“The Null-Dragon caught me with its tail swipe,” Kaelen admitted, staring at the swirling fractal bandages the Nurse was applying to his digital wrists. In the real world, his physical body lay in a gel-bed pod. But here, in the Playground —the fully immersive, neuro-direct MMO that had replaced half the global economy—the damage was real enough. Neural recoil. Synaptic debt. A bad wipe could leave you with migraines for a week.