Year 2097. Neo-Kyoto.

The world flickered.

For a brief moment, everything fractured—pixels breaking apart, reality twisting like a corrupted file struggling to load. The neon skyline of Neo-Kyoto pulsed erratically, as if the entire city had skipped a frame in time. The rain, once steady, froze mid-air before resuming its descent.

And in the middle of it all, Ryo gasped for breath.

His cybernetic visor malfunctioned, bombarding him with error codes and fragmented data streams. His head pounded, a sharp, unnatural pain lancing through his skull. It wasn't the first time he had experienced a system lag—glitches happened in this cybernetic wasteland—but this... this was different.

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This was wrong.

A whisper echoed through his mind, a voice barely more than static.

"Ryo... don't forget."

His vision blurred. He staggered, catching himself against a rusted railing. He couldn't remember what he had been doing seconds ago. Hacking into a system? Running from Enforcers? It was all a jumbled mess—memories overlapping like corrupted files fighting for dominance.

A neon sign flickered overhead, displaying garbled text before stabilizing into a single word:

REBIRTH.EXE

The moment he saw it, a cold dread settled into his chest.

Then—the world glitched again.

His body seized. A surge of data flooded his mind, force-fed into his consciousness like a program forcefully executed against its will. Images. Fragments of a life he didn't recognize.

A city in flames.

A silver-haired girl, standing amidst the destruction, her eyes glowing with an unnatural light.

A voice, distorted yet familiar, calling out to him.

"System reboot initiated. Purging redundant data."

"No—wait!" Ryo choked out, but it was too late.

His mind collapsed into static.

And everything turned to black.

To be continued...