"Kael Mercer. Given your current performance, you’re no longer fit to start for the first team."
"You have two options. Switch to a support role and stay on varsity, or drop down to the second squad."
"Choose."
Inside the glass-walled conference room of Ironclad Esports, a woman in a sharp charcoal blazer stood at the head of the table, arms folded, voice dripping with cold authority.
She was striking poised, polished. But her eyes were flat and merciless, and every word out of her mouth landed like a verdict already decided.
The room went dead silent. Then the whispering started."Cynthia’s really doing this in front of everyone?"
"Kael’s twenty-two. He’s not declining, he’s peaking."The guy carried this org to three straight championships and this is how she.
"She’s humiliating him. On purpose. In front of the whole roster." She’s got a personal grudge. Everyone knows it.
At the center of it all sat a young man with the kind of face cameras loved sharp jaw, deep-set eyes, the build of someone who’d spent years training as hard as he gamed.
Right now, though, something else was written across his features.Confusion.
He looked down at the timestamp on his phone.
June 9th, 2077.
He checked it again. Then a third time.
I’ve been sent back.
Two and a half years back the day before Ascension launched.This is the final all-hands meeting before the game goes live.
Memory slammed into him in a single wave, years of life he’d already lived folding into this one moment.
He looked up at Cynthia Miles at that expensive, empty, furious face and felt something curdle in his chest.
He knew exactly why she was doing this.
It had nothing to do with his performance. It was because he’d turned her down.
Last night in his first life she’d called him into her office after a scrim, dropping every hint that "communication" could mean a lot more than strategy talk.
Kael had heard the rumors about his team manager long before that night. He wasn’t interested in being another name on that list, and he’d said so, flatly, without dressing it up.
So this morning, humiliated and furious, she’d called an emergency meeting to cut him from the roster in front of the entire org.
Kael’s gaze swept the room slowly, and something bitter twisted behind his calm expression.
Three years. He’d bled for this team in-game, night after night, dragging Ironclad up from a nobody org to the top of the world stage.
Three championship banners. Every person in this room had gotten a cut of that glory.
And not one of them would say a word for him now.
Even having lived this exact moment once before, the silence still stung.Cynthia’s patience snapped first. "Kael. Stop wasting my time. Support role, or second team. Pick."
"Neither."He said it flat. Cold. Final.
"I quit."The room erupted. Chairs creaked. Someone gasped.
Cynthia’s face hardened. "Quit? Read your contract again. Breach it and you’re on the hook for twenty million."
Kael almost laughed.
In his first life, he’d swallowed this exact humiliation. Contract clauses, legal threats, the works he’d folded, dropped to the second team, and quietly handed off his best in-game resources to the first-team starters while his own growth stalled out.
One step behind became ten steps behind. By the time the game began merging with reality, he understood exactly how much that single decision had cost him.
Even so, he’d clawed his way back. Talent, grinding, sheer stubbornness he’d fought his way into the global top ten.
But the whole time, a hidden restriction buried deep in his character had kept him leashed to Ironclad’s guild banner, unable to fully break free.
Only after nearly dying more than once did he finally claim the treasure that changed everything a relic straight out of legend, the Primordial Bloodline.
And even then, they’d tried to make him hand it over.That was the day he’d stopped holding back. He triggered the restriction himself, let it tear his own body apart, and took as many of them down with him as he could.
Not this time.
Soon, the money sitting in Cynthia’s bank account would mean nothing. Once the merge hit, only strength inside the game would matter.
"Twenty million?" Kael said, almost bored. "I’ll pay it. Draw up the paperwork."
He wasn’t spending one more day under this roof.
Cynthia’s face went white with rage, chest heaving. "Fine! Don’t you dare come crawling back, Mercer!" She snapped her fingers at an assistant to start the termination contract.
A guy near the front glasses, buzzcut, the kind of smug that only comes from riding someone else’s coattails stood and rested a hand on Cynthia’s shoulder like he was comforting her.
Then he turned to Kael, eyes gleaming with something ugly."Your time’s up, Mercer." Ryan Tanner’s mouth curled into a smirk. "Watch. I’m taking this org further than you ever could."
Kael looked at him the way you’d look at something already dead.
He remembered this kid remembered when nobody on the roster wanted anything to do with him because his mechanics were garbage.
Kael had been the one to run extra scrims with him every night, out of nothing but team loyalty and a captain’s sense of duty.
This was the thanks he got.
And it wasn’t hard to guess what had really been going on between Ryan and Cynthia behind closed doors. A perfect match, honestly exactly the kind of people who deserved each other.
Kael didn’t bother responding. He just filed the thought away.Once the merge happens, if either of you survive a single week without me holding your hands, I’ll admit I was wrong about you.
Ten minutes later, the contract was signed.
Kael didn’t take a single thing from his desk except his neural rig. He walked out of Ironclad’s offices without a backward glance.
The second he got home, he strapped in and logged on.Ascension wouldn’t officially launch until midnight but character creation was already open.
The moment the rig’s indicator light flared red, Kael felt his consciousness get yanked loose from his body, dragged through what felt like an endless tunnel of static and starlight.
Then he was standing in a vast, glowing hall.
A voice flat, mechanical, ancient-sounding echoed directly into his mind.
"Primordial Bloodline integration in progress..."
"Current integration: 1%. Skyborn Bloodline acquired."
"Bloodline Effect: Regardless of class chosen, you will unlock a hidden class and awaken a top-tier class talent."