The nameless gamer dies in her shabby apartment, and the G.E.M.A. shard turns the corpse of Seraphine Vildea into a vessel for a foreign soul. She wakes up in a hospital bed that feels wrong, machines covered in rust, a radio announcer wishing Neo Avalis a chrometastic day. Her first words are a bewildered question about her own name, and the man who bursts through the door calls her Sera. Oliver Vildea is a loving father, but to her he is a stranger. Her brother Gabriel is a sixteen-year-old with orange hair, glowing tattoos, and an unsettling maturity, and her mother Valeria is a corporate shark who treats family dinners like boardroom audits. The protagonist quickly realizes the impossible truth: she has been isekai'd into the fictional world of Neon Dragons, six years before the game's main story begins. She has no access to Sera's memories, no clear mission, and no way back. Worse, Sera was found dead in a trash container with a scorched data-slot, meaning the original owner of this body is almost certainly gone. The moral dilemma is brutal, but the will to live is stronger. In front of a smudged mirror, she looks at Sera's pale face and green eyes, rehearses the name Seraphine Vildea, and then declares it with full ownership. The second chance she has been given is built on the ashes of a dead girl's life, and she accepts it anyway. This dark bargain becomes the foundation of the entire story, a cold pragmatic survival instinct wrapped in the language of video game progression.

After claiming Sera's identity, the protagonist opens the G.E.M.A. System and faces the most important decision of her new life: her starting Traits. The list includes Blademaster, Gunman, Hacker, Ghost, Hard To Kill, Polyglot, and more, each promising a different path through Neo Avalis. She agonizes over every option, aware that this is not a game screen but a permanent biological upgrade. She chooses Blademaster for instant combat skills and Polyglot for universal language mastery, a choice that later proves essential in dealing with the Gryplik shopkeeper Misha. The System immediately floods her brain with muscle memory, and she spends her first days in a wheelchair grinding push-ups, leg lifts, and sock-ball juggling to raise her Body and Reflex Attributes. The Rest Function becomes her best friend, granting perfect sleep and bonus XP. This rapid progression transforms her from a bedridden cripple into a girl who can stand, walk, and run. Yet the true milestone is emotional, not mechanical. Gabriel comes home after work, and the two have a raw, tear-soaked conversation about the old Sera, his guilt, and his fear that he failed his sister. The protagonist makes a vow to protect her new family, and that vow is tested almost immediately when Gabriel stumbles through the door with a deep abdominal wound, bleeding out from a scav ambush. She pushes him to a slicer named Dr. Maltrick, calling in a debt that will later haunt her, and discovers that saving a brother is never a free action in Neon Dragons.

The protagonist's daily grind at Mr. Shori's noodle stall gives her more than food and experience. It gives her a mentor, a reputation, and an impossible task. Mr. Shori is switching protection from the Red Snakes to the Clawed Beasts, and he needs a courier invisible enough to deliver a data shard that could destroy the Red Snakes. Despite her terror, Sera accepts the job, lured by the System's promise of Character Experience and a Skill Point. The journey to the 21st floor is a brutal education in the real cost of cyberpunk violence. She watches a gang skirmish erupt between Golden Phoenix and Byte Wolves, sees a teenage girl die with her throat cut, and vomits in the aftermath. The darkness of the city is no longer a game aesthetic. It is blood on the floor and scavver children stripping corpses before they are cold. She survives because of her rapidly growing Stealth skill and her own ruthless pragmatism, and at the Downpour nightclub she meets Vega, the ganger who first offered to guide her. Vega is charming, dangerous, and deeply suspicious of her. He toys with her identity, offers her a place among the Clawed Beasts, and only after she gives the data shard does he laugh, respect her, and hand over his contact number. The delivery is a success, but the cost is high: she now owes a favor to the gang, has stolen the name Ela as a shadow identity, and has seen the true face of Neo Avalis.

The family dinner after Gabriel's recovery is a masterclass in psychological terror. Valeria reveals that she laced both children's meals with a corporate neurotoxin called NeuroCorpse, a nearly undetectable substance that causes full-body agony without leaving marks. Gabriel and Sera are ordered to finish their plates, and they do, collapsing into hours of screaming, thrashing torment. Sera's mind nearly breaks, and she even fantasizes about begging for more of the toxin to anchor her sanity. The horror of the scene is not just the pain but the violation of trust from a parent who believes her cruelty is education. When the ordeal finally ends, Sera wakes with a terrifying clarity: she must never again be at the mercy of Valeria or anyone else. She also learns that Mr. Stirling, the man who helped her save Gabriel, has called in the debt owed to Valeria, putting another obligation on Sera's shoulders. She uses Mr. Shori's recommendation to find Misha's Emporium on the 31st floor, a strange and wonderful shop run by a Gryplik named Misha. With her personal credits and Valeria's restricted shard, she buys a reinforced bomber jacket, tactical pants, a filtering scarf, a durable combat knife, and a beginner deck for netrunning. She leaves the shop armed, disguised, and prepared to work off her debts in the violent economy of Neo Avalis.