"Hey."
"Heeyy…"
The voice echoed. Light, teasing, slightly nasal. It bounced around like a mischievous child playing in a cathedral-sized dark room.
Leo stirred.
His first sensation wasn't sight or sound, but a phantom thud against cobblestone—the memory of his own collapse. Roxanne's panicked cry echoed in his mind, sharp and frayed.
His eyelids twitched, then flew open into complete blackness. There was no floor. No up or down. Just a silent, suffocating nothingness that swallowed the chaos of his last moments whole. The adrenaline was gone, replaced by a profound sense of dislocation.
Roxanne and Ai. The thought was a spike of cold. He was just with them.
"...Where...?" His voice was a slow, raspy thing, the word absorbed by the void.
"Who's there?" he tried again, louder this time. "Where am I?"
A giggle answered. Sharp and high. "Oh! Right, introductions!" the voice said in a sing-song. "I'm Aya. I'm an engineer."
"Your engineer,"
"Nice to meet you~!"
Leo floated there, confused. The word echoed in his mind. Engineer?
He turned, finding a source, but the darkness remained stubbornly empty.
Aya's voice came again, friendly but detached. "Welcome to the Pipeline, Leo. This is where your consciousness goes during system updates."
Leo blinked. "Pipeline? Like a software deployment pipeline?"
There was a beat of silence.
"Yep!" Aya chirped. "Ding ding. You're not as dumb as you look."
Leo let out a soft breath, the pieces clicking together.
"Just a harmless description update. Maybe."
He inhaled slowly_, Maybe?_
"Mostly cosmetic. I ran checks to make sure you weren't in a dungeon or in combat."
Her voice took on a smug tone. "I'm not that careless."
Leo grumbled, "A warning would've been nice."
"Mmhm, mmhm," Aya replied breezily.
Leo let his body relax, arms floating limply at his sides. The void had a strange calmness to it.
Aya's voice popped back in, energetic. "This update was actually fun for me. I was getting lazy since I assumed no user would use that skill, anyway."
Leo raised an eyebrow instinctively. "What skill?"
"Share the Pain, obviously!" Aya replied, almost offended. "The syncing process? You triggered one of the most brutal skills in the entire system."
The name of the skill sent a phantom jolt through him. For a split second, the void wasn't empty. It was filled with the searing pressure of another consciousness pressing into his own. A torrent of foreign pain, alien resolve, and a loneliness so profound it felt like drowning.
"Honestly, I'm impressed you're not dead."
The echo vanished, leaving him feeling hollowed out. Leo frowned, a cold sweat he couldn't feel prickling at his brow. "You designed it to be that hard?"
"I had to!" she said. "Other systems are limited, nerfed, barely functioning. Mine?" A pause, then with exaggerated flair: "Overpowered but fair."
"High risk. High reward."
A dramatic gasp rang out. "Everyone else laughed at my drafts. They said It'd just kill all my users." She paused. "But guess what? You're still alive. And better."
Leo rolled his eyes. "Barely."
Aya continued, unfazed. "Anyway, since you can't view update notes in here, wanna hear a spoiler?" She leaned in. He could feel it, even without seeing her. "Huh? Huh? Come on, I'm offering premium leaks."
Leo exhaled sharply. "Sure. Whatever."
Aya squealed. "Yes! Finally!"
She clapped, the sound crisp and clear in the void.
"Okay! First, Share the Pain perk. It now has an additional effect. When a sync is completed, your body begins integrating with your target'."
Cosmetic my ass... The thought was sharp, acidic. A wave of nausea rolled through him, a purely mental sensation that was somehow worse than the real thing. It felt less like an update and more like an invasion. His body, his skin and bones and blood, were being rewritten by a patch note he never got to read.
Leo paused, the word catching in his throat. "…Integrating?"
"You heard me." Aya's voice was gleeful. "You've been syncing with an elf. Elves age differently. Rapid physical growth early on, then decades of near-immortality. You might've noticed some changes, they're incomplete though."
Leo's expression darkened.
Aya sang. "You're basically speeding through the elven adolescent phase. Their biology is freaky like that."
Leo crossed his arms.
"I included an experience alignment patch, too. All memories and emotions tied to your host or synced targets are now streamlined into your own psyche. Basically, you're a human-elf hybrid with 118 years' worth of life weight. Mentally, emotionally. You're still you, but... more."
The words hit him. A flash of a memory that wasn't his: the scent of pine needles on a winter morning in a forest he'd never seen. A pang of regret for years of broken promises. The phantom warmth of a hand held in his, the fingers long and slender.
His own identity felt suddenly thin, a single page in a book that had just had a hundred more pages brutally shoved into it.
Leo blinked, struggling to push the alien sensations back. "So… wait. That makes me,"
"—A middle-aged hybrid!" Aya interrupted cheerfully. "With pointy ears,"
"Only if you want to, a bonus flexibility! You're welcome."
Leo raised a hand to his ear.
"You're race is what you are by default. A Human."
Silence followed.
Then a soft chuckle escaped Leo's lips. It surprised even him.
"You're ridiculous," he said flatly.
"Thank you," Aya beamed. "I only maintain one system, and it's this one. You should feel special."
He smirked faintly. "Not sure if that's a comfort or a threat."
"Why not both?" she replied brightly.
The darkness pulsed, like the slow opening of an eye.