CHAPTER 1: SHATTERED LIVES, SHATTERED STARS

Vera Kain stared at the explosion of light outside her lab's reinforced windows. The experiment was supposed to be simple—harness the energy of a decaying star fragment. She had calculated every variable, checked every equation a thousand times. But, in that final moment, she realized something critical had gone wrong. Horribly wrong.

Before she could even shout a warning to her colleagues, the reactor blew. Blinding white light swallowed everything, and Vera's body evaporated, along with her entire life's work.

Darkness came. Silence. Then... whispers.

“Is this how it ends?” The voice echoed in the void. It wasn’t hers.

"Far from it," answered another voice, deeper, almost amused.

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Vera felt her mind pulling in different directions, like she was being torn apart and stitched back together at the same time. Then, with a gut-wrenching jolt, she awoke—but not in her lab, or any world she had ever known.

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She opened her eyes to a burnt orange sky, stars barely visible beyond the atmospheric dust. A distant planet loomed overhead, casting shadows across the jagged ruins of an ancient city. Vera sat up, wincing at the sudden sharp pain. Her hands—no, they weren’t her hands. Pale, scarred, and much younger. Her body felt wrong, foreign.

“What the hell…?” she muttered, standing shakily. The ground beneath her was cold, metallic. Ruined buildings, alien in design, stretched out in every direction.

Initializing… A voice, this one digital, chimed within her mind. She spun around, searching for the source.

Welcome to the System. Your Class: Scrap Adept. Beginning Tutorial.

A flash of light blinded her again, and this time, words formed in front of her, floating in the air like some twisted interface.