I was still standing in my apartment, trying to process everything that had just happened.
The cold remained. Frost still clung to the corners of the window, and the damp floor near the sill reflected the pale light from outside. The room was quiet—too quiet after the Will of the World, the voice, the pain, the awakening.
Ninety-two soul power.
Freeze. Frost Phantom Substitute. Ice Manipulation. Ice Seal.
The words circled in my head, heavy and unreal. I had read about powers like these—about awakenings, special abilities, and the hidden rules of this world—but reading was one thing. Living through it was another.
I looked down at my hand again.
The mark on my palm had settled. It no longer crawled up my wrist, but it was different now—sharper somehow, more defined, like a snowflake etched into my skin by an invisible blade. Faint silver lines spread from its centre like frozen veins.
I flexed my fingers slowly.
No pain. No stiffness. Just power.
Before I could think any further, a sharp sound cut through the room.
My phone rang.
The sudden noise made me flinch.
For a second, I stared at it on the table, as if I had forgotten what it was. Then the screen lit up again with another notification.
I stepped forward and picked it up.
Thirteen missed calls.
And a newly arrived message.
I frowned.
Most of the missed calls were from the same person.
Emily.
I opened the latest message.
"Even if you possess the power of ice, you should not have your window open in this heavy snow."
I stared at the screen a moment longer.
The message carried the familiar tone of someone trying to sound annoyed while failing to hide her concern. It was nagging, yes, but gentle underneath. The kind of message sent by someone who had worried enough to call thirteen times and still chose to scold instead of accuse.
Emily.
As I remembered, the female lead—the heroine of the original story—had always had feelings for the original owner of this body. Even after all the trouble he brought her, even after his selfishness, weakness, and repeated mistakes, she still wanted him to return to his senses. As an agent, it wasn't exactly a secret to her that corporations had dealings with the dark side of superpowers. But he had still chosen that path—for less risk, more money, and higher status. Like an idiot, she kept caring.
That made this more uncomfortable.
Because the person she was worried about—
wasn't really here anymore.
"How does she know the window is open?" I murmured.
I turned toward the window and stepped closer.
The moment I looked outside, I found my answer.
Below, parked near the building, was a Bureau agent car half-covered in snow. Leaning casually against the side of it stood a woman in black winter clothing, one gloved hand holding her phone as she typed.
Emily.
Even from this distance, she was striking.
She wasn't the kind of beauty that overwhelmed a room at first glance. It was subtler than that—clean features, calm posture, and the sort of face that became more difficult to look away from the longer you looked. Snowflakes drifted around her dark coat and settled in her hair before melting away. Her figure was slim and balanced, neither fragile nor severe, and the black winter clothes only made her pale skin stand out more in the moonlit street.
But what truly made her remarkable were her eyes.
Even from above, I could see them clearly.
They seemed to catch the moonlight rather than reflect it—bright and sharp, with a quiet intensity that made them feel almost luminous. Not soft. Not cold either. Just deeply observant, like nothing in front of her could fully escape notice.
Then she looked up.
Our eyes met.
Both of us froze.
For one stretched-out second, the world seemed to narrow to that line of sight between the apartment window and the snowy street below.
I didn't know how to respond to that look.
Guilt rose in me so suddenly that it felt physical.
It wasn't my guilt, not entirely. Part of it belonged to the original Luke—to the memories still left in this body, to all the disappointment and worry he had caused her. But part of it was mine because I knew things she didn't. Because I understood what kind of future awaited her. Because I was standing here wearing someone else's face while she looked at me with real concern.
So I just stood there.
I did nothing.
Emily kept looking at me for a few more seconds, her expression unreadable from this distance. Then she lowered her gaze and tapped something into her phone.
A second later, my phone rang again in my hand.
I looked down at the screen.
A new message.
"See you in court tomorrow."
I read it twice.
Then I lifted my head and looked outside again.
Emily had already pushed herself away from the car. She moved around it with calm, practised steps, opened the door, and got inside. A moment later, the engine started, headlights cutting through the falling snow.
The car pulled away from the curb and disappeared down the road.
I kept watching until it was gone.
Only then did I let out a breath I hadn't realised I was holding.
I gave a helpless smile—small, awkward, the kind worn by someone who truly didn't know what to do.
Then I looked down at the message again.
"See you in court tomorrow."
Tomorrow.
As soon as the word settled in my mind, the rest followed.
Tomorrow was the real start of the story.
Not the prologue. Not the vague background events. The actual beginning.
The day everything began to move.
The day the original plot opened its eyes.
And also—
The day Emily awakened her system.
I stood in silence, holding the phone loosely in my hand.
In the novel, tomorrow had been important for many reasons. Officially, it was just a court date, one more ugly event tied to the original Luke's bad decisions and damaged relationships. But in truth, it was the first domino. The moment the heroine fully stepped onto the stage. The moment fate started tightening around every major character.
Emily would awaken tomorrow.
That system would become one of the greatest turning points in her life, pushing her into the centre of the world's conflict. From there, everything would escalate—power struggles, hidden factions, bloodline families, the Bureau, secrets buried beneath the city, and the long chain of disasters that followed.
And me?
I was supposed to be little more than a side character drifting toward a miserable end.
A disposable man with a rare hidden ability, dragged around by people stronger than him until he was finally used up.
But now too much had changed.
I had a second awakening.
I had Time and Space fragments sealed inside my soul.
I knew things the original Luke never knew.
And tomorrow, I would have to stand in front of Emily pretending that none of this was true.
Snow continued to fall outside the window in a steady white curtain.
The apartment felt smaller now.
Not because of the cold or the silence, but because tomorrow had suddenly become real.
I looked once more at Emily's message and pictured her standing below in the snow, black coat dusted white, moon-bright eyes fixed on this window with irritation, concern, and perhaps the last bit of patience she still had for Luke.
"Kuch kuch."
A sound came from outside the window.
I looked up and saw a squirrel nibbling on something along the ledge.
Then something clicked.
It was the perfect test subject for my power.
It was alive. It was moving.
I focused on it.
Locked on.
"Freeze."
Something magical happened.
The squirrel stopped moving instantly, as if someone had paused a video. It didn't fall. It didn't react. It simply froze in place, locked between one moment and the next.
Then I released the skill.
The effect ended.
For a second, I thought it would panic and run, but it gave no sign that anything had happened at all. It simply resumed what it had been doing, as naturally as if no interruption had ever existed.
It looked like even its thoughts and senses had been frozen along with its body.
I turned back toward the room, toward the frost, the silence, and the power that still felt new beneath my skin.