System Rebirth: The Rise of Jace Ronan

They say Blackrift City breaks everyone eventually. I guess I just broke earlier than most. I used to be somebody. Not a hero. Not a kingpin. But someone. A fighter. A survivor.

The kind of guy that made people shut up when he walked into a room. Not because I was feared, but because I earned my respect with blood, sweat, and bruised knuckles. That was before the fall. Before the betrayal. Before I learned that even loyalty could be bought and sold in this city like a pack of cheap smoke.

Now I'm a mop-wielding ghost in an orange vest, cleaning puke and piss out of subway corners for half the minimum wage. No one makes eye contact. No one cares if I breathe or bleed. I don't blame them.

It was 2.17am. That time of night where Blackrift stops pretending to be a city and becomes what it really is. A gaping, rotting carcass, crawling with the desperate and the damned. I stood on the platform of Sector 9, watching a drunk teenager stagger too close to the edge.

He laughed. His girlfriend screamed something about his mother.

Classic.

I kept mopping, back hunched, headphones in, even though I had nothing playing. Silence was safer.

They left. I was alone again.

The fluorescent lights above me buzzed like dying flies, flickering in and out, painting the tiles with sickly yellow light.

That's when I saw it. A small girl, six, maybe seven, wandered out from behind a vending machine. No shoes, no coat, just a torn pink shirt and dirt smeared cheeks. She shouldn't have been there. Hell, I shouldn't have been there either, but I didn't have a choice.

“Hey,” I said, pulling the headphones down. “You lost?”

She looked up at me like I was a shadow with a voice, didn't say a word, just turned and ran.

Right into the path of an oncoming train. My body moved before my brain did. I dropped the mop, lungs tearing open as I bolted down the platform.

The screech of metal on metal roared into my ears and the child froze, her eyes wide like she'd finally realized what death looked like. I didn't think. I dove. And then, impact. Not the train.

Something else.

Everything went dark, but not like unconscious dark. This was different. A hollow, swallowing void. No pain, no breath, just weightlessness. Then a voice. Cold, alive.

[Initializing Ragnar protocol to detect it.]

[Post-synchronization in progress.]

[Unauthorized awakening triggered.]

[Post-vitals critical.]

A burning light flared behind my eyes, not blinding, but deep, like fire crawling through the marrow of my bones. I tried to scream. Nothing came out.

[Commencing emergency fusion.]

WELCOME, JACE RONAN.

I woke up to the smell of blood and the sound of a child crying. My chest felt like it had been used as a punching bag by a gorilla on crack, but I was alive. Not crushed, not mangled. Alive.

A girl was sobbing next to me, curled up by my arm. I lifted my head slowly. The train had screeched to a halt inches away from us. Inches?

How?

I sat up.

My body protested. My lungs screamed, but I moved. Something buzzed in the back of my skull, like static made of code.

A translucent screen hovered in the air before me, blue and flickering like a glitching hut from some cyberpunk game.

[Ragnar Protocol V1.03 activated.]

[Name: Jace Ronan.]

[Current level: zero.]

[Vital status: stabilizing…]

[Synchronization: 73%.]

[Primary objective: survive.]

What in the actual hell?

I blinked, tried to swipe it away. My hand passed through it like mist.

“Great,” I muttered. “Now I'm hallucinating.”

But it didn't feel like a hallucination. It felt real. Too real.

I could feel the hum of power in my fingertips. My vision was sharper. My skin tingled. I heard footsteps and yanked the girl behind me. A pair of guards rushed toward us, tasers drawn, ready to escalate.

“You the janitor?” One barked.

I didn't answer. I was still staring at the floating screen like it held the answers to the universe.

They let me off with a warning. He said the train's emergency brakes kicked in just in time. He said I was lucky. He said the girl vanished before they could question her. She always was a ghost, I guess.

Back in my flat, which was a polite word for a glorified storage unit above a closed bar, I stared at myself in the cracked mirror. Same haunted eyes. Same scar across my jaw from the fight I refused to throw five years ago. The night I lost my name. Lost my career. Lost everything.

Except now, a glowing blue symbol hovered faintly beneath the skin on my wrist. A circle made of gears and runes rotating slowly, pulsing with light.

I touched it.

[Quest alert: Initiation.]

[Defeat three hostile targets within 24 hours.]

[Reward skill unlock: basic combat enhancement.]

[Failure: internal rejection.]

[System termination: Post death.]

“Fantastic,” I muttered. “It talks like a psychopath.”

Still, I wasn't dumb. I knew what this was. Everyone in the underground talked about systems like they were myths. Old war experiments. Cultivator tech. Alien implants. No one had ever seen one and lived to explain it.

But here I was, somehow bonded to it like a parasite with a fancy UI.

I had 24 hours to kill three people, or I'd die. Simple enough. The only problem? I hadn't fought in years. Not seriously. Not since my last match, the one I walked away from instead of losing on purpose. That night cost me my gym, my title, my brother's trust, and my entire damn life. Now the city wanted me to fight again.

Or maybe it was fate.

I hit the streets at midnight.

Blackrift didn't sleep. Not really. It just shifted. Daytime crooks turned into nighttime predators. The slums of District 13 were worse than usual. Junkies twitching in alleyways. Rats the size of cats kicking at trash bags. Neon signs flickering above closed pawn shops like electric ghosts.

My breath fogged in the cold as I walked deeper into the heart of the zone. I could feel the system pulsing inside me, like a second heart. My hands were sweating, nerves burning under my skin. I didn't have a weapon. Just years of muscle memory buried under failure. Then I found them.

Three gangsters.

Red Fang crew.

Shaking down a vendor. One had a bat. Another had a knife. The third had his fist halfway into the man's register.

[Hostile targets identified. Quest progress: 0/3.]

I stepped forward.

“Hey,” I said, voice low. “Why don't you pick on someone who's had a really shitty day?”

They turned, laughed, then came at me. I didn't hesitate. The fight was fast. Brutal. Sloppy. I took a hit to the ribs that cracked something. But the moment I landed a blow, something clicked. My reflexes spiked. My vision sharpened.

I could see muscle movement before it happened. Predict motion. It was like my body remembered what it was like to be alive again. And the system was guiding me.

Three men down. Bloodied, but breathing.

[Quest completed.]

[Reward unlocked.]

[Skill: Basic combat enhancement.]

[+10% strength, speed, and reaction time.]

[New trait: Fighter's edge.]

I stood over the last guy, chest heaving. The screen faded. My pulse slowed. And for the first time in five years, I felt something stir in my gut.

Hope?

No.

Purpose.

And it terrified me.