out of one hundred.
The number hit her harder than she expected. The ceiling she had just broken now felt distant, almost abstract.
Sword mastery was no longer dormant. It pulsed steadily, a core component of her being.
Magic resonance had stabilized, no longer flickering. It flowed alongside her movements, integrated rather than external.
Rank remained one.
Evolution tree access confirmed.
Aira let out a shaky laugh.
"So this is what it costs," she murmured. "You don't get stronger. You get… rewritten."
She dismissed the status.
Then she felt it.
The sword.
She did not summon it.
She aligned with it.
Her posture shifted instinctively, weight redistributing, spine straightening. Her breathing slowed, each inhale and exhale measured without conscious effort.
Light condensed in her hand.
A blade formed—clean, narrow, unadorned. No runes. No serial markings. No excess.
It felt like an extension of her intent rather than an object she held.
Aira rose to her feet.
The movement was smooth, efficient, as if her body now understood how it was meant to move. She lifted the blade and tested a simple motion—a shallow cut aimed at the far wall.
There was no sound.
No shockwave.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the wall separated.
Not shattered.
Not torn.
Separated.
A perfect line appeared, metal parting as if the concept of connection had simply been removed along that edge.
Aira froze.
"That wasn't strength," she whispered.
Correct.
"It wasn't speed."
Correct.
She stared at the clean cut, her pulse quickening.
"It was… permission."
The system did not deny it.
Sword authority has begun forming.
She dismissed the blade. It vanished instantly, leaving no residue, no lingering energy.
Aira leaned back against the wall, exhaustion finally catching up to her now that the evolution was complete.
She was no longer human.
Not because she had lost her emotions, her fear, her memories—but because she had chosen to become something else.
Above her, far beyond the forgotten layers, Neon Eden reacted.
Data streams stuttered. Race registries flagged an anomaly. A new designation appeared without origin, without approval.
Director Kael Morvain paused as the report crossed his vision.
A race change without precedent.
A human no longer classified as human.
No rollback available.
He felt a chill run through him.
"That," he said softly, "is going to be a problem."
Below, unaware of the attention beginning to converge, Aira closed her eyes.
This was Rank One.
The weakest point of a path that stretched far beyond what the city believed possible.
She had paid the price.
She had replaced her name in the system.
And this—
This was only the first cut.