Kael stood inches away, his hand still outstretched, trembling. He stared at the suspended NPC, his mind reeling. This isn’t a bug. This is… something else. The cold, hard logic of his former Admin role kicked in, pushing back the initial wave of terror. This was too precise, too devastating to be random. It was a calculated attack.
He felt a familiar pressure behind his eyes, the ghost of an interface that used to appear at his mental command. He tried to summon a system log, to pull up diagnostic data, to find anything. Nothing. The world was deaf to his commands. He was truly powerless.
Lyra rushed to his side, her face pale. She grasped his arm, her fingers digging in. "Kael… what happened to him? Is he… gone?" Her voice was a hushed whisper, trembling with a fear that mirrored his o
