Chapter 1: The Night the World Reset

One minute, my best friend Derek was lobbing Cheetos at my head in our dorm room—the next, we were trapped inside someone else’s paperback redemption story. The stale smell of ramen noodles and old socks clung to the air, a reminder we’d left behind real life.

The original moment we found ourselves yanked from campus into the heart of someone else’s plot felt like a fever dream. There was that sensation you get at the top of a roller coaster—weightless, unanchored, a little sick with anticipation. I kept waiting for the RA to bang on our door and tell us to knock it off, but nobody came. Just silence, and a sky that didn’t look like any campus I’d ever seen.

Derek got stuck with the mean girl project, and I drew the short straw—helping the physics prodigy who barely looked up from his notebook. Just as we were about to finish our missions, the main character showed up. Overnight, all our progress vanished.

Derek always claimed he got the short end of the stick, but we both knew his stubborn streak was a superpower in worlds like these. We’d charted every move, cheered each other’s victories, and griped about the setbacks over microwaved pizza. But none of that could have prepared us for the way the story reset—like someone yanking the power cord out of the wall.

We stared at the progress bars, blinking zeros. I wanted to punch a wall, or scream, but all I could do was laugh. It sounded hollow. My friend came to me and said he was done playing—should we just go home?

I didn’t even have to think. Derek was my ride-or-die, always had been. If he was out, so was I. I replied, "If you go back, I’ll go back too."

It was late, the air was muggy with summer, and I could see the tired set of his shoulders—my answer was automatic, bone-deep loyalty. I tried to crack a smile, make a joke, but the words caught. Sometimes, all you can do is show up for your people.

Later, the two of us died and left that world. With our prize money, we roamed the country, living it up. A year later, the system suddenly rebooted.

Those months blurred into a reel of road trips: neon-lit diners on Route 66, fishing in the Rockies, backyard barbecues with strangers. For a while, we pretended we could outrun the past. Then the universe—well, the system—decided to call us home.

"Alert: main character in the novel world has died. Target used abnormal means. Forcibly recalling hosts. Teleportation will begin in three seconds."

My friend and I…

I remember the taste of whiskey on my tongue, laughter echoing in my ears, and the feel of someone's hand in mine as the world flickered.

Three seconds later, with our arms around pretty girls, we landed in front of two women who’d gone completely dark.

Talk about a cold shower. One second, we were poolside in Vegas, the next we were blinking under fluorescent lights, caught dead in the headlights of two women who looked like they could kill with a glance.

The mean girl tied up my friend’s hands. "You’re not getting away from me ever again."

Natalie’s glare could’ve melted steel. Her voice was honey-laced poison, and the zip tie made a finality of it all. Derek—ever the smartass—shot me a look that said, “Help me, bro.”

The cold woman beside her shut down the system for good. "You too, darling."

Aubrey, always the ice queen, had a clicker in her hand. The hum of servers faded, screens went black, and she barely spared me a glance. “No more running,” she said, and I felt my knees go weak—not from fear, but from the realization we’d come full circle.