Start Again: A Prologue Novels & Stories

I'm actually pretty sure you're mixing up the title. There's a webnovel on platforms like RoyalRoad called 'Start Again' that has an opening chapter sometimes labeled "Prologue," but I've never seen a standalone book called 'Start Again: A Prologue.' If we're talking about that webnovel's prologue, it sets up a brutal system apocalypse scenario. The main character, Leo, is in a city when blue screens appear globally, granting people classes and skills. It's pure chaos right from the jump—monsters spawn, buildings collapse, and society shatters in minutes.

Leo isn't some chosen hero initially; he's just trying to survive. The prologue focuses on his immediate, visceral reaction to the end of the world. He witnesses incredible violence and gets a fairly common class, feeling that crushing sense of being ordinary in an extraordinary crisis. The writing is frantic, which fits the premise. It ends with him barely escaping an early threat, realizing nothing will ever be the same. It's a functional, action-heavy intro that gets the plot moving without much lingering character depth, which some readers find effective and others think is a bit thin.

I know the exact serial you're talking about, but honestly, tracking down a free, complete, and authorized version of 'Start Again: A Prologue' is tricky. It’s originally a Korean webnovel, so most free English translations pop up on aggregator sites that scrape content, and those are a mess—ads, missing chapters, machine-translated gibberish halfway through. I got burned trying to read it on one of those sites; the translation quality nosedived after chapter 15, and it ruined the flow of the regression premise.

Your most reliable bet for a free taste is probably Webnovel’s app or site, which hosts the official translation. They use a coin/privilege system, but they always offer the first several dozen chapters completely free to hook you. After that, you either wait for daily free unlocks or pay. It’s not totally free, but it’s legal and the translation is coherent. I’d avoid random blogs promising PDFs; that’s just pirated content slapped together, and it never includes the author’s later revisions.

I actually just reread 'Start Again: A Prologue' the other night after finishing the third main novel, and its setup feels much more meaningful in hindsight. At first, it's a short, brutal look at the protagonist's final moments before the 'reset'—this utter physical and emotional collapse. You get the why of the reset immediately: life is unsalvageable here. But the prologue's real genius is the specific details it plants. The mention of the scar on his left hand from a childhood accident, or the half-remembered melody his sister used to hum. These aren't just tragic flavor text. In 'Start Again: Volume 1', those become the first flickers of his old memory returning, the keys he uses to prove his 'future' knowledge to an ally. The prologue doesn't just give a reason to start over; it provides the buried treasure map he'll use on the second go-around.

It also firmly establishes the narrative voice, which is closer to a raw, exhausted journal entry than the more strategic, observant tone of the early chapters in the main story. That shift in perspective itself shows the distance traveled. You need the bleakness of the prologue to fully appreciate the cautious hope in Chapter One. Without it, the protagonist's paranoia and his refusal to take certain friendships for granted might seem like edgy overcaution. Because you saw the end result, his every small choice in the main story carries more weight.