The system answered my question.
Not with words, not with Meridian materializing in a shower of golden light to explain the relevant mechanic. Just a notification, clean and clinical, appearing in my peripheral vision while I sat on the bench in the dark with my face in my hands.
SYSTEM ALERT. ACTION BLOCKED. NO VOLUNTARY TERMINATION ALLOWED. REASON: PLAYER SAFETY PROTOCOLS ACTIVE. ALTERNATIVE: SEEK HEALING AND CONTINUE GAMEPLAY EXPERIENCE.
I read it twice.
Player safety protocols. The system had been monitoring my state, tracking whatever the DESPAIR status effect was reading from my neural inputs or my behavior patterns or whatever metric it used to determine that a player had crossed from general misery into something more specific, and it had responded by blocking the exit I had be
