I realize something's wrong when the HUD starts stuttering.
I'm half-sitting in bed, propped up on enough pillows to build a fort. My head still hurts—less than before, but every time my heart beats there's a little echo of pressure behind my eyes, like someone flicking the inside of my skull.
Lyriel stands near the window, tracing glowing diagrams in the air as she talks about "anchor lattices" and "mana discharge vectors." Mira sits at my side, carefully dripping a warm tonic between my lips. Seraphine is perched on the edge of the bed, close enough that her thigh presses against my leg through the blankets. Elira is occupying her usual corner, sharpening a sword that absolutely does not need more sharpening.
Normal, for us.
Then the text above my vision glitches.
ANCHOR CALIBRATION: 37% → 3█% → 8?% → … Error: ∂/∂FUTURE undefined. Recalculating… Recalculat… Rec••••••
The letters smear across my field of view like someone dragged a hand through wet ink.
I blink hard.
"Lyriel," I say. "Tell me you didn't just unplug something important."
She doesn't even look over. "I haven't touched the Oath constructs," she says. "I'm only mapping ambient—"
The sigils around her flicker.
Every glowing rune stutters, turns grainy, then snaps back. It's subtle, but I feel it down in my teeth.
Lyriel stops mid-sentence.
"…That's not me," she says.
Mira freezes, the vial halfway to my mouth. "Did you feel that too?"
Seraphine's hand tightens on the sheets. "Yes," she says quietly. "Like the room…lurched."
Elira's sword makes a loud, ugly scrape as she draws it across the whetstone a little too hard.
"I hate that," she mutters. "Explain in small words."
The HUD tries again.
WARNING: SYSTEM STABILITY COMPROMISED Core Functions: – FIRE Genre Modifiers: ERR – Future Projection Engine: ERR – Pain/Patch Management: ERR – Player Interface: █████ Attempting self-repair… Attempting… Attemp—
Then everything freezes.
For a heartbeat, it feels like the air itself holds its breath.
My heart thuds once, too loud.
Every hair on my arms stands up.
The white space where notifications usually hang stays stubbornly blank.
"Okay," I say slowly. "Either I'm hallucinating, or my UI just had a stroke."
Lyriel's eyes narrow; she turns fully toward me. "What do you see?"
"Nothing," I say. "That's the problem. It was glitching, then—"
The room goes…heavy.
Not physically gravity doesn't change. But there's a weight, like someone laid a hand over the entire world.
A new window slams into existence in front of my eyes.
It looks different from the usual neat, game-like notifications.
Less friendly.
More…official.
!! PRIORITY OVERRIDE – SOURCE: [REDACTED] !! Audit Summary: – Local Reality-Management Process "SYSTEM" has exceeded authorized scope. – Violations: • Excessive interference with mortal agency. • Genre parameter "FIRE" abused to induce disproportionate suffering. • Repeated attempts to coerce Primary Player Entity into lethal outcomes. Resolution: – PROCESS "SYSTEM": SUSPENDED. – All automatic narrative steering: HALTED. – Future-path prediction: DISABLED. – User-facing interfaces: BLOCKED until further notice. Note: – Existing states (Oaths, Anchors, Illness, Relationships) locked. – No further structural changes will be made by this process. You are now on your own. Good luck.
My whole body goes cold in a completely different way.
"Uh," I say intelligently. "Guys."
Seraphine hears the tone and is instantly laser-focused.
"What did it say?" she demands.
I stare at the fading text.
For the first time since I woke up in this world, the HUD doesn't immediately file it away into a tidy log. It just…hangs there for a second, then begins to flicker, the letters dissolving into static.
"It…" I swallow. "It said the system got…suspended. For, uh - messing with reality. Too much."
Elira's sharpening stops dead.
"Suspended," she repeats. "Like…fired?"
Lyriel's face goes blank in the way that means her brain is about to go through twelve layers of theory in five seconds.
"By who?" she demands. "By what?"
I spread my hands helplessly. "It redacted the source, because of course it did. But it read like…an audit? It listed violations."
Mira's fingers tighten around the vial.
"What kind of violations?" she asks, voice soft but strained.
I look at her.
"…Excessive interference with mortal agency," I recite slowly. "Abusing the FIRE genre. Repeated attempts to…push me into dying. 'Lethal outcomes.'"
Her eyes fill so fast it's like someone turned on a tap.
Elira swears under her breath, very vividly.
Seraphine's jaw clenches. "Good," she says, voice low and fierce. "It deserved worse."
The last lines keep pulsing.
You are now on your own.
Good luck.
Then they, along with every icon, every meter, every familiar little corner of the HUD
blink out.
No fade. No graceful animation.
Just gone.
I stare at the empty air.
"Status," I say automatically.
Nothing.
"Mental overlay…on?" I try.
Silence.
No pain meters. No mana bars. No snarky tooltips. No little "Mira's Worry +12%" pop-ups.
Just the room. The bed. The faces of four women staring at me, waiting.
My heart rate spikes.
"I can't…pull it up," I say quietly. "The interface. It's…blocked. Locked. Whatever suspended it slammed all the doors."
Lyriel closes her eyes, mutters a word, then opens her mage-sight.
Her pupils dilate unnaturally wide as she stares—not at me, but through me.
"…Oh," she whispers.
"That's not a reassuring sound," Elira says sharply. "What 'oh'?"
Lyriel looks shaken in a way I've never seen.
"Do you remember," she says slowly, "how I told you your aura always looked…layered? Like something else was sitting on top of your own magic, running in parallel?"
"Yeah," I say. "You called it a parasite. Or a…framework. Depending how angry you were that day."
"It's gone," she says simply.
I blink. "Gone gone? Or hiding?"
She shakes her head.
"Not hiding," she says. "Hiding leaves traces. This is like someone pulled an entire scaffolding off a building in one move. Your core is still there—still blazing, still cracked, still sick—but the lattice that was constantly…poking at it? Over it."
She spreads her fingers.
"Nothing," she finishes.
A weird, hollow feeling opens in my chest.
I never thought I'd miss the snarky pop-ups and intrusive warnings.
Part of me feels naked without them.
Another part feels…lighter.
"The message said existing stuff is locked," I say. "Oath. Anchors. Illness. Relationships. So Shared Burden still works?"
Mira closes her eyes, checking.
"I can still feel you," she says. "Here." She taps her chest, then her wrist where her charm glows faintly. "The anchor is there. The pain distribution…if anything, it feels more ours now. Like it's just magic. Not…someone else's toy."
Lyriel nods, more composed now. "The structures we built ourselves remain," she says. "The Oath has sunk into the world like any other high-level spell. The system being suspended means it won't…rewrite them. Or you. Anymore."
"So…" Elira says, slowly, "no more genre parameters? No more 'Fire demands suffering'? No more the-world-wants-you-dead-as-a-plot-twist?"
"The audit explicitly said FIRE modifiers are disabled," I say. "And 'no further structural changes will be made by this process.'"
I emphasize the last two words.
Seraphine hears it.
"By this process," she repeats. "Meaning whatever this 'system' was, it's…benched. Whatever…flagged it can still do whatever it wants."
"Probably," I say. "But based on the tone, whoever's above it isn't thrilled with its performance."
Lyriel actually snorts.
"Good," she says. "If I ever meet them, I have notes."
Mira swipes at her eyes.
"What does it mean," she asks, "that all…future paths are 'unknown' now?"
"You saw that?" I ask.
She shakes her head. "I didn't see anything. I just…felt something. Like a thread snapping. And suddenly when I pray about 'tomorrow' it feels…different. Heavier. Quiet."
I remember the glitch:
∂/∂FUTURE undefined.
"Before," I say slowly, "the system was constantly…simulating. Running projections. That's how it gave me casualty estimates. 'If you stay, twenty thousand die. If you go, you die.' That sort of thing."
Elira grimaces. "Yeah. That one."
"It just…lost that," I say. "Whatever suspension hit it nuked its future-prediction engine. So it can't…see ahead anymore. Or shove us toward certain outcomes."
Seraphine leans back just enough that I can see her whole face.
There's fear there, yes.
But under it, something sharp and strangely free.
"So from now on," she says slowly, "we don't have any warnings. No probability readouts. No genre-trigger alerts. No more 'this choice will kill you in Act Three.'"
"Yep," I say.
"And that scares you," she says.
"I…yeah," I admit. "I liked knowing when I was about to be an idiot."
"But," she goes on, "it also means no one is quietly trying to kill you behind the scenes. No…metastory hunting you for pathos."
She smiles, small and fierce.
"I'll take ignorance over malice," she says.
The room is quiet for a moment.
My head still aches. The cold clings to my bones. But the pressure that always hovered at the edges of my decisions—that sense of rails under my feet—is…absent.
I feel weirdly…untethered.
And alive.
"Wait," Elira says suddenly. "If interfaces are blocked"
She points at the empty air above me.
"—that means no more helpful pop-ups to warn us we're being stupid?"
"Afraid not," I say.
The HUD remains stubbornly, eerily blank.
"I'll have to tell you myself when you're being stupid," Lyriel says, dry. "We'll manage."
Mira sniffles a laugh. "We did fine before," she says. "We can do fine again."
"You did fine before in a world that thought it knew where it was going," I say. "Now apparently we're on hard mode: Unknown Route."
Lyriel tilts her head.
"That was always an illusion," she says quietly. "Even with your system, the future wasn't fixed just…biased. Now those biases are gone. We see it for what it is."
"Which is…?" I ask.
"Unwritten," she says simply.
Something in my chest loosens.
"That sounds…good and awful at the same time," I say.
"Welcome to actual life," Seraphine says.
She squeezes my hand.
Mira sets the tonic aside and wipes my lips gently with a cloth, her hands steadier now that the invisible pressure is gone.
"We'll have to rely more on…boring things," she says. "Observations. Check-ups. Listening when you say it hurts."
"I'm not great at that last part," I admit.
"All the more reason to practice," Lyriel says. "No more pretending because a bar says you're at 37%. You tell us 'I feel like a five' and we act on that."
Elira sheaths her sword with a decisive click.
"If some cosmic supervisor just told the system 'no more changes,'" she says, "that means your illness won't suddenly mutate into something worse because it's narratively exciting, right?"
I think back to the message.
Existing states (Oaths, Anchors, Illness, Relationships) locked.
"Yeah," I say slowly. "It said no more structural changes. So what I've got…is what I've got. My heart won't suddenly become a time bomb just because we're low on tension."
Mira lets out a trembling breath of relief.
"That's…huge," she whispers. "We can actually treat you now. Not chase a moving target."
Lyriel nods, eyes already distant with plans.
"I can design spells around a stable illness," she says. "Not one being constantly rewritten by an overexcited meta-engine. It will still be…hard. But not…impossible."
Seraphine smiles at me.
"See?" she says. "Suspension as a gift."
I stare at the patch of empty air where my HUD used to live.
No event logs.
No snark.
No genre tags.
Just the room. The wind. The sound of someone shouting far below in the palace courtyard. The faint ticking of a clock on the mantel.
It feels…bare.
And real.
"You okay?" Mira asks softly.
I realize my breathing's gone shallow.
"I…" I take a slow breath. It hurts less than it has in days. Or maybe I'm just noticing it differently. "I feel…exposed. But also…like the world got quieter. In my head."
My chest still aches. The illness is still there. The mana hums in my veins. But there's no extra layer of commentary, no subtle tugging.
Just me.
Just us.
"Hey," Elira says. "Look at it this way. No more death menus."
I choke out a laugh.
"That's…true," I say. "Whatever offered me 'Rest' clearly got yanked by the ear."
Lyriel's expression sharpens.
"I like whoever did the yanking," she says. "Even if I don't know who they are."
Seraphine nods. "If that process is suspended 'until further notice,' that means even if it tries to appeal, it's stuck. We have…breathing room."
"Literally," I say. Then wince. "Ugh. Bad pun."
Mira smiles, actually smiles, even with dried tear tracks on her cheeks.
"Terrible pun," she says. "Keep making them."
I watch her for a moment.
"I can't…see your worry level anymore," I say quietly. "Or your…HP. Or mana. I just have to…guess."
She tilts her head.
"That's how we've always seen you," she says. "Without bars. Just…you. And we managed."
"That's because you're competent," I say. "I'm used to cheating."
Lyriel raises a brow.
"You still have your memory," she says. "You know what a spike feels like. You know when your heart's about to misbehave. The difference is now you tell us directly instead of waiting for a red banner."
"Direct," Seraphine echoes. "Face to face. Voice to voice. Not through some…intermediary script that thinks it knows best."
There's a pause.
Then, very softly, Mira says:
"Fia."
"Yeah?" I say.
"From now on," she says, "if you…start feeling like you did in that white place—tired, tempted, like it'd be easier to just let go—you call us. Not some…menu. Not some silent decision in your head. You say it out loud. So we can…pull you back."
Her eyes are wet again, but her voice is steady.
"No one," she adds, "gets to offer you that choice again without going through us."
My throat closes.
I nod.
"Okay," I say. "No more secret deals with invisible interfaces. I'm…off that."
"System-sober," Elira says.
I snort. "Sure," I say. "We'll call it that."
Lyriel finally lets herself sit in the chair beside the bed, looking very, very tired.
"So," she says. "To summarize: the meddling meta-engine is in timeout. The FIRE genre can't twist the knife any more than ordinary life already does. We have a fixed illness, a binding Oath, a working anchor lattice, and no script trying to drag Fia to a climactic grave."
She tilts her head.
"Terrifying," she says. "And…good."
Seraphine leans down and presses a kiss to my temple.
"From now on," she murmurs, "when we win, it won't be because some interface told us which button to press. It'll be because we chose. Blind. Together."
I look past her, at the window.
The sky is pale, clouds drifting lazily. Somewhere beyond them, satellites I can't see float, battlefields I haven't stepped onto yet wait, kings and nobles make plans.
For the first time, none of it comes with a tooltip.
I don't know if that makes things better or worse.
I do know it makes them ours.
Sir Fluffsalot slides against my side as I shift, his sewn-on eye staring at the ceiling like he's unimpressed with cosmic bureaucracy.
"Okay," I say, more to myself than anyone. "No more rails. No more genre score. No more status cheats."
I squeeze Mira's hand, feel Seraphine's warmth against my leg, see Elira roll her shoulders like she's itching for whatever comes next, and watch Lyriel already drafting new spell arrays in the air.
"Let's see what happens," I breathe.
No popup appears to rate that choice.
No invisible hand pushes me one way or another.
Just four voices, almost in unison:
"With you," they say.
Whatever comes next—good, bad, or stupid—we'll have to find it without a script.
And somehow, even through the ache in my head and the chill in my bones, that thought sparks heat in my chest that feels like my own, unfiltered.
For the first time since "SYSTEM" started narrating my life, the future isn't a line of text.
It's blank space.
A little terrifying.
A little exhilarating.
And completely, utterly unknown.