Miri woke up on the cave floor.

  Again.

  Her headlamp bounced as she sucked in a sharp breath and pushed herself up on her elbows. Judging by the lack of soreness and the time on her watch, she’d only been out for a few seconds.

  Which felt deeply unfair.

  She let herself fall back and stared at the ceiling.

  You died.

  “Dead,” she said to the darkness, testing the word like it might break between her teeth.

  It didn’t echo. It didn’t need to.

  What echoed was Mason’s absence.

  Twins were supposed to feel each other. A pulse. A pressure. A shared hum under the skin. She held herself perfectly still, as if moving might drown it out, waiting for that familiar background signal to reassert itself.

  Nothing.

  The silence hurt more than the idea of death. It felt like standing on one side of a wall she and Mason had built together brick by brick, only to realize she was the only one still touching it. Was he alive on the other side, pounding just as hard? Or had the wall swallowed him too?

  Her mind refused to imagine him alone.

  Every memory came paired. Two sets of footprints. Two headlamps cutting through the dark. Two voices arguing about whether continuing deeper was a terrible idea or an excellent one. Now there was only one voice, and it sounded unfinished, like a sentence cut off before the verb.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, breathing slow.

  She should have been panicking.

  She noted that she wasn’t.

  Filed it away with the other wrong things.

  What would happen now? Was Mason somewhere else, seeing glowing text too, swearing at the universe like he always did? Or was he back in the crystal cavern, staring at her body and trying not to scream?

  The thought twisted low in her chest. It didn’t spiral the way it should have. That worried her.

  The System appeared again.

  [ Proceed to begin the T????????u??????t??????o??????r???????????i?????a??????l??????????? Introduction. ]

  Miri groaned.

  “I don’t want to,” she told the air.

  The System did not care.

  She took a steadying breath and folded her grief small, the way she and Mason used to pack fear away in tight spaces. Answers wouldn’t come to her curled on the floor.

  She stood.

  The cave was unchanged. Dead end behind her. Darkness ahead. No Mason. No better ideas.

  She started walking.

  The passage was narrow enough that her headlamp mostly illuminated rock inches from her face. The walls felt closer than they should have, like the cave was leaning in to listen.

  Then she saw light.

  Real light.

  She quickened her pace.

  The passage opened into a cavern roughly the size of her first studio apartment. Torches lined the walls—except they weren’t torches. They were balls of fire, stuck to the rock like glowing, angry barnacles.

  “…Okay,” she muttered. “Sure.”

  As she stepped fully inside, something popped into existence with a soft pfft.

  A couch.

  Then a table. Pfft.

  An ornate rug unfurled beneath them. Pfft.

  A stuffed bookcase. A cushy armchair. A bar cart stocked with amber liquids and shimmering glassware. Wooden workbenches. A small bed tucked neatly into the corner.

  Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.

  The cave transformed into a cozy, lived-in apartment belonging to someone with no concept of minimalism.

  Miri turned in a slow circle.

  “Nope,” she said. “Absolutely not.”

  “Hello there, Miri,” a cheerful voice said. “I’m your Introduction Guide.”

  She froze.

  Then she saw the cat.

  It was a big-ass cat. Nearly four feet tall, standing upright on its hind legs, wearing a fluffy apron that valiantly failed to contain the explosion of fur beneath it.

  Miri blindly reached out for support, arm sweeping through empty air where Mason should have been. Her hand dropped.

  Right. Alone.

  The cat’s fur was ginger-orange, with three white paws. For one unsettling second, it reminded her of the fat, stupidly affectionate cat they’d had as kids.

  Then it blinked.

  Its eyes were bright yellow, with tiny swirling sparkles inside the pupils.

  And it was talking.

  Miri stared at it.

  “No,” she said. “This is a prank.”

  The cat paused.

  “A… prank?”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding as the idea solidified. “This is absolutely something Mason would do. He’s always wanted to get me back for the airhorn incident.”

  “What is an air horn,” the cat asked.

  “Never mind. The point is, this is elaborate. I’ll give him that. Very immersive. Ten out of ten commitment.”

  She gestured wildly at the furniture. “But I am not falling for it.”

  The cat watched her for a moment, then shrugged and poured itself a cup of steaming tea.

  “Sit down, child,” it said, gesturing to the couch.

  It poured itself a cup of steaming tea.

  Miri sat. Carefully.

  The cat added an obscene amount of milk to its cup, then glanced at her. “Tea?”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Yes please,” Miri said automatically.

  She accepted the cup, added honey, and froze.

  The cup was warm.

  The steam curled gently upward. The scent was real. Familiar.

  She took a cautious sip.

  It tasted like tea.

  “The System informs me that you respond best to straightforward honesty,” the cat said. “Your negative emotional responses have been temporarily dampened to ease your transition. To use a phrase from your world, I will rip the bandage off quickly.”

  That explained… a lot.

  Miri nodded. “Okay.”

  “You took a swan dive into a pool of annihilation and were recreated by a god to be integrated into the System for a secret mission.”

  The words came out fast enough that Miri had to sit with them for a second.

  “That’s…”

  She remembered the crystal cavern. The impossible blue water. The brief, total pain.

  Annihilation.

  Her thoughts caught on the rest of the sentence. A god. One of many, apparently. She glanced around the room. Was she some kind of magical battery for the Matrix? A pawn? A test subject?

  Mason would probably be thrilled.

  The thought tugged her mouth into a frown.

  “What secret mission?” she asked. “And if you’re about to say holy mission, absolutely not. I’m an atheist. I think. Or I was.”

  She looked down at the tea in her hands. The warm tea.

  Proof of something god-like was right there in her hands. Can’t really deny it when you’re drinking it.

  “Actually,” she added, “what do you call it when you accept that gods exist but don’t worship them?”

  “Alatrism,” the cat said instantly. “But that’s irrelevant. There are many gods. You could become one yourself, eventually.”

  Miri did not react to that at all.

  “The important part,” the cat continued, “is that quests are challenges issued by gods through the System. The System helps focus your path. It presents itself in a format familiar to you. Like a video game.”

  It gestured vaguely with its cup.

  “You gain experience through effort. Magical. Physical. Mental. Greater effort yields greater rewards.”

  Miri stared at the cat.

  “That sounds exactly like a video game,” she said slowly. “Suspiciously exactly.”

  The cat raised an eyebrow.

  Miri looked past it. At the bookcase full of leather-bound tomes and yellowed scrolls. At the floating fireballs. At the cave walls made of the wrong kind of rock.

  Motherfucking magic.

  “Okay,” she almost grinned. “Okay. I believe you.”

  Her grip tightened on the cup as she thought about how Mason would go nuts for this.

  “Where’s my brother?”

  The cat paused.

  Just long enough to be deliberate.

  “He is,” it said carefully, “involved.”

  Miri carefully set the teacup down on the table. “That’s not an answer.”

  “No,” the cat agreed pleasantly. “It is a boundary.”

  She exhaled sharply through her nose. “Okay. Fine. Start talking. Slowly. And if you say the word destiny, I’m throwing this tea at you.”

  “Entirely reasonable.” The cat took a sip of its own drink, sighed contentedly, then set the cup aside. “The System is not fate. It is infrastructure.”

  Miri frowned. “Infrastructure.”

  “Yes. Think of it as… scaffolding. It does not decide who you are or what you will do. It simply makes sure the world doesn’t collapse while you’re doing it.”

  “That’s not comforting.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be.”

  The cat hopped down from its chair and padded across the rug, tail flicking. As it spoke, faint motes of light drifted through the air, assembling themselves into simple shapes—lines, bars, symbols—then dissolving again.

  “The universe contains magic,” it said. “Most worlds do. Yours should.”

  Miri’s jaw tightened. “But it doesn’t.”

  “Correct. Earth’s mana is suppressed. Not gone—contained. Imagine a river dammed so thoroughly that the land forgets what rain feels like.”

  “That doesn’t sound natural,” Miri said.

  “No,” the cat agreed. “It is deliberate.”

  She swallowed. “By who?”

  The cat’s ears twitched. “Later.”

  It turned back to her.

  “When a world’s magic is forcibly constrained, any sudden exposure is catastrophic. That is why jumping into the pool killed you. Your body had no pathways for mana. No tolerance. It was like pouring lightning into a glass.”

  Miri winced. “We really should’ve tested the water.”

  “Many species make that mistake exactly once.”

  “Yeah,” she muttered. “Sounds like us.”

  The cat climbed back into its chair.

  “The god who retrieved you does not wish to destroy Earth,” it continued. “Nor rule it. Nor harvest it. He wishes to… repair it. Carefully. Over time.”

  “And I’m part of that plan,” Miri said flatly.

  “Yes.”

  “Why me.”

  The cat tilted its head. “Because you jump.”

  Miri blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “You leap into unknown spaces,” the cat said. “Not blindly so much as decisively. You test limits. You survive. And when you fail, you get back up and try again.”

  “That sounds like a polite way to say reckless.”

  The cat smiled, all teeth and whiskers. “Recklessness without conviction gets people killed. Yours does not.”

  Miri didn’t respond to that.

  “The System exists,” the cat continued, “to translate magic into something you can interact with safely. Gradually. It enforces rules where none would otherwise exist. Growth instead of overload. Progression instead of annihilation.”

  “Levels,” Miri said.

  “Yes.”

  “Skills.”

  “Yes.”

  “Quests.”

  “Also yes. Though not all of them will be reasonable.”

  “That makes sense.”

  The cat gestured, and the earlier status screen flickered faintly in the air.

  “Without the System,” it said, “restoring mana to Earth would be catastrophic. Your species has no tolerance for it. No pathways. No instinctive defenses. Reintroducing magic all at once would kill millions.”

  Miri swallowed. “And with it?”

  “With the System,” the cat said, “individuals can adapt. Slowly. Safely. Strength, perception, and magical capacity grow in step with exposure.”

  “So I’m a test subject,” Miri said flatly.

  “No,” the cat replied. “You are a champion.”

  She blinked. “That somehow sounds worse.”

  The cat’s whiskers twitched. “A champion is not chosen because they are ready. They are chosen because they will become ready.”

  Miri stared at the glowing numbers, at the neat boxes and locked thresholds. Levels. Skills. Progression. A structure imposed on something wild and dangerous.

  “And what happens,” she asked, “if I decide I don’t want to do this?”

  The cat didn’t hesitate.

  “Then Earth remains as it is,” it said. “Muted. Suppressed. And you will not.”

  That landed harder than she expected.

  She looked away, jaw tight.

  “And the god,” she said. “What does he want from me?”

  The cat folded its paws neatly. “A task. One that cannot be completed quickly or cleanly. You will need to grow stronger. Smarter. More adaptable. The System’s quests will guide that growth.”

  “Like a leash,” Miri muttered.

  “Like a trail marker,” the cat corrected. “You may ignore them. You may deviate. But the path exists whether you follow it or not.”

  Miri’s fingers curled in the fabric of her shorts.

  “And I’ll be doing this alone,” she said.

  The cat’s gaze softened—not gentle, exactly, but steady.

  “You will not be as alone as you fear,” it said. “The System exists to support you. To intervene when necessary. To ensure you are not overwhelmed.”

  That wasn’t the same as having someone.

  Miri felt the weight of that settle in her chest.

  She had never done anything alone before.

  Not really.

  Every climb, every bad decision, every reckless leap had been mirrored by Mason at her side. Even when she led, she knew he was there—watching her footing, catching details she missed, grounding her when adrenaline ran too hot.

  Her breath stuttered.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” she admitted quietly. “I’ve never— ”

  The words trailed off as a memory surfaced, unbidden.

  Rain. Cold. Mud slick under her boots.

  They’d gone off-trail chasing a viewpoint Mason swore was on the map. They’d slipped. Lost their packs. Lost daylight. And then Mason had gone down hard, his foot bending in a way feet absolutely should not.

  She remembered kneeling in the mud, hands shaking, panic clawing up her throat as he told her—calm, pale, trying not to scream—that she had to go. That she had to leave him there and get help.

  She’d cried. Sworn. Argued.

  And then she’d gone.

  She remembered the panic snapping at her heels the entire way—the fear that she’d miss the trail entirely, that she’d walk for hours and find nothing, that she’d come back too late or not be able to find him again at all. Every shadow looked wrong. Every bend in the path felt like a mistake. She’d had to stop more than once, hands on her knees, breathing through the thought that she might be leaving him behind forever.

  A full day of hiking through rain and cold with nothing but a polyester poncho and sheer, shaking determination driving her forward. She’d made it out.

  She’d brought help back.

  Mason had lived.

  Miri drew in a slow breath. She didn’t want to do this alone.

  But she could.

  She lifted her head.

  “Okay,” she said. “Tell me what I have to do first.”

  The cat smiled.

  “That is the correct question.”

  A soft chime rang in Miri’s head.

  [ System Achievement! ]

  She recoiled.

  “What the hell?”