The manic grin plastered across Jax’s bloodied face felt brittle, like cheap synth-glass ready to shatter. "Absolutely perfect," he echoed, the words raspy in the vibrating air. Behind him, the low roar of reality coming undone wasn’t fading; it was deepening, evolving from a simple structural collapse into something more fundamental, more personal. The groans of tortured meta-steel were now interwoven with a high-frequency keening, like stressed space-time itself was crying out. Dust and grit rained down, and the tunnel lights, already dead, were now sources of negative illumination – patches of darkness so profound they seemed to swallow the faint ambient glow from the ubiquitous fungus.

  Ahead, the barrier shimmered, a translucent curtain woven from pure impossibility. It crackled audibly, spitting out miniature, multi-colored lightning bolts that grounded themselves harmlessly against the tunnel walls, leaving behind the acrid tang of ozone and something else… something sharp and clean, like antiseptic air before a storm. It wasn't just blocking the path; it felt like a deliberate statement. You Are Here. And You Are Fucked.

  Jax pushed himself off the wall, his body screaming a thousand different kinds of protest. The systemic strain notification wasn’t kidding; every movement felt like dragging weights through setting concrete. His head throbbed in time with the building's death throes, and the metallic taste of blood was thick in his throat.

  Ping.

  A notification flickered weakly at the edge of his vision, struggling against the general sensory overload.

  [WARNING: Environmental Hazard Escalation! Cascade Front Approaching!]

  [Vitality Status: CRITICAL (18%?)]

  [Localized Reality Stability: Degrading Rapidly]

  "Eighteen percent?" Jax muttered, spitting blood onto the vibrating deck plating. "Generous. Feels more like three."

  He limped closer to the energy barrier, vibro-knife held loosely in his grip – more a security blanket than a viable weapon against this. The crackling energy washed over him in waves, making the fine hairs on his arms stand on end and setting his teeth buzzing in a deeply unpleasant harmony with the reactor's death song.

  His Axiom-sight struggled to resolve the barrier. It wasn’t like the solid matter he’d learned to perceive, nor the focused energy of the Enforcer shields or the construct's lasers. This was… different. It looked like raw potential, a fluid boundary where multiple, conflicting Axioms clashed and momentarily stabilized into a visible field. He saw flashes of Cohesion warring with Entropy, kinetic force vectors canceling each other out, bursts of thermal energy immediately dampened by localized cold sinks. It was a physical manifestation of the Anomaly’s core nature: reality arguing with itself.

  Could he disrupt it? Like the door lock, could he inject targeted static? He reached out tentatively, not physically, but with his perception, trying to 'feel' the flow of energies within the barrier.

  The instant his focus touched the shimmering field, he recoiled as if burned. It wasn't pain, exactly, but a dizzying influx of raw, unfiltered data. Conflicting signals, nonsensical physics, whispers of impossible geometries flooded his mind, threatening to overwhelm his already strained consciousness.

  Ping.

  [Cognitive Hazard Detected: Axiomatic Flux Field!]

  [Mental Fortitude Check: Failure!]

  [Temporary Debuff Applied: Sensory Overload (-10 Focus?)]

  "Son of a bitch," Jax groaned, clutching his temples. The whispers that usually accompanied his power use intensified, becoming a cacophony of conflicting advice and alien desires. His vision swam, the barrier’s colors seeming to bleed into the surrounding air. Sensory Overload? More like brain-scrambled-and-served-cold.

  Okay, direct interference was out. Trying to force it with Entropy like the door frame felt like cortical suicide. What about… absorbing it? Could he draw power from it, like he accidentally did from Object Rho?

  He focused again, this time not trying to push, but to pull. He visualized the barrier's chaotic energy flowing into him, feeding his depleted reserves. He braced for the cognitive flood.

  Nothing happened. The barrier crackled on, indifferent. It wasn't a power source; it was a wall built of arguments.

  The tunnel trembled violently. A large chunk of ceiling plating detached nearby, crashing to the floor with a deafening clang that sent shivers down his spine. The keening sound from behind him intensified, closer now. The cascade was catching up.

  Panic, cold and sharp, sliced through the pain and disorientation. He was out of time, out of options. Fight the barrier, get torn apart mentally. Wait for the cascade, get torn apart physically, possibly existentially.

  He looked down at the vibro-knife. Then back at the barrier. Could mundane tech interact with it? He doubted it, but… desperation was the mother of really stupid experiments.

  He activated the knife, its familiar low hum a small comfort. He cautiously extended it towards the crackling field. As the vibrating blade tip neared the barrier, the crackling intensified. Miniature arcs of energy leaped from the field to the knife, enveloping the blade in a corona of multi-colored light. The humming pitch of the knife changed, becoming strained, higher.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Jax felt a weird resonance travel up his arm, vibrating in his bones. The barrier resisted the blade, but it wasn't like hitting a solid wall. It felt… viscous. Like pushing the knife into incredibly dense, energized gel.

  He pushed harder. The strain on the knife grew. Sparks showered his glove. The energy corona flared brighter.

  Ping.

  [Axiomatic Flux Field Interaction Detected!]

  [Attempting Mundane Tool Breach…]

  [Result: Negligible Penetration. High Probability of Tool Failure.]

  "Yeah, no shit," Jax grunted, putting his shoulder into it. The knife whined, protesting the abuse. The barrier yielded, but only infinitesimally, the surface dimpling slightly around the blade before snapping back.

  He needed more power. More… oomph.

  His gaze fell on the discarded power cell he’d scavenged earlier from the looped maintenance drone. It was still tucked into a pouch on his vest, mostly charged. An idea, born from the fusion of desperation and his newfound, terrifying understanding of Axiomatic fuckery, sparked.

  Could he channel energy through the knife? Not his own draining vitality, but external power? Use the power cell to brute-force the barrier’s conflicting Axioms, creating a temporary overload, a localized breach?

  This was uncharted territory. The system hadn't given him an 'Electrokinesis for Dummies' skill tree. He didn't know the first thing about safely channeling energy, especially not into a device vibrating at high frequency while interfacing with a wall of pure reality static.

  The tunnel shook again, harder this time. Dust turned into a cascade of small rocks falling from the ceiling. The keening sound was right behind him.

  Fuck it.

  He ripped the power cell from his pouch, fumbled it with numb fingers, then jammed its contact points against the metal pommel of the vibro-knife. He focused his will, visualizing the cell’s stored energy flowing through the knife, into the barrier. He wasn’t trying sophisticated Axiomatic manipulation; he was just trying to jam the signal, flood the zone with raw power.

  Ping.

  [WARNING: Uncontrolled Energy Channeling Attempt!]

  [Equipment Hazard: Critical Overload Probability!]

  [Potential Outcome: Catastrophic System Failure (Biological & Technological)!]

  Ignoring the screaming warnings in his head – both the system’s and his own primal survival instinct – Jax pushed. He felt the power cell surge, dumping its charge directly into the knife. The knife screamed, its hum rising to an unbearable shriek. The metal heated instantly, burning through his glove. The blade glowed white-hot, enveloped not just in the barrier’s corona, but in raw, arcing electricity drawn from the cell.

  And the barrier reacted.

  The spot where the supercharged blade pressed didn't just dimple; it tore. A jagged, fist-sized hole ripped open in the shimmering field, revealing the continuation of the tunnel beyond – blessedly stable, blessedly mundane-looking, at least for a split second. Raw, conflicting energies poured out of the breach like pressurized steam, washing over Jax with nauseating force.

  Then, with a sound like tearing fabric amplified a thousand times, the power cell exploded in his hand.

  The blast threw Jax backwards, slamming him against the tunnel wall. Pain, white-hot and absolute, erupted in his hand and arm. He screamed, or tried to, the sound lost in the roar of the detonating cell and the encroaching cascade. Shrapnel peppered his face and chest. Darkness swarmed the edges of his vision.

  Ping. Ping. Ping.

  Multiple notifications overlapped, glitching wildly.

  [CRITICAL DAMAGE SUSTAINED! Left Hand Maimed!]

  [Vitality Status: CRITICAL (4%?)]

  [Axiomatic Resonance Spike Detected! Unstable Adaptation Triggered?]

  [New Skill Unlocked?: Energy Resilience (Rudimentary)?]

  [WARNING: CASCADE IMMINENT! EVACUATE NOW!]

  Through the haze of agony and near-unconsciousness, Jax saw it. The hole he’d ripped in the barrier was still there, fluctuating wildly but open. And through it… escape.

  Survival instinct, honed sharp by years in the Grey Levels, overrode the pain. He surged to his feet, ignoring the mangled ruin of his left hand, ignoring the feeling that his entire arm was on fire. He stumbled, staggered, then threw himself forward, diving headfirst through the tearing, crackling hole in the barrier just as the tunnel behind him seemed to implode, consumed by a wave of crushing darkness and screaming geometry that was the leading edge of the Resonance Cascade.

  He hit the floor on the other side, rolling, the impact sending fresh waves of agony through him. He lay there, gasping, curled around his ruined hand, the smell of burnt flesh and ozone filling his nostrils. The hole in the barrier behind him snapped shut with a final, violent crack, leaving only the faint shimmer of the undisturbed field.

  He was through. He was alive. Barely.

  He risked opening his eyes. The tunnel here seemed… quieter. More stable. The floor wasn't vibrating quite so violently. The air still stank, but it was the familiar stench of decay and stagnant water, not the sharp tang of imminent reality collapse.

  He pushed himself up into a sitting position, cradling his left arm. His hand… Gods, his hand was a mess. Glove shredded, skin blackened and split, fingers bent at impossible angles. Blood welled sluggishly. He could barely feel it, shock setting in alongside the agony.

  Ping.

  [STATUS UPDATE: Limb Integrity Compromised (Left Hand - Severe Trauma)]

  [Pain Levels: Critical]

  [Recommendation: Immediate Medica…]

  "Yeah, thanks," Jax choked out, bile rising in his throat. "Got any Trauma Patches in that system of yours?"

  Silence. Apparently, the universe handed out stat points and warnings, but not first aid. Typical.

  He fumbled clumsily with his good hand at his vest, finding his last trauma patch. With gritted teeth, he slapped it over the worst of the damage on his hand. The patch hissed, injecting coagulants and painkillers. The immediate agony subsided slightly, replaced by a deep, throbbing ache, but at least the bleeding slowed. It wouldn't fix the mangled bone and cooked nerves, but it might keep him from passing out or going into shock. For now.

  He was alive. Trapped deep in an Anomalous Zone, hunted by the Authority, having failed his mission, severely injured, and possessing powers he barely understood that seemed intent on killing him almost as often as they saved him.

  But alive.

  He looked down the dark, relatively stable tunnel ahead. Where the hell did he go now? Back the way he came was impossible. Forward… forward was deeper into Sector 9, deeper into the unknown.

  With a groan, Jax levered himself to his feet, swaying unsteadily. One step at a time. Find somewhere safe, somewhere defensible. Assess the damage. Figure out what the fuck 'Architect Zero' meant. And maybe, just maybe, find a way out of this reality-forsaken hellhole that didn't involve getting eaten, shot, or disintegrated by his own glitching powers.

  He took a step, then another, leaving small, bloody footprints on the grimy floor. The adventure, it seemed, was far from over. It was just getting significantly more painful.