Chapter Three: One Mistake, One Ability Lost

At first, nothing changed. Then rain touched his lips, and he could not taste the metallic tang that always hung in a Haicheng storm. Su pushed a mint into his mouth. "What do you taste?" He bit down. He felt a hard object break. Sweetness, cold, mint—everything was gone. "Nothing." For the first time, he was truly afraid. This was not a game. The Protocol could cut an ordinary piece from a person so cleanly that only its absence remained. Chen tried to run. Lin seized him. "Who hired you?" "I don't know! We took jobs on the dark web. The task was called Feed the Clock." Chen trembled. "I really do owe money. They said if I fooled you once—" "Your hardship was real, so you gambled that the system would accept you?" Chen nodded.