The screens shifted—one by one—until the feed showed every chamber at once.Thirty-two small squares of human desperation, each a window into a different reality, yet all trapped in the same nightmare.
In some chambers, voices rose and fell in frantic arguments—pleas for mercy, threats of revenge, whispered bargains that would never be honored.In others, players leaned back in their chairs, trading what might be their last conversation with a strange calmness that felt unnatural, almost inhuman.
A few faces wore sly, unreadable smiles—manipulators who twisted every word into a trap. Some were clearly psychopaths, feeding on the tension, finding sick amusement in the fear of their opponents.And then there were those who said nothing at all… silent statues, staring blankly ahead, their indifference more chilling than any threat.
They all knew the truth.Many of them would be dead before the day ended.
But the greater truth—the one none of them dared to say out loud—was that this game wasn't the start of their suffering.They had all lived cursed lives long before The Game of the Masterminds began.
The year was 2050, and Earth had rotted beyond redemption.The innocent, the corrupt, the monsters, and the martyrs—they were all victims of the same broken world.Even the administrators behind the glass, save for a few exceptions, carried scars that time had not healed.And even the two "Victimizers"—the shadowed figures who orchestrated this blood sport—were victims in their own right.
The game itself had a story, one buried so deep that no player, no audience, and no outsider could fully uncover it.It would go on until They decided it would stop—though even They knew that day would rarely, if ever, come.
If the first game of The Game of the Masterminds could be this brutal...what horrors would the next games bring?