Crossed into level five tonight, mid-pull, no ceremony — just a small click somewhere inside me and a number ticking over. I almost missed it; I was three hundred and some XP short for what felt like forever, close enough to taste, and then one ordinary jack into one ordinary terminal and there it was.

I used to think levels were for bragging. Now they're a map. Every one I climb drags me nearer to the terminals I can't crack yet — the ones at eleven, and past that, that cough up things I've never held. Pristine decks. Access fragments. Shapes I've only heard about. The rares I've got are beautiful, but somewhere up there are rarer ones with my name already on them, if I just keep climbing.

Eighty decks, eighty-three relics, and a door at level eleven I mean to open. Back to it.