3:33 PM.
I sat at my desk at home, school bag dumped on the floor. The calendar notification burned in my mind.
Audit.
The room was silent. The only sound was the hum of my laptop and the frantic beat of my heart.
3:32.
I had told Kasia. Her response was a single word: "Vigilant."
I had my skills ready. Not that I knew what to ready them for.
3:33.
The clock on my screen ticked over.
Nothing happened.
No flash of light. No disembodied voice. No DeVille appearing in a puff of sulfur.
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. A hoarse, shaky laugh escaped me.
Was it a bluff? A psychological game?
Then, my laptop screen died.
Not just went black. The power light winked out. The hum stopped.
Absolute silence.
My phone, lying next to it, also went dark.
What the—
Before panic could fully set, a new screen manifested in the air in front of me.
It wasn't the System's clean blue hologram.
This one was the color of a deep, bruising violet. The text was a jagged, archaic font that hurt to look at.
[AUDIT INITIATED]
[AUDITOR: D]
[SUBJECT: ALEX THORN / CHRONOS_ARCHITECT]
[PARAMETERS: REALITY LENS - NARRATIVE COHERENCE]
A lens of violet light shot from the screen, scanning me from head to toe. I couldn't move.
[SCANNING...]
[CONFLICT DETECTED: DOMAIN - 'LITERARY REVENGE FANTASY']
[NARRATIVE COHERENCE: ACCEPTABLE]
[CHARACTER MOTIVATION: SIMPLISTIC BUT EFFECTIVE]
[POWER PROGRESSION: LINEAR, PREDICTABLE]
It was critiquing my life. Like I was a story.
Rage boiled up, cutting through the fear. "Who are you to judge me?" I snarled at the violet screen.
The text scrolled, ignoring me.
[AUDIT POINT 1: CONSEQUENCE DEFICIT]
[OBSERVATION: SUBJECT OPERATES WITH ABSOLUTE SOCIAL/PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPUNITY. NARRATIVE WEIGHT OF ACTIONS DISSIPATES. LACKS RESONANT FAILURE.]
[REMEDIATION: INJECT NARRATIVE CONSEQUENCE.]
A wave of disorientation hit me. The room seemed to tilt.
A new line of text appeared, not on the violet screen, but in my own System's blue interface. It was glitched, bleeding violet at the edges.
[CONTRACT MODIFICATION: FORCED]
[CONTRACT: FISTORIA FANTASY GENRE ANCHOR - TIER: GOLD]
[NEW CLAUSE ADDED: 'AUTHOR'S DOWNSIDE']
[DESCRIPTION: FOR THE DURATION OF ONE (1) WEEK, ALL SYSTEM-ENHANCED SKILLS (EXCLUDING PASSIVE STAT BOOSTS) ARE INACTIVATED. YOU WILL NAVIGATE YOUR EMPIRE WITH MORTAL CUNNEL ALONE.]
[DURATION: 168 HOURS. STARTS NOW.]
My blood froze.
I tried to activate Reader's Insight. Nothing. Not even a flicker.
Social Web Sight. Silence in my mind.
Authority Projection. I felt no different.
Even Skill Synchronization was gone. The faint connection to Kasia was severed.
I was stripped. Naked.
The violet screen updated.
[CONSEQUENCE INJECTED. AUDIT POINT 1 SATISFIED.]
[AUDIT POINT 2: ANTAGONIST DEFICIT]
[OBSERVATION: OPPOSITION IS PEDESTRIAN. HUMAN-SCALE. LACKS COSMIC FLAIR.]
[REMEDIATION: PROVIDE COMPETITION.]
The screen displayed the cover of "Goblin Coin Hegemon."
[THIS NARRATIVE HAS BEEN GRANTED TEMPORARY PRIORITY. ITS PROGRESSION WILL BE ACCELERATED. CONSIDER IT A... COURSE CORRECTION.]
The violet screen began to fade.
"Wait!" I shouted, my voice raw. "Why? Who are you?"
The final text shimmered in the air before vanishing.
[I AM THE EDITOR THIS STORY DESERVES. SURVIVE THE WEEK, LITTLE AUTHOR. OR BE DELETED. -D]
The screen vanished.
My laptop and phone powered back on, buzzing to life as if nothing happened.
But everything had changed.
I was just a kid with money and a story. No magic. No unfair advantages.
For one week.
And out there, a rival story was being pumped with cosmic steroids.
The Audit was over.
The test had begun.
//-\\
To my fellow authors in the trenches:
They told us we weren't good enough. They sent the cold, automated emails. "Not a fit for our current line-up." "Lacks marketability."
Every time you see Alex Thorn crush an editor in this story, remember: this isn't just fiction.
This is the scream of every writer who stayed up until 3:00 AM pouring their soul into a document that the world ignored. It is for everyone who has ever struggled with low reads, low reviews, low comments, and those painful, stagnant low collections that make you want to quit.
The gatekeepers are human. They are flawed. And in the digital age, they are becoming obsolete.
They sit in their comfortable chairs judging worlds they could never even imagine, let alone build. They look at spreadsheets while we look at the stars.
We don't write for the approval of a corporate board in a glass office. We write for the person scrolling on their phone at a bus stop, looking for a world better than their own.
We write for the ones who need an escape from a life that feels like a dead end.
If you have a manuscript sitting in a folder named "Draft 1" that you're too afraid to post—post it right now.
Stop waiting for permission to exist. If you've been rejected ten times, go for the eleventh. Use their "No" as fuel for your fire.
Alex Thorn had to die to get his second chance. You don't. You just have to keep typing until your fingers bleed and your vision blurs. The industry thinks they hold the keys. They forgot that we are the ones who build the doors in the first place.
Let them call us "cringe." Let them call us "amateurs." While they talk, we build. While they judge, we evolve into something they can't control.
Current Motivation Level: 18%
Next Level: +1%
If this chapter resonated with you, drop a comment. Tell me about the time a gatekeeper told you "No."
ALL HELL FROM WEBNOVEL STARTS FROM YOU!
— A.T.