Integration has Begun
Danica floated, weightless, as though suspended underwater — but there was no water. No resistance, no cold pressure against her skin. It was like the entire concept of touch had taken a personal day.
Everything around her was white. Not soft white. Not foggy white. Blinding, featureless, aggressively white, so stark it made her eyes ache. The only colors she could find were the black of her clothing and the faint olive of her own skin, both too sharp, too vivid, like she'd been Photoshopped into a broken screensaver.
Her hands drifted up to her face without permission. Fingertips brushed her cheeks, her jaw, her forehead, as though touch might make this more real. Am I dead?
She ran the last few minutes back. Anger. The hallway. Beth's face doing that weird thing with her eyes. The elevator. The walls cracking like a dropped screen. And then the voice — that enormous, nowhere voice.
Maybe I'm dreaming. Sure. Except stress dreams didn't usually nail the costume detail, and she was fairly certain her subconscious didn't know what elevator pixelation looked like.
Drugged? She hadn't eaten since lunch. Hadn't drunk anything either. But cons were cons.
Her body was warm. Heart going fast. She just couldn't feel the edges of herself, as though someone had turned off the signal between her brain and the rest of the situation.
And then her brain did what it always did under pressure: skipped straight past reasonable and sprinted for the exits.
What if Beth cast a spell?
For one unhinged second she pictured her ex waving a wand and chanting bad Latin in that hotel hallway. The thought climbed toward a laugh and didn't quite make it. No. If Beth had magic she'd have conjured her shoe collection instead of draining Danica's bank account for it.
What if Mom and Dad were right?
The thought arrived without warning and sat there, uncomfortably heavy. They'd called it. Sort of. Not the version with riots and bunkers, but something stranger. Something that felt less like an apocalypse and more like a factory reset.
Where was Mark?
Her head snapped left, then right. The void didn't ripple. Didn't shift. Nothing but endless, indifferent white in every direction: no Goku wig, no smartass grin, no six-foot-two disaster in an orange cosplay being aggressively helpful at exactly the wrong moment.
She'd reached for him. In the elevator, when the walls started fracturing, she'd reached for him and her hand had passed through shadow.
Did he not make it? Did I leave him behind?
The thought didn't spiral the way the Beth stuff had. It simply settled, cold and specific, somewhere below her sternum, and stayed there.
She filed it under deal with this when you have more data and kept breathing.
A pulse moved through the space then. Soundless, but felt deep in her chest, her teeth, the small bones of her hands. As if her skeleton had been repurposed as a tuning fork. Words blinked into existence in front of her, black against invisible glass:
—
[SYSTEM MESSAGE]
Welcome, Initiate Danica Inoy.
Integration of U132G264890S253W1 has begun.
To assist with the transition of native life forms into the multiverse, the World Core has been activated. Testing of all eligible sentient species will commence immediately.
—
Her breath caught. "Testing?" The word came out too loud, bouncing back at her from nothing, like sound had forgotten how echo worked.
Danica’s hand shot up on instinct, her fingers sweeping through the letters. Only empty air. She tried again, slower, methodical, running her palm across the space as if checking for a pane of glass or a projection surface. Still nothing.
She ran through the options.
Hologram — possible, but the resolution was wrong. No shimmer, no source point, no visible emitter range.
AR contacts — she wasn't wearing any, and this was way beyond consumer grade anyway.
Hacked neural interface — she'd have had to consent to installation, which, no.
Stress hallucination — her heart rate said yes, but the detail was too consistent. Dreams didn't render serif fonts.
She closed her eyes. Opened them. The text was still there, solid and patient and completely unbothered by her having a moment.
"Okay," she said, to nobody, in a room with no walls. Her voice came back sharp and hollow, like sound bouncing off the inside of a skull. "That's still there. Great. That's… yeah."
She pinched the inside of her forearm hard enough to sting.
It didn't help.
The text dissolved. Reformed. If anything, it looked more aggressive
Great, now I’m imagining the font has emotions.
—
[SYSTEM MESSAGE]
In order to leave the Astral Zone and enter Stage One, you must select a class.
Suggested Starting classes for Level 0 humans are:
Warrior
Mage
Healer
Priest
Please state your selection.
—
Danica stared at it.
Select a class. Just like that. No context, no comparison screen, no tooltip on hover. Four options and a prompt, like the universe had decided the apocalypse was a personality quiz and she should hurry up and pick.
She folded her arms. "No."
The text waited.
"I need more information before I select anything. That’s basic consumer protection." She’d learned that lesson after getting scammed into paying for a Korean drama TV app for a year.
—
Please state your selection.
—
"I heard you the first time." She kept her voice level, the way you did with bad UI, calm, deliberate, one more try before you went looking for a workaround. "I'm not selecting until I understand what I'm selecting. Show me the full class list. Show me a comparison. Give me anything."
—
Please state your selection.
—
"What are the stat bonuses for Healer versus Priest?"
—
Please state your selection.
—
Fine. Different approach. "Help," she said clearly, like a voice command.
—
Please state your selection.
—
"Menu."
—
Please state your selection.
—
"Accessibility options."
—
Please state your selection.
—
She stood there in the white nothing, arms crossed, staring down a text box with one exasperating response to everything she said, and felt the boiling frustration of someone who has encountered a system with no help documentation, no escalation path, and apparently no will to live.
Her patience snapped like a cheap phone charger cable.
"I want a live agent!" she shouted into the void. "Or at minimum an interactive AI that understands only an idiot clicks Accept without reading the terms and conditions!"
The echo came back at her, sharp and hollow.
She stood there breathing.
"...except for phone updates," she muttered. "Nobody has time for those."
She waited, almost satisfied with herself.
The glowing text blinked out entirely.
The void pulsed, slow, and faint, like something vast had taken a breath. Or noticed her.
The silence that followed didn't feel peaceful. It felt like the pause before a system reboots and you don't know if it's going to come back right.
Her heartbeat ticked faster.
Then: nothing. No text. No prompt. Just white and quiet and the low hum of her own anxiety.
"For fuck's sake," she said, voice cracking into the emptiness. "This is the worst interface I've ever seen. Even crappy indie games have a help screen."
As if summoned by her fury, the white void shimmered and a figure pulled itself into a shape that had no business existing outside a fantasy art portfolio.
A miniature figure materialized, hovering at eye level, no taller than ten inches. Bat-like wings twitched against air that didn't exist, sending faint ripples through the nothing around him.
Her hand was at her dagger before she'd made a conscious decision about it.
Because of course there's a demon now.
She held the grip without drawing. He was the size of a TV remote. If he attacked, the tactical situation was probably fine. Probably. The small ones were always the ones you had to watch. Her brain helpfully supplied the image of whatever this thing looked like at full scale, and she decided not to think about that.
Ten inches, Dani. Worst case he bites your ankle. Best case he's a hologram. Either way, put the knife away.
She didn't put the knife away.
His skin was deep polished crimson, as though carved from lacquered stone. Black horns curved up from his forehead in two clean arcs. His eyes were narrow and unreasonably deep as they moved over her face with the calm efficiency of an investigator cataloguing a problem.
He wore leather trousers and knee-high lace-up boots. Ren faire energy, except no Ren faire performer had ever made Danica feel like she should be standing at attention.
Despite being the size of a coffee mug, he radiated the authority of someone accustomed to much larger people finding reasons to cooperate.
She eased her grip on the dagger. Didn't let go.
Things with horns, she thought, rarely show up with good news. Regardless of scale.
The demon opened his mouth and produced a guttural and resonant sound with genuine weight to it. His authority and demand were clear even if the words weren’t.
She stared at him. He stared at her.
"Great," she said. "They outsourced the help desk to another dimension and didn't think language support through."
She raised her voice slightly, with the careful enunciation of someone who had once tried to order coffee in three countries where she didn't speak the language. "Do you speak English? I've also got some Russian, a little German, and Mandarin. Though I've been told my tones are criminal."
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The demon's eyes narrowed. He said something else, clipped and irritated, one clawed hand gesturing in a way that needed no translation.
"Yeah," Danica said. "Same."
—
[SKILL GRANTED]
[TRANSLATION - LEVEL 1 OF 5]
Translation - The ability to understand all common-level languages. This skill includes both verbal and written forms of communication.
—
The demon's next words arrived perfectly crisp, in an accent that was, inexplicably, extremely posh British. “Can you understand me now?”
Danica blinked. "...why did a translation skill give you a BBC accent?"
He ignored that. "I am Eenax, your designated guide. What seems to be the problem?"
She took a slow breath, felt her shoulders drop about half an inch, and decided that sarcasm was load-bearing right now and she was keeping it.
"Well, Eenax, here's the deal." She kept her voice even, the way you did when filing a complaint with someone who wasn't personally responsible but was definitely going to hear about it. "I was supposed to be having a self-care weekend. Instead my ex stalked me across two state lines, the world pixelated like bad Wi-Fi, and I woke up floating in a white void being ordered to pick a class with zero context. No tutorial. No intro screen. Not even a loading tip." She paused. "What kind of system does that?"
Eenax pinched the bridge of his tiny nose. "Did you not read the informational messages provided over the past year while your planet was prepared for integration?"
"The what."
It wasn't a question. It was a flat statement of understanding that a very large mistake had been made and not by them.
Eenax's wings went still. He tapped the air and a document materialized in front of her. Words scrolled up the page, formatted with the aggressive confidence of a contract written by lawyers who billed by the clause.
She caught the header: Intergalactic Accords on Planetary Integration. Article numbers. Subsections. Lettered sub-subsections.
"You're kidding," she said.
"The accord requires a full galactic cycle of preparation, approximately one year by your reckoning," Eenax said, clipping the legalese down to their core meaning. "Virtual training, system orientation, access to integration law. Every seeded planet receives it before their World Core activates." He paused with the weight of someone about to say something he found deeply professionally embarrassing. "You were supposed to know all of this already."
Danica looked at the floating document. Looked at him. "We got nothing."
"So it would appear."
"No emails. No push notifications. Nothing landed in anyone's spam folder?"
"That is..." He scrolled through text only he could see, expression tightening. "That is not standard."
"So to be clear." She held up one finger. "Your system integration, the one that just ate my entire planet, skipped the part where you tell anyone it was happening."
Eenax said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.
"This legalese is ridiculous." She scrubbed a hand down her face. "And while we're on the subject, how does an intergalactic system have classes that sound like a medieval fantasy RPG? No cybernetic engineers? No space marines? Not even an accountant option for the math nerds?"
Eenax let out a sigh with the energy of a man who had answered this question ten thousand times and resented every single one. "Structured class-based development provides the highest rate of species advancement. Statistically speaking."
"Someone did a galactic survey and decided swords and spells beat lasers and AI."
"The Founder and a council of hyper-intelligent multi-dimensional entities spent centuries on it," Eenax said, with the clipped precision of someone reciting from a document they did not write but were contractually obligated to defend. "Warrior and mage archetypes yield the most stable progression. Civilization after civilization. The data is not subtle."
Danica opened her mouth.
"And yes," he continued, cutting her off, "alternatives were tested. The Universal Corporate Hierarchy model was an unmitigated catastrophe. You do not want to know what happens when you try to level up as an unpaid intern."
She paused. "Okay. That one I believe." She looked back at the four options still floating patiently in her vision. "But these are really my only choices? Warrior, Mage, Healer, Priest. That's the whole menu. No Rogue? No, I don't know… Assassin?"
The joke came out before she'd cleared it. And then just sat there, a little too revealing.
Would I, though? she thought. Or am I making dumb jokes because actually thinking about this means thinking about all of it.
She let that thought go and immediately picked up another one, like poking a bruise to confirm it was still there.
Mark would be fine. Mark made friends in elevator queues and once talked his way backstage at a convention by complimenting someone's foam work. Whatever cosmic interface they'd stuck him with, he was probably already on a first-name basis with it.
Zelimir would assess, adapt, and have a contingency plan drafted before most people finished panicking. That was just who he was.
And her parents had been preparing for the end of the world since before she could remember. They had a bunker. They had supplies. They had opinions about this exact scenario.
Except they hadn't prepared for it to look like this.
Her stomach shifted, slow and cold, and she looked back at Eenax and the floating class menu and the endless white nothing and thought about how many people were somewhere in it right now, alone, with no idea what was happening.
"Okay," she said, mostly to pretend she was in control. "Why is this happening to Earth? Why now?"
Eenax opened his mouth. Then stopped.
His wings went still. A glowing interface materialized in front of him. Thin panes of light scrolling quickly. His disapproving glare announcing how much he didn’t like what he saw.
"That's… concerning."
Danica's stomach dropped. "What's concerning? Concerning how?"
"Your planet was activated prematurely." The condescension was gone from his voice, replaced by a careful and flat tone. "An emergency protocol has been triggered. I cannot yet locate the precise cause." He kept scrolling, tail flicking in short, sharp movements. "This is not standard procedure. Not remotely."
Prematurely. The word sat in her chest like a swallowed stone.
"So when you say prematurely," she said slowly, "you mean the part where you were supposed to spend a year preparing us, that part got skipped."
"Along with several other parts, yes."
"Great." The laugh that came out of her was too sharp to be funny. "Love that for eight billion people."
Eenax lowered the interface. When he looked at her his expression had shifted into one she hadn't seen from him yet. It wasn’t frustration, nor bureaucratic exhaustion. Something closer to genuine concern, which was somehow worse.
"The four phases of planetary integration are now unfolding under emergency conditions," he said quietly. "The controlled transition has been forfeited. The System is adapting as circumstances require."
Adapting. That was the word they used in every sci-fi movie right before an explosion.
"Walk me through the phases," she said. "All of them."
Eenax straightened, shifting into the cadence of someone delivering a briefing they'd given many times before, in better circumstances than these.
"Phase One: Tutorial Trial. Every newly integrated native begins in an isolated personal dungeon. A contained zone designed to teach basic survival under System parameters. Trainers, limited shops, manageable threats. You'll have several days alone to reach a minimum competency threshold." He paused. "Alone."
Her brows went up. "No helpful glowing fairy? No 'press X to swing your sword'?"
"The fairies unionized," Eenax said. "It was a debacle."
She couldn't tell if he was serious. She was choosing to believe he was. "And after the solo death march?"
"The system transitions you into a dungeon scenario, still Phase One, designed to test combat and problem-solving. You may encounter other survivors there. Cooperation is optional." A beat. "Survival is not. Reach the exit and Phase One is complete. Fail to reach it and you are removed from the process. Permanently."
Permadeath. She let that sit for exactly one second, then filed it under problems for future Danica and kept moving. "Phase Two."
"Regional Trial. Survivors are consolidated into larger shared zones: full ecosystems, complex threats, other people to cooperate with or annoy. This is where you stop learning how the System works and start learning how to live inside it." He glanced at her. "Duration is variable. A week. Possibly three. Do not make plans."
"And while we're doing all that, Earth is just… remodeling?"
"Essentially."
"And death is still death."
"The System," Eenax said primly, "is not in the business of second chances."
She pressed her tongue to the back of her teeth. "Phase Three."
"Reintegration. Once planetary stabilization concludes, survivors return to a fully integrated Earth. Your world enters quarantine. Protected from external interference while it establishes governance and demonstrates basic functional competency within the System's framework." He let that land. "Think of it as a probationary period."
"Corporate jargon for 'don't embarrass yourselves in front of the multiverse.'"
"Succinctly, yes."
"And if we fail the probation?"
Eenax's expression said you really don't want that answer without his mouth having to do any of the work.
"Phase Four," she said.
"Open Access. Quarantine lifts. Earth joins the greater multiversal network: trade, travel, diplomacy, all of it." He paused, wings settling. "Along with every opportunist, predator, and ambitious entity who has been waiting to see what a newly integrated world has to offer."
Danica stood very still for a moment.
Solo dungeon. Group dungeon. Rebuild civilization under supervision. Then open the doors to the entire multiverse.
"So the tutorial is the easy part," she said.
Eenax looked at her with something that might, in certain lighting, have been respect. "Most initiates require considerably longer to reach that conclusion.”
"I'm motivated." She dragged a hand down her face. "Okay. Classes. Let's talk about the extremely boring class options before I think too hard about everything else."
"Yes, let’s move on." Eenax's mouth curved slightly in the first thing resembling a smile she'd seen from him. He waved his hand and the interface dissolved. "Class selection is mandatory. However." He lifted one clawed finger before she could say anything. "It is not permanent. You may revise your class at Levels 10, 50, 100, and 250."
"So if I pick wrong I'm not stuck with it forever."
"Correct."
She let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "Okay. That helps. What do classes actually do?"
"Two things. They provide stat increases at every level, and they determine which skills become available to you as you progress."
"Skills being what exactly?"
Eenax adopted the expression of someone who had explained this to too many people who should already know it. "Abilities. Techniques. Spells. Some you earn through experience, some the System grants directly. Every five Soul Levels you choose to either deepen an existing skill or select a new skill from a curated list. Your class and your personal history both influence what options appear."
Danica turned that over. Stats she understood. Skill trees she understood. The Soul Level part though—
"What's a Soul Level?"
The expression that crossed Eenax's face was the precise blend of exhaustion and resignation she remembered from every senior developer who'd ever had to explain version control to a new hire.
"I was afraid we'd get here," he said, and conjured another interface.
—
[SYSTEM DATA UPLOAD — CORE FRAMEWORK] [USER: DANICA INOY]
—
A wall of glowing blue text unfurled in front of her.
"Oh good," she said. "A readme file. Precisely what I wanted from the apocalypse."
Eenax ignored her and gestured to the first section. "Mind Level. Think of it as your brain stat: knowledge, skill application, cognitive processing. It goes up when you study, practice, solve problems, master new abilities." He paused. "In short, the more you use your head, the smarter the System decides you are."
Danica squinted at the dense text beneath his summary. Intellectual Proficiency Index. Skill Proficiency Nodes. Cross-discipline synergy pathways. "So study hard, do homework, unlock brain DLC."
"Sarcasm will not raise your IPI."
"No, but it keeps me from screaming." She waved a hand. "Keep going."
"Body Level." He moved to the next section. "Physical stat. Combat, endurance, training under stress. Fight things, lift things, survive things. Your body adapts and the number goes up."
"So skipping leg day could literally kill me now."
"Your Physical Performance Metric directly affects your survival probability, yes."
She thought about Mark, who considered walking to the parking lot a workout, and felt a genuine flicker of concern. "My best friend is going to be so annoyed."
"Body Level," Eenax said pointedly, "can also be raised through non-combat physical exertion. He will adapt or he will not."
Danica decided not to think about that second part.
"And Soul Level?"
Eenax gestured to the final section with the air of someone presenting a bill for damages.
She read it. Read it again.
Metaphysical System Integration. Celestial alignments. Anomalous karmic imprints. Paradox events. Immortal ascension protocols.
"Okay," she said. "That one's ominous."
"Soul Level is typically the average of your Mind and Body scores," Eenax said, with the practiced calm of someone defusing an overwrought customer. "Most beings never need to concern themselves with the finer details."
"It says 'paradox events.'"
"In rare cases—"
"It says 'immortal ascension protocols.'"
"For very advanced—"
"Eenax." She turned to look at him directly. "It says I could explode into cosmic glitter."
"Only in extreme cases," he said. "And the glitter is metaphorical."
She pressed her lips together. Looked back at the text. Looked at him.
"Does your entire civilization run on excessive paperwork and strategic omission of terrifying information?"
Eenax straightened with the dignity of someone who considered that a compliment. "Proper documentation is the foundation of a stable society."
"Right." She turned back to the interface. The luminous words hung in the air patiently waiting for her to interact. It reminded her of every overengineered system she'd ever worked with. Built by people who understood it perfectly and had never once considered what it felt like to encounter it for the first time. "This whole thing feels like it was designed by a committee that fell in love with its own complexity. Four class options, a three-tier level system, soul mechanics that may or may not involve cosmic glitter, and I'm supposed to just pick something and go."
"You are not limited to four options," Eenax said, with the clipped precision of someone correcting a misconception they found genuinely offensive. "There exist thousands of potential classes. The suggested list is merely the baseline for unprepared initiates."
Danica went still. "Thousands."
"Each with unique prerequisites. Some require prior training or specialized knowledge. Others demand the completion of hidden quests, exclusive bloodlines, or divine intervention." He paused, and an almost wry look crossed his face. "And a select few are obtained through questionable decision-making."
"Like what?"
"You would be astonished how many individuals unlock Berserker simply by striking the wrong deity."
She stared at him for a moment. Then: "Okay. That's actually useful information." She straightened, shifting her posture, less braced, more focused. The problem hadn't gotten smaller. She'd only stopped flinching at it. "Thousands of classes, hidden prerequisites, divine intervention for some, and at least one unlockable by punching the wrong god." She ticked them off on her fingers. "How do I find out what I actually qualify for?"
Eenax opened his mouth.
Then stopped.
His wings went rigid. His pupils shrank to points. For one unguarded moment the bureaucratic composure dropped entirely and something genuinely startled looked out through his eyes.
"Oh."
Danica went very still. "That's not a good 'oh.'"
Eenax cleared his throat and straightened the front of his tiny leather vest with the careful dignity of someone buying themselves two seconds. "It appears," he said, in a tone that had shifted from exhausted professionalism into reverent, "that you are the first person on your planet to formally report a system irregularity."
She stared at him. "I complained. That's what I did. I complained at a text box until it sent me a demon."
"You lodged the first intergalactic customer service complaint on behalf of your world." A gleam of genuine amusement broke through the composure. "You beat out a woman named Karen by 0.48 seconds."
The notification hit before she could respond.
—
[SYSTEM MESSAGE]
Thank you for your feedback
[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: GLITCH PIONEER]:
You were the first person on your planet to report a legitimate system issue.
+10 Free Points
+1 to Identify Skill
+50,000 GC
Unlimited Lifetime access to a system guide
—
Danica read it twice. "And people say complaining gets you nowhere."
Eenax said nothing. He was looking slightly to the left of her face, at the air where her notification hovered with the practiced neutrality of someone pretending they already knew exactly what it said.
She let him suffer for a moment.
"Lifetime access to a system guide," she said. "That means you, right? Permanently."
Something crossed his face too fast to name. His wings stayed very still.
"Special status," he said haughtily, "comes with expectations."
"Like what?"
"That I am not entirely certain." He tapped one claw against his chin. "But your tutorial path has been flagged." A pause. "For revision."
—
[SYSTEM ALERT]
Phase One Tutorial Initialization: Revised Path Detected.
—
Her stomach dropped. "That's the fine print that kills you, isn't it."
"Possibly." His shrug was almost apologetic. "Though very few initiates ever qualify for a revised path. The System does not flag just anyone."
"Unique," she said flatly. She'd heard that word her whole life and it had never once meant simple. "Unique is what they put on the headstone right before 'should have read the terms and conditions.'"
Eenax said nothing. Which was its own kind of answer.
She stood in the white nothing — no floor, no ceiling, no walls, no Mark, no Zelimir, no anyone — and took stock of what she had. A demon the size of a TV remote who was apparently hers now. A stat boost she didn't know how to use. Fifty thousand credits in a currency she'd never spent. A class she hadn't picked. And a tutorial path that even her guide couldn't explain.
She rolled her shoulders back. Cracked her neck once, the way she did before a long build session.
"Okay, Eenax." She turned to face him fully. "Let's talk about what I qualify for."
Chapter 2A
Status Sheet
[USER: DANICA INOY]
Mind Level: 0
Body Level: 0
Soul Level: 0
BASE STATS
STR: 6
CON: 5
DEX: 12(19) Item bonus +7
INT: 9
WIS: 8
FREE POINTS AVAILABLE: 10
DERIVED STATS
HP: 10/10
MP: 10/10
Stamina: 10/10
SKILLS:
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