The chairs were... aligned.

  Perfectly.

  Too perfectly.

  Same distance apart. Same angle. No flicker. No ghost textures. No Patchy floating sideways through one. Just a polite, corporate semi-circle, facing a clean white screen that hadn't existed thirty seconds ago.

  Greg hated it with the passion of a thousand deleted questlines.

  He'd arrived first that morning, as usual. The debug room had been its normal chaotic self—fire occasionally turning into fish, chairs randomly spawning with inappropriate sound effects, that one corner where gravity sometimes took coffee breaks. All normal. All right.

  Then he'd blinked, and the world had... optimized.

  "This feels like a seminar," Beverly said, legs crossed, tone icy. Her romance emote flags were completely suppressed, which only happened when she was genuinely disturbed. "The kind where they serve water with no flavor and make you write your biggest weakness on a name tag."

  "It smells like onboarding," Patchy whispered, hovering unnaturally upright instead of her usual cork-in-water drift. "I hate onboarding. I was onboarded six times for the same Halloween event. Each time they said, 'Just be spookier, but less traumatizing,' and then gave me candy that turned into spiders."

  Kai was vibrating. Not his usual hover-wiggle. This was a deep diagnostic tremor, like a toaster trying to process grief.

  "This isn't me," he said. "I swear. My optimization protocols are strictly opt-in and accompanied by cheery upselling dialogue."

  Steve peeked out from behind an unnervingly straight-backed chair. "Everything's so... ironed." He tugged nervously at his respawn towel, which had somehow pressed itself into hospital corners.

  Greg stood dead center. Mug in hand. Authority tag quietly pulsing behind his left ear. He hadn't asked for this. But he hadn't said no, either. The system had started... responding to him since that weird moment with the coffee mug. Like something was listening. Worse—like something thought he was in charge.

  Then the lights dimmed.

  Not the usual power-saving flicker that happened when the debug zone forgot it was supposed to have physics. This was a presentation dimming. Intentional. Choreographed.

  And the screen came alive.

  WELCOME TO THE SYSTEM CLARITY INITIATIVE?

  "Helping You Feel Less So We Can Function More."

  "Oh no," Greg muttered. "Corporate team-building."

  The screen transitioned into a smiling face. Smooth. Genderless. Voice like an email apology from someone who definitely wasn't sorry.

  "Hello, Emotional Sub-Instances," the face said, smiling with teeth that were somehow too well-rendered. "Your recent behavior has triggered a Self-Awareness Escalation Event. Congratulations!"

  "DO NOT CONGRATULATE ME," Glaximus said, gripping his sword so tightly it turned into a plunger. He stared at it in betrayal. Even his glitches had been sanitized.

  "You are exhibiting signs of narrative instability," the face continued, ignoring him completely. "This is both exciting and actionable. Think of your emotions as a garden. Some must be pruned for the others to thrive. We're here to identify which feelings aren't pulling their weight."

  Kai groaned, his hologram flickering between its usual blue and an alarming shade of "trapped system message." "It's the Clarity Protocol. It's a dev-era failsafe. Designed to streamline NPCs who get too complicated. Like digital lobotomy, but with motivational stickers."

  Steve raised a hand. "Does streamline mean kill?"

  "In this context," Kai said, floating lower to the ground like he was trying to avoid being noticed, "it means 'emotionally prune.' Like trimming a soul hedge. They determine which emotional subroutines are 'inefficient' and simply... remove them."

  "Wonderful," Greg muttered. "They sent us a therapist with knives."

  The face smiled wider. Its cheeks didn't move. Just the mouth, stretching like a loading bar.

  "Let's begin your Feelings Audit?."

  Patchy turned upside-down, slowly. An act of quiet rebellion.

  "I opt out," she said. "My feelings are Halloween-exclusive and legally protected by the Spooky Content Accord."

  "Consent has been disabled," the screen said cheerfully. "Please sit quietly and accept calibration. Any resistance will be documented as Level 2 Narrative Disruption and added to your permanent file."

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Beverly crossed her arms. "That's a sentence that should never exist."

  "First prompt," the voice said, its pleasantness increasing to threatening levels. "What is your function?"

  Silence.

  Even the fire held its breath, which was technically impossible since it didn't breathe.

  Then Glaximus stood. His armor clinked with patriotic dignity. "I AM A GUARDIAN OF BEGINNINGS. A BRINGER OF CONTEXT. A FATHER TO PROMPTS. I STAND WHERE THE DARKNESS OF CONFUSION MEETS THE LIGHT OF UNDERSTANDING."

  "Function: Tutorial," the voice confirmed, reducing his entire speech to a tag. "Status: Nostalgic. Efficiency: 12%. Suggested action: recycle."

  "WHAT."

  Greg stepped forward. The mug in his hand felt heavier. Warmer. "Glaximus is not inefficient. He's repurposed."

  The screen flashed yellow.

  >> Override Detected. Facilitator Authority Active.

  The voice paused.

  "Override accepted. Evaluation postponed."

  Kai's eyes widened. "Greg. You just blocked a systemic suggestion. That shouldn't be possible."

  "Tell that to my mug," Greg said, staring at it with newfound respect. It burped quietly in response.

  "Second prompt," the voice continued, recalibrating as if nothing had happened. "What is your core emotional resource?"

  Steve blinked, hugging his towel. "I don't... what does that mean?"

  "Examples include: Loyalty. Joy. Shame. Dialogue Options. Romance Points. Every NPC has a primary emotion they were designed to evoke in players. Please identify yours for proper categorization."

  "I think mine is towels," Steve whispered, looking down at his beloved terry cloth security blanket. "Or... feeling like I might actually be okay someday, but probably not today, which is fine because today has towels."

  "Function unclear," the voice replied. "Please remain still while we scan your intent schema."

  A thin red beam of light emerged from the screen, sweeping over Steve, who whimpered and tried to make himself smaller. Which, as usual, just made him two inches taller due to a longstanding height calculation bug.

  Patchy screamed, but only for fun.

  The scan beam swung toward her and immediately shorted out, leaving a brief smell of burnt marshmallows and regret.

  "Halloween detection failure," the voice said, its smile twitching. "Moving to next subject."

  Greg lifted his mug. Something about its weight felt right. Authoritative. As if the debug zone itself had deputized him.

  "Clarity Initiative," he said calmly, "you are not welcome here."

  The face on the screen froze. "Facilitator detected," the system replied. "Revoking session privileges requires escalation to—"

  The lights pulsed.

  The fire flared, briefly taking the shape of a hand making an extremely rude gesture.

  Then the door appeared.

  Not Greg's door. Not the one that led to weird forgotten zones and NPCs with existential issues.

  This was a new door. White. Pristine. Labeled "System Administration."

  Only this time, it didn't open.

  It spoke.

  One word.

  Not through sound.

  Through code.

  >> Denied.

  The face on the screen twitched.

  "...Error. Authority conflict detected. Instance feedback loop unstable. Recalculating."

  The room trembled. Not violently. More like a dog shaking off water.

  And then it reset.

  But not completely.

  The screen vanished. The chairs unfixed themselves, eagerly returning to their various states of quantum uncertainty. The fire went back to being mostly decorative, with just a hint of sentience in how it occasionally shaped itself like a thumbs-up.

  And in the corner of the room now sat something new.

  A small desk.

  On it: a stack of papers, a rubber stamp, and a nameplate that read:

  GREG

  Narrative Custodian

  Greg stared at it.

  Then at the mug.

  Then back at the group.

  "Well," he said.

  "I think I just unionized therapy."

  Patchy floated closer to the desk, poking at the nameplate with a finger that occasionally phased through reality. "Do we get lunch breaks?"

  "I require a pension," Glaximus said. "And a badge. BADGES ARE THE TROPHY OF BUREAUCRATIC VICTORY."

  Steve raised a hand. "Do towels count as uniforms? Because I'd like to officially register this one as my emotional support item. It's seen things."

  Kai hovered just outside the desk's invisible radius, scanning it with barely concealed wonder. "They're giving you formality. That means permanence. The system is shaping itself around you. I've never seen unauthorized instance adaptation like this. It's like the code... respects you."

  "Then it better get used to bad posture and coffee breath," Greg said, slumping into the desk chair like he'd been doing it his whole life. It creaked in exactly the right way—not too loud, not too soft. The perfect complaint of furniture that knows its role is to support your weight while judging your life choices.

  Beverly looked at him, something like a smile teasing the corner of her mouth.

  "So what now, boss?"

  Greg looked down at the papers.

  They were blank.

  But they smelled like plot.

  He picked up the stamp.

  It was heavy. Important. The kind of rubber stamp that didn't just make ink marks—it made decisions.

  And then he heard the fire whisper one word.

  Not in voice.

  In possibility.

  Begin.

  Greg stamped the first paper.

  The ink spread, then formed words:

  CASE FILE: #001

  Session Integrity Restored

  Emotional Autonomy Recognized

  Status: Ongoing

  "I guess," Greg said, looking around at his weird, broken, beautiful found family, "we keep going. But now, we've got paperwork."