Otwin’s room was barely a room at all. It was a box built inside the warehouse, plank walls nailed up to make a private corner in a world of crates, grease, and men who never slept at the same time. The air always carried a faint tang of wood and machine oil, and even at night the place was alive. Overhead chains creaked as loads settled. Boots crossed the floor in slow patrol.

  He had earned the privacy, but the space still felt like a borrowed thing.

  A narrow cot sat against one wall with a folded blanket and a pillow that had once been white. A scarred table held a tin cup, a half cleaned pistol, and a stack of papers that Otwin tried not to look at. The corner opposite the cot was claimed by a battered mirror, tall enough to show him from hairline to belt. The mirror had been hung crooked, because the boards were crooked, because nothing in this warehouse had ever been built for comfort.

  He stood in front of it with his shirt off, bare feet on cold plank, shoulders squared as if he expected an enemy to step through the glass.

  The man in the mirror did not look like the man he had been a month ago.

  Otwin had always been tough. The Army, then years of scavenging had done that. Hard travel, cold nights, hauling scrap until your back screamed, eating whatever kept you standing. It had carved him down into something wiry and stubborn. It had not made him impressive.

  Now he was.

  His shoulders looked broader. Not swollen like a man who lived in a gym and ate better than a soldier. Broader in the way of a working animal that had been fed properly for the first time in years. His chest had thickened. His arms held clean definition, the lines and separations more obvious when he moved. Even his forearms looked different, cords running from wrist to elbow like braided rope.

  He turned slightly, watching the muscles in his abdomen tighten and shift. He saw old scars there, pale and stubborn. He saw the faint discoloration of bruises that should have taken longer to fade. He saw a body that was mending faster than it had any right to.

  His hair was the part that unsettled him most.

  It had always been kept short, clipped close out of old habit from the Army and years of practicality. He had never cared to let it grow, and lately it had been thinning and greying at the edges in a way he tried not to think about. It had been fighting a slow losing battle for years. Not white, not fully, but grey at the temples. Grey sprinkled throughout. Grey in the beard that came in rough when he forgot to shave.

  Now, in the mirror, more of it was dark.

  Not dyed. Not oiled. Dark in a way that made him feel like he had woken up in the wrong body. The grey had retreated as if it had been scrubbed out. There was still some, enough that he could not pretend it was gone, but the black had taken back territory.

  He lifted a strand between his fingers and rubbed it, as if the color might come off on his skin.

  It did not.

  He stared at himself for a long moment, jaw tight, the warehouse noise fading behind his breathing.

  “What is happening to me?” he asked quietly.

  A pale overlay flickered at the edge of his vision. DAC did not speak aloud. It never needed to. Its presence lived in his eyes and along his spine, in the pressure at the base of his skull when it decided to be noticed.

  Correcting biological inefficiencies. Altering genetic code. De-aging process initiated.

  Otwin blinked.

  He glanced back at the mirror, then down at his hands. The hands looked the same. Callused. Scarred. Nails rough from dirt and work. But the skin did not look as thin. The veins did not stand out in the same tired way.

  “You are making me,” he said, voice low, “younger?”

  The response came immediately.

  Negative. I am removing the cellular degradation that causes the aging process.

  Otwin let out a short breath through his nose, almost a laugh and not quite.

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  Negative. You are not losing years, you are losing the negative results of them. Truly making you younger would remove your life experiences and memories. Rather, I am returning you to your physical and mental prime as far as abilities.

  The phrasing was clinical, but the meaning landed heavy.

  Prime.

  Otwin had not thought about that word in years. Prime was something other people talked about. Soldiers who still believed the Empire cared. Fighters in pits who thought their bodies were permanent. Young men who had never seen their joints swell in the cold.

  He looked at the mirror again and felt a strange mix of anger and relief. Relief because his body had been failing him in ways he had refused to admit. Anger because it was not his choice.

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  “That seems,” he said slowly, “useful. But it will draw questions if I start suddenly looking like a young man again.”

  For a moment, the HUD went quiet.

  Three dots appeared in the corner of his vision.

  …Processing.

  Otwin waited. He hated that pause. It made the DAC feel less like a tool and more like a person who enjoyed making him stand there.

  Then the text changed.

  This is not something I had before considered. Information accepted. De-aging will continue, however your appearance will not be altered further.

  Otwin frowned.

  “So I’ll look old but be young?”

  Affirmative.

  He stared at himself again. The grey still there, the lines at the corners of his eyes still present, but the posture, the thickness in his shoulders, the energy under his skin. A man who had been sharpened and reinforced.

  “How are you doing this?” he asked.

  DAC answered with the same calm certainty it used when describing a weapon.

  I have access to your basic cellular structure and genetic code through tendrils and filaments that have spread through your body. I am slowly altering those cells and your genetics through an internal process that utilizes high grade System magics not understandable to any people on this planet.

  Otwin’s stomach tightened.

  “Wait,” he said, turning slightly as if he could look at his own spine through the mirror, “what are System magics?”

  The HUD brightened. Lines of information assembled as if the DAC had been waiting for the question.

  The System is an external governance and integration framework layered over reality. It is not a nation, guild, or empire. It is a set of rules that observe living and nonliving entities, measure capability, assign classifications, and enable structured growth through directed energy exchange.

  Otwin stared, trying to keep up.

  At the basic level, the System identifies traits, skills, and thresholds. It records progress. It rewards adaptation. It creates pathways for improvement by converting experience, conflict, and resource acquisition into measurable advancement. Many civilizations eventually interpret these pathways as levels, ranks, classes, or tiers.

  DAC did not pause.

  At the higher level, the System is a control architecture. It can rewrite biological processes, augment physical law locally, and bind capabilities to rules that persist across individuals. It can enforce limitations, enable exceptions, and accelerate development beyond natural constraints. It is not understood by this planet’s current scientific or magical institutions.

  Otwin’s mouth went dry.

  He had lived in a world where magic existed, yes, but magic had always been something done by people. Artificers with stones. War mages with training. Ritualists with tools.

  This sounded like something else. Something that sat above all of it.

  “What,” he said, voice flat with disbelief, “in the heck.”

  The response came with immediate certainty, as if it had taken the phrase literally and found it insufficient.

  No. The System is not in a heck. Query. What is a heck?

  ***

  Otwin did not move right away.

  He stayed where he was, shirt half settled on his shoulders, fingers still worrying the hem as if his hands needed something to do. The mirror showed a man who looked steadier than he felt. The warehouse noise pressed back in slowly. Chains. Boots. Distant voices. The world insisting on being ordinary.

  DAC’s last words sat in his head like a weight.

  He exhaled through his nose and leaned his palms against the rough plank wall beside the mirror. The boards were solid. Real. He pressed a little harder, grounding himself in the feel of splintered wood and old nails.

  “Is the System here?” he asked.

  The HUD flickered, text assembling with its usual calm precision.

  In a way. System Integration is preliminary. There are System Units determining if integration is warranted. DAC unit has determined that this world should be rated at the highest priority for integration.

  Otwin’s head came up sharply.

  “Wait,” he said, turning slightly, eyes narrowing at his reflection. “What? You’re part of this… System?”

  There was no hesitation in the reply.

  Affirmative. And thus you are as well. Diamond+ Armored Power Core was created to be an upgraded brain for a new class of Steam Knight armor. However, the artificer who was directly responsible for my creation was influenced by the System, and used preliminary System mechanics in my creation.

  Otwin stared at himself.

  That sat badly with him. He did not like the idea of invisible hands shaping things before anyone knew to object. He had spent enough of his life being moved by forces he did not see coming.

  “Why,” he asked, voice roughening despite himself, “should we be a priority?”

  The answer came longer this time, as if DAC considered the phrasing important.

  This world possesses unique elements not present in other regions of System controlled space. Power stones. Lift stones. The spirit cores of mages. These elements are not known variables elsewhere. They represent new resource classes.

  Otwin frowned.

  These elements would strengthen the System and those integrated into it. As such, they are a priority for observation, classification, and integration.

  He swallowed.

  “You’re talking about us like we’re… raw materials.”

  Affirmative.

  The word hit harder than anything else so far.

  Otwin turned away from the mirror and sat heavily on the edge of the cot. The wood creaked under his weight. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together.

  “What would System integration mean to us?” he asked.

  The warehouse felt quieter, as if it were listening.

  It would provide you with significant opportunity for advancement inside the Belguivar Galaxy.

  Otwin blinked.

  “The what galaxy?”

  The Belguivar Galaxy is the System designation for the galaxy this world occupies. The System has integrated the majority of this galaxy.

  He let out a short, humorless laugh.

  “So you’re telling me,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face, “that the stars have names I don’t know, rules I don’t understand, and you are part of it?"

  Affirmative.

  He looked up again.

  “So there are other worlds,” he said. “With life. Other than Continentum.”

  Affirmative. There are many other inhabited worlds. Some are System integrated. Some are not.

  Otwin shook his head slowly.

  “This is a lot to take in.”

  There was a pause. Not the processing dots this time, but a quieter hesitation, as if DAC were adjusting how much truth to deliver at once.

  Affirmative. This is part of the reason I have been altering you.

  Otwin stiffened.

  With your shell shock symptoms and former imbalances in your brain chemistry, this information would likely have triggered a severe anxiety response or worse. As you are now, your blood pressure has only risen slightly above baseline.

  Otwin stared at the floor.

  He took a slow breath now.

  The breath came easily.

  “Ummm,” he said after a moment, glancing up at the air in front of him, “thank you?”

  The reply was immediate.

  Thanks are unnecessary. This is a consequence of my mission directives.

  Otwin frowned.

  “Uhh,” he said, one corner of his mouth twitching despite himself, “what are those?”

  The HUD text appeared, stark and simple.

  Classified at this time.

  He snorted.

  “Fantastic.”