The entity tilted its head again.
Show you what?
"The integration. What it actually involves. What I'll become if I say yes."
The library dissolved.
I stood in darkness. Complete. Absolute. The kind of darkness that existed before light was invented.
Then I saw myself.
Not my reflection. My actual self. Satori Nakano as seen from outside my own body. I was floating in the void, eyes closed, neural interfaces attached to my temples. The crystalline walls of the integration chamber pulsed around me with light that wasn't really light.
Two architectures exist within your mind, the entity's voice explained. The first is Satori Nakano. The boy who was born eighteen years ago. The child who grew up as a Zero. The teenager who manifested an Aspect against all probability.
I watched as a glowing structure appeared around my floating body. It looked like a neural network made of light. Complex. Beautiful. Incomplete.
