2025-11-15 16:51:13The notification came with a single vibration.
—Account access denied. Leon stared at his phone as if the screen had personally struck him. He tried again. And again. And again. Each attempt ended the same way: All accounts frozen. Access restricted. Contact your financial administrator. He didn’t need to guess who the “administrator” was. Alexander Hale. His father. The man who taught him never to trust outsiders—but forgot to mention that betrayal often came from home. Leon stood under the overhang of a closed café, rain spilling off the metal roof in cold sheets. Only an hour ago, Vanessa had humiliated him in front of reporters. Only a day ago, he still lived in the Hale penthouse at the top of Crestfield Tower, a place filled with glass walls and silent servants. Now? He had a dying phone battery, a plastic bag with two shirts, and thirty-six dollars in crumpled bills. That was all. He tried opening his digital wallet. A new message blinked across the top: Hale Group Internal Alert: Fraud Investigation Initiated. All related assets temporarily seized. “Fraud,” Leon murmured, his voice raw. “They really went that far.” He wasn’t surprised his stepmother Eveline wanted him out of the way—she always saw him as a threat to her son’s succession. But he was surprised at how fast the world turned its back. Money gone. Home gone. Reputation destroyed in a single press conference leak. The rain grew heavier, slapping the pavement around him. His clothes were already soaked from wandering for hours. His hair stuck to his forehead. His breathing turned white in the cold. This wasn’t symbolic. This was real. He was homeless. A black limousine rolled by, sending a wave of dirty water splashing against the sidewalk. Leon stepped back automatically, but there was nowhere to escape. Water hit his shoes and seeped in. He clenched his fists. “Eveline… was this your plan all along?” He pictured her—immaculate dress, cold green eyes, a smile that hid knives. She’d been waiting for the moment Alexander became too disappointed to defend his son. And it had worked. Too well. Leon walked. He didn’t know where he was going—he only knew he couldn’t stand still. The rain masked his expression, and every step echoed with memories that didn’t belong to him anymore. His penthouse. His car. His office. Gone. Every direction he turned, the city looked different. Harsher. As if it sensed he no longer belonged in the upper floors of life. A group of teenagers hanging under an awning looked at him like he was some drunk wanderer. A restaurant owner waved him off before he could even ask for shelter. He passed by a digital billboard displaying the future launch of Hale Group’s newest product. His father’s signature was printed at the bottom of the display. Leon paused and watched. He used to stand beside Alexander at company events, listening to investors praise the “Hale heir.” He used to think he had a future there—somewhere between improving the company and proving his worth. Now the billboard felt like it was mocking him. Lightning cracked across the sky, illuminating the wet streets and glass buildings. Leon’s reflection stared back at him from the puddled sidewalk. A man without a home. A man without a family. A man without a future. He pressed a hand to his chest. How did everything fall apart this fast? The ache inside him wasn’t just emotional. It was physical. A crushing weight that made his lungs burn with every breath. He wandered for hours, the city growing darker and colder. At one point he stopped outside a cheap motel. He checked his wallet. Thirty-six dollars. The receptionist didn’t even look up from his phone when he said, “Rooms start at forty-eight.” Leon walked away. By midnight, the rain had turned into a relentless downpour. His clothes clung to his skin like icy armor. His hands trembled. He ducked into a narrow alley between two apartment buildings. The only light came from a flickering neon sign above a small bar that had already closed for the night. Trash bags lined the wall. The smell wasn’t pleasant. But the alley had one advantage—it shielded him from the wind. Leon sank to the ground slowly. The moment he sat, a wave of exhaustion hit him. Not just from the day, but from everything that came before it. His father’s cold judgment. Vanessa’s betrayal. The framing. The humiliation. The loss. It all collapsed onto him at once. He buried his face in his hands. For the first time since childhood, the thought came unbidden: Maybe it would’ve been better if I never existed. His breath hitched—shallow, uneven. Something inside him cracked. Not the loud, dramatic kind of break. A quiet one. A silent snap deep in the chest that took everything else with it. He whispered into the dark, voice shaking, “I really… have nothing left.” Rainwater dripped from his hair onto his hands. The alley felt suffocating. His heartbeat thumped painfully, each beat slower than the last. His vision blurred. His mind went blank. Something inside him gave way. A sharp beep echoed in his skull. Leon jerked upright. Another beep. Clearer. Louder. Sharp, mechanical. He looked around, but the alley remained empty. Only the neon sign flickered. Yet the sound continued—inside his head. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. Then a monotone voice vibrated through his mind like a cold needle: [EMOTIONAL STABILITY: CRITICAL] Leon froze. His breath stopped. Another mechanical tone followed— [HOST HAS REACHED EMOTIONAL COLLAPSE THRESHOLD] “What… what is this?” Leon whispered. The rain muffled everything, but the voice cut through it with surgical precision. [REBIRTH SYSTEM INITIALIZING…] [LOADING… 19%] [42%] [67%] [90%] [COMPLETE.] A flash of white light exploded across his vision—internal, not external. Leon clutched his head as a surge of electricity-like sensation swept through his nerves. The ache in his chest paused. His breathing steadied. His vision sharpened for a brief moment. Then the final message arrived. [WELCOME, HOST LEON HALE.] [THE REBIRTH SYSTEM HAS NOW BEEN BOUND TO YOU.] Silence followed. Rain poured. The neon buzzed. A cat hissed in the distance. Leon stared at nothing, heart pounding, chest rising and falling in disbelief. “What… did you say?” he whispered into the darkness. The answer came instantly. [BEGIN TASK 1: SURVIVE THE NIGHT.] Leon’s world—once stripped to nothing—shifted in a single heartbeat. A spark lit inside him where despair had lived moments before. Not hope. Not yet. But something sharper. More dangerous. Something like… rebirth.
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Ch. 14 — The Emotional Threshold
The bridge was silent.Too silent.Leon sat hunched against the cold metal railing, his body drained, his eyes swollen from crying — something he never thought he’d do again. The night air stung his face, but he barely felt it.He was numb.Completely, utterly numb.But inside that numbness… something stirred.A tremble.A pulse.A vibration like the faint thrum of a distant machine warming up.He squeezed his eyes shut, gripping his head with both hands.“Stop…” he whispered. “Just stop…”His thoughts weren’t thoughts anymore.They were fragments.Shards.Pieces of a shattered self.Vanessa’s laughter.Mason’s insults.Eveline’s venom.Alexander’s eyes as he signed the disownment papers.The flash of cameras.The cold warehouse concrete.The river.The brokenness.The emptiness.Everything hit him at once — a tidal wave of years of pressure collapsing inward.His breathing sped up.His pulse raced.His fingers dug into his scalp so hard he felt the sting of nails against skin.“Stop…
Ch. 13 — A Night of Despair
The storm eased sometime after midnight, but the cold didn’t lift.It wrapped itself around Leon like a second skin as he dragged himself across the cracked pavement, still shaken by the strange flashes of light and sound that had echoed through his mind.Had he imagined it?Was it a hallucination from exhaustion?The rainwater dripping from his hair made it hard to think.Harder to breathe.He didn’t go back to the warehouse.He couldn’t—not yet.Instead, his feet carried him toward the old iron bridge crossing the river at the edge of the industrial district. A lonely place. Quiet. Forgotten. Like him.By the time he reached the midpoint, the storm had died completely, leaving only the hiss of wind over the dark water.Leon gripped the railing with both hands, knuckles white.The river below was black—so dark it swallowed the reflection of the city lights. The current moved slowly, like something alive, waiting.He stared down at it.For a long time… he didn’t move.---His shoulder
Ch. 12 — The Broken Man
tThe rain came down in sheets, turning the streets into rivers of cold water that splashed against Leon’s ankles as he walked.No umbrella.No jacket.No destination.Just pain.Just emptiness.Just the weight of another humiliating day.He limped slightly—the result of a fall earlier that afternoon. Mason had “accidentally” knocked a crate off a high shelf. Leon barely dodged it, but the second crate Mason shoved after it struck Leon’s shoulder, sending him crashing onto concrete.The bruise spread down his arm like a blackened spiderweb.The supervisor only smirked.“Try not to die on shift, Hale. Paperwork annoys me.”Leon hadn’t answered.What was the point?Now, hours later, the injury burned with every step, pulsing like a reminder of how far he had fallen.Thunder cracked overhead, but the storm was nothing compared to the one raging inside him.His breath fogged the air as he crossed under a flickering streetlamp. The yellow light illuminated the soaked bandage wrapped around
Ch. 11 — The Collapse Begins
The rain hadn’t stopped.By the time Leon returned to the warehouse, his uniform clung to him like a second skin, soaked through with cold and humiliation. The night shift lights buzzed overhead, casting long shadows across the empty loading bay.His steps felt heavier than they should.His chest tighter than it had ever been.He moved like a man carrying a mountain.---The storage room—his “home”—was dim and damp. A thin mattress lay in the corner, barely better than cardboard. Leon shut the door behind him and leaned his back against it, sliding down slowly until he was sitting on the floor.His body ached, but the real pain wasn’t physical.It pulsed from somewhere deeper… a place he didn’t know could hurt this much.He dropped the envelope—the final inheritance papers—onto the ground. It landed with a soft thud, like dirt hitting a coffin.Leon stared at it.“That’s it,” he breathed. “They’ve completely erased me.”His voice sounded foreign—even to himself.He had lived his whole
Ch. 10 — Eveline’s Final Knife
The warehouse break room smelled of old coffee and metal dust. Leon sat alone on a cracked plastic chair, his body still aching from the twelve-hour shift Mason had deliberately stretched just to “test his limits.” His palms were raw, his shoulders burning, his pride almost gone.Almost.He stared at his phone—one of the only things he had left that still worked since his accounts were frozen. A single message notification blinked.From: Family Attorney – UrgentHis pulse kicked hard.He opened the message.> “Leon, you need to come in. There has been a final decision regarding the Hale inheritance.”A cold weight sank into his stomach.Final decision.Something told him it wasn’t going to be in his favor.---Thirty minutes later, Leon stood outside the glass-paneled office of Mr. Whitford, the Hale family attorney. Rain drizzled down his hair, soaking through his cheap uniform. He didn’t bother wiping it off.Inside, Mr. Whitford looked uneasy—almost guilty.“Leon,” he said, rising
CHAPTER. 9 — Mason’s Threat
Leon didn’t sleep after the system awakened.How could he?That cold mechanical voice still echoed at the back of his mind, sharp as broken glass:[REBIRTH SYSTEM ACTIVATED.]His life had collapsed so brutally that something—not human—had chosen him as a “prime candidate.”And yet morning came like always, dragging him back into the world he still had to endure.The warehouse buzzed alive with forklifts, workers shouting, machinery rumbling. Leon stepped onto the floor with stiff legs and sore shoulders, head low, eyes heavy from a night without rest. He expected exhaustion.He didn’t expect to run straight into Mason Briggs.The supervisor stood near the timeclock, arms crossed, a grin already spreading across his face. Mason’s smile wasn’t friendly. It was the type that belonged to someone who loved watching things break.Especially people.“There he is,” Mason said loudly, drawing the attention of the nearby workers. “The stray dog reporting for duty.”A few workers chuckled. Other
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