An Unbound Soul

There was a glitch in the System. It wasn't the first time, but it was the first one for over a hundred years. Erryn had hoped she'd ironed out all the bugs by now, but she'd be the first to admit not knowing how half the ancient construction worked, so missing something wasn't a complete surprise.

She stirred her attention from her sixth floor, where the floor boss was arguing with a ranger about the way an arrow couldn't possibly hit anything that was running away, because by the time it reached the target's previous position, they would have run further. Erryn wasn't entirely certain if the slime believed what she was saying, or if she was just messing with the poor delver. She had recently taken to calling herself 'Mirodar The World Eater' because she thought it sounded cool. With a personality like that, Erryn didn't feel safe making any assumptions. But, as amusing as the sight was, System maintenance unfortunately needed to take precedence.

The glitch was something new. The System had generated a unique trait for someone that was incompatible with basic System functions. That shouldn't happen; the System wasn't allowed to create a new effect that conflicted with any existing rules. It should be easy enough to fix in any case; Erryn just needed to find the recipient, remove the trait, then find the hole that allowed the conflict to happen and patch it.

The source was to the far east, almost as far as the ocean. A tiny village built on the edge of a forest. A tiny shack in the tiny village, home to a pair of young humans. The source of the glitch was the woman, which was odd. Young as they might be, they were far past the age of generating traits, and a quick inspection of the woman's status confirmed she had nothing out of the ordinary. Ah, it wasn't from the woman, but from inside the woman. She was visibly pregnant. But why was the System generating traits for a baby that had yet to be born?

Erryn accessed the trait details and baulked. The System hadn't generated the trait or its effect; it had simply wrapped words around something that was already there. This wasn't a bug in the System, it was a bug in reality. There was a soul that shouldn't be there. A soul uneroded by the cycle of reincarnation, so alien that no existing soul magic would touch it. A soul immune to Erryn's Law. This trait couldn't be removed any more that the child's heart could be; to do so would be fatal. She should kill the child before it threatened everything she had built. She should kill it, but... Erryn was no murderer. Besides, she watched the parents lovingly embrace, the mother caressing her belly. If she was guardian to these people, how could she ever take that happiness away from them? If only she had spotted the soul earlier, before it had implanted, she could have sent it back to where it belonged. Now she could only keep watch; she could never bring herself to kill an unborn child.

Besides, perhaps this child could offer something else that Erryn so desired: validation. She would do what she could to make sure the child was safely born and settled, but beyond that, she wouldn't interfere. Instead, she would wait and see how the child reacted to her world.