Back in System Space, he lay carelessly on the ground, limbs splayed, eyes closed.
He was done.
Not "He needs a nap" done — done done.
Like someone who'd sprinted through the entirety of art history barefoot, bled onto every medium, and been critiqued by the ghosts of dead masters. His soul felt wrung out. He had scraped paint from cracked palettes, mixed pigments in dusty basins, carved marble with blistered fingers, thrown ink like spells, and dodged arrows in a battlefield led by da Vinci's deranged apprentices. He had emotionally bled beneath Rembrandt's golden light and drowned quietly in Monet's fog.
He had climbed peaks made of forgotten dreams, swam through subconscious seas, and held conversations with more dead people than a seasoned medium with a 24/7 group chat.
This time, the System had chosen a new strategy.
