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The neon sign for "The Byte Hole" flickered, casting a sickly green glow over Kael’s cramped studio. He stared at the progress bar on his screen. It was stuck at 99%.

He opened his DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). A hundred new icons appeared, sleek and silver. He loaded a simple vocal track—a recording of his own voice—and dragged the "M-Super-Transformer" onto the channel. He hit play.

Suddenly, the screen turned a deep, bruised purple. A text box appeared, but the font was in a language he didn't recognize—sharp, jagged symbols that seemed to bleed into the desktop wallpaper.

Kael reached for the power button, but his hand froze. He couldn't move. On the screen, his own webcam feed popped up. He saw himself sitting there, terrified. But in the video, a digital shadow was standing behind him, its hands made of flickering waveform data. "The price," the voice glitched, * "is the frequency."*

A voice, synthesized and cold, crept through his headphones even though they were unplugged on the desk. "License... not... found."