Prelude Rebirth

"Prelude Rebirth" is the first chapter of Final Fantasy Lost Stranger manga. It was published in both Japanese and English on July 14, 2017.

Summary
Since early childhood Shogo Sasaki has been a dedicated fan of Final Fantasy and played several installments. He used to play along with his sister Yuko Sasaki and used to share on his motto of studying hard and believed nothing was unbeatable. Yuko admired her brother and the two vowed to join Square Enix to work on a Final Fantasy title of their own.

Several years later both siblings are hired, although they are in different departments. Shogo becomes depressed, but Yuko encourages him that they can still make their dream a reality since they are in the company they wanted. A truck appears to run them over and seemingly kill them.

Shogo feels a moogle and wakes up finding a black mage (Daston Volta) and warrior (Rei Hagakure) and eventually a white mage (Sharuru Linkingfeather) that believe he is injured. The white mage heals him with Cure until her MP is depleted. Shogo joins the group and finds Yuko in the town of Nylpo. Shogo recognizes several races, such as miqo'te, although he gets the names wrong. He realizes that they are in a Final Fantasy world different from anything he and Yuko know. Although confused, Yuko encourages her brother to make the best of this chance to live a Final Fantasy adventure. They request to join Sharuru's party, and she accepts.

The group partakes in several quests with Shogo annotating every piece of information he deems useful. The siblings are Jobless and they need to register in the guild to acquire a job. A civilian alerts the adventurers that a girl was left behind with a monster nearby, and the group decides to help her. Once they arrive, the group finds the menacing Dawnless White Dragon, a monster known to never suffer any wound, and whom Sharuru's group failed to defeat in their previous encounter. Faced with such a monster the party decides to wait for more capable fighters to arrive, although Yuko decides to save the girl quoting Zidane's catchphrase of "not needing a reason to help somebody".

Being the fastest of the group, she believes she can get the girl while the others distract the dragon. The attacks do not affect the monster, and when Yuko gets the girl, the terrain under her weakens and the dragon notices them. Shogo realizes the terrain is unstable and using an unknown ability he detects where the terrain is weakest, firing an arrow and causing the ground to collapse. Yuko tosses the girl to Shogo, but is mauled by the dragon inflicting fatal wounds that cannot be healed by Sharuru's magic. Shogo begs the white mage to use Raise on her, but Sharuru reveals that Raise is but a spell in legends.