Chapter 2: Three Days, Two Beasts, Zero Dignity

The System, Skylar decided within the first ten minutes of talking to it, had the bedside manner of a parking ticket.

"Explain," she said, sitting cross-legged on the creaky bed, wrinkled hands folded like she was interviewing it for a job. "And this time, lead with something useful."

[System: Acknowledged. Beginning briefing.]

[In 3 days, 4 hours, 12 minutes, a global Rift Event will occur. Sky fractures will release mutation energy across the planet. Humans, animals, and environments will be irreversibly altered.]

Skylar blinked. "I'm sorry, a what event?"

[Rift Event. Colloquially referred to, in future records, as The Apocalypse.]

"Future records," she repeated slowly. "So this has already happened. Somewhere. To someone."

[System: Correct.]

"And I'm finding out about it now, three days before it happens, in the body of a woman old enough to be my own grandmother's roommate."

[System: Also correct.]

Skylar pressed her palms against her eyes. "Fantastic. Just — fantastic. Okay. What do you need me to do? Hide? Stockpile canned beans? Learn to use a crossbow?"

[Main Quest Available: Claim Two Unwanted Beasts.]

She lowered her hands. "I'm sorry, claim them? Like — property? Are we talking pets?"

[Negative. Beasts refers to individuals who will awaken beast-based abilities during the Rift Event. The two targets assigned to Host have been rejected by all prior claimants.]

"Rejected," Skylar echoed. "As in nobody wants them."

[Confirmed. Both targets are currently classified as Unwanted — low market value, poor projected combat output, social liability.]

"So the system's plan," Skylar said, "is to take a sixty-eight-year-old woman with a beauty score of twelve, and pair her up with two men that nobody else wants. That's — that's actually a little insulting to everyone involved."

[System: Reward for quest completion includes incremental restoration of Host's physical age, contingent on affinity growth with both targets.]

Skylar went very still.

"Wait. Back up. Say that part again."

[Affinity growth with claimed targets will reverse Host's aging process.]

For the first time since waking up in this stranger's papery skin, something in Skylar's chest loosened. She glanced at her spotted hands, at the loose skin along her knuckles, and felt something that was suspiciously close to hope.

"So if I get these two men to like me," she said carefully, "I get to be young again."

[Affirmative.]

"And if I don't?"

[System: Survival probability remains at 0.7%.]

"Right," Skylar said. "No pressure, then."

She stood up, joints protesting the entire way, and studied her reflection in the cracked mirror one more time — not out of vanity, but calculation. If she was going to talk two strangers into liking a woman old enough to have delivered their mothers, she needed a plan. And possibly a better outfit than the moth-eaten shawl currently draped over her shoulders.

[System Note: Probability Sight has been unlocked.]

"My what now?"

[Probability Sight: A passive skill allowing Host to perceive likely outcomes of immediate physical actions. Useful for hazard avoidance and combat prediction.]

As if to demonstrate, a faint shimmer crossed her vision — the loose floorboard by the door flickered with a soft red outline, and a ghostly percentage hovered over it.

[73% probability of ankle injury if stepped on directly.]

Skylar stared at it. "You couldn't have told me before I almost broke my hip walking to the mirror?"

[System: Host did not request a hazard scan at that time.]

"I'm starting to think you enjoy this."

The system, predictably, said nothing.

Skylar sidestepped the floorboard with the smug satisfaction of a woman who had just discovered cheat codes to her own survival, and made her way toward the door. If she only had three days before the sky apparently fell apart, she wasn't going to spend it arguing with blue text in an empty room.

"Fine," she said, pulling the shawl tighter around her thin shoulders. "Where do I find these two poor, unwanted souls the entire world has decided to reject?"

[Target One: Located seven streets east. Current status: injured, resting near the old textile mill.]

[Target Two: Located within the northern district. Current status: isolated, avoiding public contact.]

"Great. An injured stray and a hermit. This is shaping up beautifully." Skylar pushed open the door, wincing as sunlight hit her unfamiliar, wrinkled face. A few passersby glanced her way and quickly looked elsewhere, the way people do when they don't want to be caught staring at something unfortunate.

She ignored them. She had bigger problems — namely, convincing two beasts who'd been rejected by literally everyone else that an old woman with a beauty score in the single digits was somehow their best option.

"Lead the way," she muttered under her breath, already following the faint directional pulse the system had marked in her vision. "Let's go meet my future husbands."

[System Note: Neither target has agreed to any bond yet.]

"Details," Skylar said breezily.

She turned the corner onto a narrower street, the old mill visible in the distance, its broken windows catching the weak morning light. Something about the building made her pause — an odd, prickling awareness she couldn't quite explain, like she'd stood in that exact spot before and it hadn't gone well.

She shook the feeling off and kept walking.

She was three streets away when the ground beneath her feet trembled — once, sharp and sudden, like something enormous had shifted deep below the earth. Windows rattled. A bird shot up from a nearby rooftop, shrieking.

Skylar froze mid-step.

[Warning: Unscheduled tremor detected. Anomaly does not match projected Rift Event timeline.]

The countdown flickered in the corner of her vision — and for one heart-stopping second, the numbers jumped backward before settling again.

[System: ...recalculating.]