Aira woke to light that did not belong to the sun.
Neon Eden's artificial dawn slid across the fractured ceiling of the abandoned service chamber in carefully calculated gradients, bright enough to wake the body, gentle enough not to startle it. Dust drifted slowly through the air, each particle catching faint bands of blue and silver light. The city hummed beyond the walls—endless, indifferent, alive.
She did not move at first.
She noticed her body before she noticed anything else.
That alone told her something was wrong.
Or rather—different.
There was no pain waiting for her.
No ache in her joints, no lingering soreness from exertion, no reminder of hunger or exhaustion. Her breathing was deep and smooth, every inhale filling her lungs completely, every exhale releasing without resistance. Her heartbeat was slow and steady, strong in a way she had never known.
Aira opened her eyes.
The service chamber was unchanged. Cracked panels. Broken conduits. A place the city had abandoned and forgotten.
And yet, she felt too large for it now.
She pushed herself upright, expecting at least a flicker of weakness.
There was none.
Her body responded instantly, rising with smooth coordination, balance snapping into place without conscious effort. She stood there for a moment, confused by the ease of it, by the certainty with which her muscles obeyed her will.
Her center of gravity had shifted.
Not awkwardly. Not unevenly.
Perfectly.
She lifted her hands and stared at them.
They were steady.
Longer fingers. Defined joints. Strength resting beneath smooth skin rather than pressing against it. This wasn't the exaggerated bulk of enhancement or the artificial symmetry of cosmetic modification.
It was completion.
Something brushed against her lower back.
Aira froze.
Slowly, she reached behind herself.
Her fingers slid through thick, unfamiliar weight.
Hair.
Not the short, uneven length she remembered. Not the practical cut she had given herself months ago, when she had still been adjusting to this life, this body, this world.
Her hair flowed freely down her back, heavy and cool beneath her fingers, reaching all the way to her waist.
She stepped toward a fractured metal panel embedded in the wall and stopped.
The reflection staring back at her made her breath catch.
It was her.
And it wasn't.
Her face had settled into something strikingly mature—features balanced and sharp without being artificial. Her jawline was clean. Her lips naturally full. Her eyes bright and deep, carrying weight that had nothing to do with age and everything to do with memory.
And her hair—
It was silver.
Not pale. Not white.
Silver like moonlight poured into liquid form.
Even under the artificial glow of the chamber, it shimmered faintly, catching light and reflecting it softly, as if it belonged more to night than to day. She knew—without needing proof—that under real moonlight it would glitter, quietly and unmistakably.
In a city where beauty could be engineered, optimized, and sold—
No one had ever looked like this.
Not the celebrities refined by systems. Not the elites sculpted by genetic tuning. Not the soldiers enhanced until they resembled weapons more than people.
Aira stood beyond comparison.
Her beauty did not invite attention.
It disrupted it.
The kind that made people hesitate without understanding why. The kind that unsettled rather than reassured. The kind the system could observe, analyze, and still fail to explain.
She looked eighteen.
Exactly eighteen.
Prime human appearance.
Her hands clenched slowly at her sides.
"That's a lie," she whispered.
Because she knew the truth.
She wasn't eighteen.
She wasn't even close.
She was only a few months old in this world.
Months since reincarnation.
Months since she had opened her eyes in Neon Eden for the first time, weak, unnoticed, carrying memories of a life that had broken her long before it ended.
Her body looked like it had lived years.
Her mind had lived far more.
Evolution had not given her time.
It had stolen it.
She stared at her reflection, something cold and heavy settling in her chest.
"You didn't let me grow," she said quietly. "You skipped it."
The system answered calmly.
Evolution enforces optimal combat form.
Chronological age is irrelevant.
Aira laughed softly, the sound brittle.
"Not to me."
She turned away from the reflection and rolled her shoulders. Her silver hair shifted with the movement, flowing down her back like a curtain of moonlight. Her body felt… ready. Not eager. Not restless.
Prepared.
But preparation did not erase the truth.
She had not lived eighteen years in this body.
She had not been given time to become this person.
She had been reshaped into her.
She closed her eyes.
"Status."
The familiar blue interface unfolded before her vision, smooth and precise, layered over reality without obstruction.
Her name appeared.
Aira
Below it, her race—no longer Human. The designation was new, unregistered, born solely from the sword-based evolution she had chosen. The system recorded it without judgment, without warning.
Rank: One
Level: One / One Hundred
She stared at the numbers.
Level One again.
But now she understood.
Levels measured effort.
Caps measured permission.
And evolution… evolution rewrote the body to survive what permission allowed.
She dismissed the interface.
The city answered her silence.
Holoscreens flickered to life across the lower sector, their glow bleeding through alleyways and shattered windows. The announcement cut through the ambient hum with controlled urgency.
NEON EDEN DEFENSE DIRECTIVE
INTER-WORLD WAR PREPARATION
RECRUITMENT SECTORS NOW ACTIVE
Images followed—vast shipyards bristling with unfinished war vessels, training arenas filled with humans clashing steel against steel, commanders standing before projection maps of a world that was not theirs.
Eight years.
That was what Neon Eden had bought by destroying the enemy's original plan.
Eight years to prepare.
Eight years to bleed slowly instead of all at once.
Aira did not hesitate.
She gathered her coat and draped it over her shoulders. Her silver moon hair spilled freely down her back, unbound and unmarked by insignia or allegiance. It caught the light as she moved, shimmering faintly with every step.
She left the service chamber and stepped into the city.
Neon Eden was already changing.
Barricades lined major intersections. Patrols moved in tighter formations. Recruitment drones hovered overhead, scanning passersby and broadcasting calm directives that barely concealed urgency.
Civilians clustered around holoscreens, voices overlapping in fear and speculation.
"They say the other world doesn't fight like humans…"
"My cousin enlisted this morning."
"Eight years isn't enough."
Aira moved through them quietly.
Heads turned.
Conversations faltered.
She felt it—the way attention bent around her presence, the way people noticed her before understanding why. Not desire. Not simple admiration.
Disruption.
Her silver hair caught the light as she walked, glittering softly, almost unreal. In a city saturated with engineered perfection, she stood apart by not fitting any known pattern.
She looked eighteen.
They assumed she had lived that long.
They were wrong.
At the edge of the recruitment sector, massive steel arches rose like the ribs of a sleeping beast. Energy barriers shimmered faintly as long lines of humans waited beneath them—warriors, gunners, archers, pilots, swordsmen and women.
Aira joined the line.
Around her stood people who had lived full lives. Some older. Some younger. All of them with histories in this world that stretched back years.
She had months.
And yet she stood among them without being questioned.
Because appearance mattered more than truth.
Ranks and levels flickered openly around her—badges of identity in a society obsessed with measurable power.
Rank Two.
Rank Three.
A few Rank Four.
They glanced at her.
Saw Rank One.
Saw her face.
Saw her hair.
And hesitated.
Whispers followed her through the line.
"Did you see her…?"
"That hair—no enhancement signature…"
"She looks… unreal."
Aira kept her gaze forward.
When she reached the gate, a scanning field swept over her body. For a fraction of a second, the system hesitated—data streams colliding as her race designation failed to match known templates.
Then the anomaly was suppressed.
The gate opened.
Inside, the recruitment sector stretched upward and outward—tiered training grounds, weapon testing zones, magic calibration chambers, command platforms stacked into the city's spine.
Everything here existed for one reason.
To prepare humans to die efficiently.
An officer stepped into her path.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. His system rank hovered at Rank Five.
"Name."
"Aira."
"Age?"
She paused.
"Eighteen," she said.
It was easier than explaining the truth.
He nodded, eyes flicking briefly over her, then stopping—just for a moment—on her silver hair as it caught the overhead light.
"System rank?"
"Rank One."
"Combat specialty?"
"Sword."
A longer look this time.
"Sword users are common," he said. "Hybrid permissions are restricted."
"My evolution permits it," Aira replied calmly.
Silence.
He gestured toward a terminal. "Hand."
She placed her palm against it.
Data streamed rapidly.
"No prior affiliation," he muttered. "No sponsorship. Unregistered race…"
He looked at her again, more carefully.
"You're an anomaly."
Aira met his gaze without flinching.
"I'm a volunteer."
"Why?"
She looked past him, toward the training fields where humans clashed, screamed, fell, and rose again under Neon Eden's watchful eyes.
"Because there's a war coming," she said quietly. "And I don't have years to prepare."
The officer studied her.
Then stepped aside.
"Sector C. Preliminary assessment."
Aira walked forward.
Her sword did not manifest.
It didn't need to.
It waited.
Bound not to her age.
Not to her appearance.
But to her will.
Above the sector, unseen by most, monitoring systems logged her entry. Predictive models adjusted. Probabilities shifted.
A human who was only months old—wearing the body of someone eighteen—had stepped into the preparation for war.
And Neon Eden had no idea how dangerous that made her.