"Just relax, Haneul. The System link isn't supposed to hurt."
Doctor Cho was good at lying.
Haneul lay on the scanning table under a mesh of humming metallic arcs, hospital gown rustling every time she had to shift. Lines of light traced lazy spirals above her, feeding into a circular pad under the table.
The machine's name floated in her vision.
[DEVICE: SOUL-STRATA RESONANCE IMAGER v3.1]
[LICENSE: CLASS-B TOWER SYSTEM INTERFACE.]
"I feel like I'm about to be microwaved," she said.
Cho smiled thinly.
"More like a soul X-ray," he said, adjusting settings on a terminal. "We're not altering anything, just… looking deeper."
"Because the last scans didn't tell you why my body hates existing," Haneul said.
Cho's smile dimmed.
"Your condition is… unusual," he said. "Normal bio-arcane readings don't map to your symptoms. So we requested access to this." He patted the side of the machine. "Loaner from a Tower research division. It can look at how your soul-structure interacts with local System fields."
"That answered none of my sarcasm," she muttered.
He pretended not to hear.
"We'll patch into your System interface now," he said. "You may see some unfamiliar UI. Just ignore it and keep breathing normally. If you feel any sharp pain, tell me."
He stepped back behind the transparent shield.
A new window flickered into being at the edge of Haneul's vision, tagged in a different color from her usual notifications.
[EXTERNAL DEVICE REQUEST: TEMPORARY READ-ONLY ACCESS TO USER: RYU_HANEUL SOUL-STRUCTURE METADATA.]
[REQUESTING ENTITY: SOUL-STRATA RESONANCE IMAGER v3.1 (LICENSED).]
[PERMISSIONS: VIEW-ONLY.]
[DURATION: 00:30:00]
[ACCEPT?] [DECLINE?]
Haneul stared.
"Do I… get to say no?" she asked.
"The System requires your consent," Cho said. "But if you decline, we can't get data that might help you."
He meant: if you decline, we'll have nothing new to bill you for.
She sighed and accepted.
[ACCESS GRANTED.]
The arcs above her hummed louder. Light crawled along the metal, then sank into her chest like fog being pulled through water.
Haneul shivered.
For a moment, she felt like she was falling inward, tumbling through herself. Then a strange stillness wrapped around her bones.
The UI shifted.
She'd never seen this kind of data before—three-dimensional diagrams, lattices of light representing something that wasn't flesh. Her HP bar pulsed faintly alongside a ghostly silhouette, threaded with fine lines of code.
On the other side of the shield, Doctor Cho watched a similar display on his monitor. His face creased.
"That's… unusual," he murmured.
Haneul stared at a label that floated beside her ghost-silhouette.
[SOUL STRUCTURE: TYPE – FRAGMENTED.]
[INTEGRITY: 73%.]
[ANCHOR FLAGS: …]
She squinted.
Most of the small text was device-side, not translated into user-friendly UI. But some phrases leaked through.
[ANCHOR: ROOT_PROCESS_SHARD – STATUS: DORMANT.]
[LINK: USER_RYU_KAEL – STATUS: ACTIVE.]
[WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED FRAGMENT LINKAGE.]
Her mouth went dry.
"Doc?" she said. "What's 'root process'?"
Cho blinked, clearly not expecting her to see the same labels.
"Your System UI is… more verbose than average," he said carefully. "Most patients just see error codes."
"Lucky me," she said. "What is it?"
Cho hesitated.
"I'm not a Tower engineer," he said. "But as far as we understand it, the 'Root Process' is part of the core System architecture. Usually completely abstracted away from end users. This…" He tapped his screen, then stopped himself from saying more.
"This what?" Haneul pressed.
"It's… probably a mislabel," Cho said. "These devices aren't perfect. Corrupted terms, legacy fields. I wouldn't worry about it."
He was lying again.
"What about 'fragmented soul structure'?" she asked. "That normal?"
"Not… unheard of," he said. "Some Tower divers exhibit soul-fragmentation after exposure to high-tier anomalies." He glanced at her file. "But you've never been inside a Tower."
"Guess I'm just talented," she said.
The scan continued, slow and thorough. Occasionally, Haneul caught glimpses of other strange tags:
[PROCESS: HANDLER_UNKNOWN – OFFLINE.]
[BACKUP_ADMIN_LINK: NULL.]
[FRAGMENT_STATUS: WAITING.]
It felt like overhearing someone else's phone call through a thin wall.
Finally, the machine's hum subsided. The arcs powered down, retracting with mechanical sighs. The external access UI dissolved.
[SESSION COMPLETE.]
[DATA SYNCED TO MEDICAL PROFILE.]
Cho stepped back into the room.
"Well?" Haneul asked.
"We'll need time to interpret the results," he said, which meant we have no idea what we're looking at. "I'll consult with some specialists. There are Tower-aligned researchers who might have seen similar patterns."
"Tower-aligned," she repeated. "As in 'people who consider patients loot drops?'"
He winced.
"That's unfair," he said. "They work with complex System interactions every day. If anyone can understand what's happening to you—"
"—it's the people who built the machine that plugged my soul into the System in the first place," she finished.
He didn't deny it.
"Rest for today," he said instead. "We'll talk when I have more."
He left.
Haneul turned her head to stare out the small window. From twelve floors up, she could see the distant silhouette of Tower Seventeen, black against the perpetually hazy sky.
"Root process shard," she whispered. "Link to Kael. Unauthorized."
She picked up her tablet with trembling fingers and opened a message thread.
Scan was weird. Machine says my soul is "fragmented" and tagged to something called a "Root Process shard." Also it knows your name.
Before you say anything: don't you dare do something reckless without me yelling at you first.
She hit send.
Kael's System pinged in the middle of the boss fight.
He didn't notice it.
He was busy not dying.