Nico Nightshade is twenty-five, depressed, living with his mother, and stuck. Most nights, he escapes into progression fantasies where effort has visible results and every problem comes with rules. Then something appears in the backyard shed. A Gate. After surviving what comes through it, Nico awakens an Ability called Living Shadow—and the System gives his shadow an Attribute of its own: Want. His father’s recent death has already left Nico with responsibilities he barely knows how to handle. But this new world makes a strange kind of sense to him. Train. Test. Improve. And as reality becomes more dangerous, Nico starts functioning better than he ever did before. The question is whether he’s finally learning how to live—or just getting very good at progressing.