The air inside the hut tasted of burnt copper and static. It was a confined space, a "Logic Anchor" that Nasan had carved out of the thinning reality of the Khal Mountains, yet to Soran, it felt as vast as a dying star. He sat cross-legged on the uneven wooden floor, his eyes fixed on a hovering fragment of jagged obsidian. This was the Deprecated: Void Strike archive crystal, a piece of code so old the current System version didn't even have the protocols to recognize its existence.

  Soran’s right hand, still scarred from the affinity overflow weeks ago, twitched. His internal view was a chaotic mess of scrolling white text against an endless black void.

  > [SYSTEM LOG: ATTEMPT 47]

  > Target: Skill Mounting - Void Strike (v0.0.8)

  > Status: Permission Layer Active

  > Compatibility: -10.0 Affinity (Critical Conflict)

  He didn't blink. Sweat tracked through the grime on his forehead, but his expression remained a mask of frozen intent. To his left, Nasan sat by the hearth, the orange glow of the fire reflecting off the "Logic Flakes" swirling in his tea. The old man wasn't watching the fire; he was watching the way the air around Soran began to pixelate.

  "The issue is not the skill's cost," Soran said, his voice sandpaper-dry. "The issue is the permission layer."

  Nasan didn't look up from his cup. "Then break it. You’re treating the System like a law. It’s not a law, boy. It’s a suggestion made by a machine that’s forgotten how to think. If you aren't feeling the friction, your Will isn't growing. The System is the lubricant; Will is the grind."

  Soran closed his eyes, shifting his focus entirely to the internal interface. In the center of his consciousness, a flickering translucent wall of code manifested. It was the Permission Layer—a conceptual barrier that stood between his intent and the execution of the deprecated skill. It pulsed with a rhythmic, sickly violet light, pushing back against his mind with the weight of a mountain.

  Mounting sequence initiated.

  The barrier flared. Soran felt a sharp spike of pressure behind his eyes. It wasn't just a mental obstacle; it was a physical rejection. The negative affinity in his veins acted like a poison, reacting to the ancient code of the Void Strike.

  [WARNING: SYSTEM RECOIL IMMINENT]

  He ignored the warning. He reached out with his Will, not as a hand, but as a wedge. He drove his consciousness into the flickering wall of code. The friction was immense. It felt like dragging his bare skin across jagged glass.

  A sharp, metallic tang filled his mouth. A single drop of blood escaped his nostril and hit the floorboards with a soft thud.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  "The data is consistent: pain is the only metric that isn't being simulated right now," Soran muttered. He wasn't speaking to Nasan. He was verifying a fact. The pain was real because it existed outside the System’s rendering. It was the only thing that proved he was still there.

  He stood up, his movements slow and mechanical. In his mind, he wasn't looking at a screen anymore. He was standing in front of the wall. He pulled back his fist—a conceptual representation of his concentrated Will—and struck the Permission Layer.

  The impact sent a shockwave through his nervous system. His knees buckled, but he didn't fall.

  [SYSTEM ERROR: UNAUTHORIZED OVERWRITE ATTEMPT]

  "Again," Nasan barked, his voice cutting through the static in Soran’s ears. "The System wants you to believe that wall is solid. It’s only as solid as your belief in its authority. Punch through the lie!"

  Soran struck the barrier again. This time, the translucent code cracked. High-pitched feedback screamed in his skull. His vision began to artifact, the edges of the hut blurring into grey, unrendered polygons. He could see Serka now, leaning against the doorframe. She had arrived hours ago, her clothes torn and her breathing heavy from the climb, her eyes wide as she watched the "anomaly" struggle. She looked exhausted, her hand white-knuckled on the hilt of her blade, but Soran didn't have the spare processing power to acknowledge her presence.

  His Will stat flickered.

  The world was fading. The smell of the woodsmoke was being replaced by the sterile scent of an empty server room. Soran looked at the Void Strike icon. It was greyed out, locked behind a thousand lines of "Permission Denied" scripts. He didn't try to click it. He didn't try to find a key.

  He reached into the raw data of the skill itself. He began to manually rewrite the execution path, dragging his Will through the code like a needle through leather.

  "I am not trying to fix the error," Soran whispered, his voice barely audible over the roar of the system backlash. "I am trying to become it."

  [CRITICAL WARNING: CONSCIOUSNESS FAILURE IMMINENT]

  Blood was streaming from his nose now, coating his upper lip. He took the final line of the Void Strike protocol and snapped it. He didn't ask for permission. He forced the reality to render the strike.

  Void Strike activated.

  For a microsecond, the hut vanished. There was no floor, no Nasan, no Serka. There was only a silent, perfect vacuum where Soran’s hand had moved. A sphere of non-existence expanded and then collapsed, leaving a perfectly circular hole in the heavy wooden table in front of him. No splinters. No saw marks. The matter had simply been uninstalled.

  The feedback hit him like a physical blow.

  Soran’s eyes rolled back. His legs gave way, and he collapsed toward the floor.

  Before he could hit the wood, a shadow blurred across the room. Serka moved with a speed that defied the lag of the mountains. She didn't catch him; she stepped over him, her boots clicking sharply against the floorboards.

  She drew her sword.

  The blade didn't shine with the typical golden light of a System-sanctioned weapon. Instead, it hummed with a low, jagged frequency—a "System Error" vibration that made the air around the steel ripple and warp. She stood between the unconscious Soran and the open door, her eyes fixed on the treeline outside where the first signs of golden, orderly tracking light were beginning to bleed through the mist.

  Nasan remained in his chair, calmly sipping his tea as the hut stabilized. He looked at the hole in his table, then at the girl standing guard over the broken boy.

  "The friction," Nasan whispered to the dying fire. "It finally caught fire."

  Soran lay still, his Admin Log slowly fading into a dark, dormant state, the last line of text flickering before the screen went black.

  Pain is the only thing the System cannot yet control.