The Heir’s Awakening System

Dessert shift

"Grandpa’s always had a sweet tooth," the hostess purred, her gold eyes reflecting the chandelier’s light like two melting coins. "But tonight, Uncle, he wants something **special**. Something **final**."

Marcus stood in the underground dining room’s antechamber, the waiter uniform stiff against his skin, the silver thread at his collar pulsing with a heartbeat that kept time with the debt clock ticking behind his eyes—$1,264,560.00 and climbing. The scent of burnt sugar and ozone cloyed in his throat.

The hostess—**Liyue**, his niece, his blood, **possessed**—gestured to the double doors. "Table’s set. Single seating. No substitutions."

He pushed through. The dining hall had transformed. The long steel table was now a **surgical slab**, white linen replaced by sterile drapes, crystal glasses by IV bags filled with **silver fluid**. At the head sat Zhang Li—**young**, **gold-eyed**, **smiling like a man who’d just found the last piece of a puzzle he’d lost sixty years ago**.

"Marcus,"