The bell rang inside their skulls. It was the same sound as before, but louder now — deeper, like an old clock striking doom. Steve covered his ears, but it did not stop. The light went out and the world folded into black.
When he opened his eyes, he was alone.
The room smelled of damp stone and old cloth. The air was cold, and his breath came out in small white clouds. He reached out and his hand touched something wet. Hands — many hands — pressed against him from the dark. They were cold and small and bony. They wanted him to stay.
He pulled back and crawled to his feet. A whisper crawled from everywhere and nowhere at once.
"Why did you wake us?"
Steve's heart was a drum. He took a step and the floor complained like old wood hurting. The darkness around him moved like a live thing.
Maya woke on her knees. The light in her small room came from a single candle that burned by itself. Wax dripped like blood down the table. The wallpaper breathed. With every slow breath, the pattern of the flowers bent and looked like eyes.
"Steve?" she called. Her voice was small and already breaking.
From the corner, the whisper answered with her voice, but wrong.
"Staaave… help…"
Maya's throat closed. She held the candle tight. The room seemed to tighten with her. The walls leaned in. A small toy chest in the corner creaked open by itself. A lullaby started — soft, broken, sung by many voices together. The melody wrapped around her like a hand.
She crawled away, but the floor kept giving way under her feet, and the lullaby grew louder and closer.
"Please," she whispered, though she did not know who she meant.
Tom opened his eyes and found himself in a long hall filled with mirrors. The hall was long like a river and lined with glass. He took a step and dozens of Toms looked back without moving.
He laughed at first because that was what people did when they were afraid. The laugh fell dead in the hall. Then one mirror Tom smiled back when the real Tom had not smiled. The smile was wrong — too thin, stretching past the face.
Tom walked toward one mirror. The reflection did not follow him. Instead, it pressed a hand flat to the inside of the glass. Cracks spidered out and the hand looked like it wanted to push through. The sound of fingernails against glass was like nails on a coffin.
The mirror Tom mouthed words. The sound was a hiss in the quiet behind Tom.
"We are the real ones," it said. "You are the copy."
Tom felt fingers clamp his throat, not from his world but from a place inside the glass. He fought and clawed at nothing. He hit his fist against the mirror. The glass did not break. But his own breath left him. He tasted metal.
Liam woke with a chain around his ankle. The room smelled of rust and old leather. He could not see much, but the scrape of metal told him he was not free. He pulled and the chain bit into his skin.
In the corner, two eyes opened — not human, wide and yellow with a thin slit of black. A low growl moved the air. Liam had not known fear like this since the things he had done before. A dark memory surfaced — fists, threats, the weight of being in a gang. He had changed, but the ground remembered.
The thing in the corner stepped out. It had a head like a wolf and shoulders like a man. It walked on long fingers and it smelled like wet fur and iron.
Liam stood. His legs trembled. The wolf-man moved close, sniffing, tasting the air. Then it tilted its head and laughed with a voice like a wet throat.
Liam felt the chain tighten. It was a test of strength and memory. He forced himself to breathe deep, thinking of small things — his little sister's laugh, an old street that was safe. The small things steadied him. He pushed at the chain with all he had. It groaned and bit. The beast lunged.
Liam kicked with steel in his legs. The beast yelped like something surprised. Liam ran. He did not have to win now. He only had to move.
Alisa opened her eyes in a child's room gone wrong. The walls were painted too bright. The dolls on the shelves had their eyes sewn closed, but when she looked at them, she felt watched. The rocking horse creaked with no wind. A chalk circle lay on the floor with strange runes she did not know. Paper cranes hung from the ceiling, folded and perfect, but they seemed to breathe.
On the small bed sat a girl with hair in her face. She hummed a lullaby that should have brought peace, but it made Alisa's teeth ache.
"Do you want to sleep?" the girl asked, although her mouth did not move. Her voice came from inside Alisa's head.
Alisa had always been the one who read. She loved words and facts. Now the books in the shelves turned their pages on their own, letters moving like writhing worms. They wrote her name across a page and then erased it with slow, cruel strokes.
She moved toward the girl and the dolls watched. The girl looked up and the seam of her mouth opened like a rip. Something cold reached out and touched Alisa's hand. It felt like ice and sorrow.
Alisa did the only thing she could think of — she read aloud. A silly poem she remembered from childhood, soft and silly words. The sound seemed to push back the humming. The room shuddered. The dolls' smiles broke, and the girl's eyes filled with something like recognition.
Alisa kept reading. The words gave her a small flame of control.
Arin woke in a room of books and clocks. Every shelf was full of old, leather books whose spines were rubbed smooth. The clocks were everywhere — on the wall, on the table, hanging from the ceiling — and every clock showed a different time. The hands spun backward and then stuttered forward.
Arin remembered his grandmother's stories — the old village tales — and suddenly he knew why this room smelled like dust and candles. He had been the one who listened to those stories, who scoffed and then felt their truth prick his skin. The room was made of the stories themselves.
A book opened on the table. Pages turned until words formed letters that shivered. A voice that sounded like paper and wind whispered to him.
"You who reads, you who knows," it said. "Time is debt. Pay what you owe."
Arin's chest tightened. He had always thought his knowledge could save him. Now knowledge was a trap. He walked between the clocks and their hands brushed his sleeves like fingers. Each tick was a small cut.
On a shelf he saw a photograph wedged inside a book — a picture of the burned village, little ruined houses and faces blurred by smoke. In the center, a woman stood in white.
Arin fell to his knees. The clocks spun faster. The books opened as if hungry. Words climbed out and wound around his legs like vines. They asked him questions about promises he did not keep, about stories he laughed at, about names he forgot to remember. His grandmother's voice whispered in his head — warning, pleading.
Arin reached for the book with the photo. The pages burned his fingers like cold fire, but he would not let go. He started to read aloud the names on the page, names he traced with his thumb. With each name he said, a clock's hand slowed. The book's vines loosened a little.
This test was not of strength. It was of memory. He had to remember the names of the ones the villagers had lost. He had to call them back from the dark.
Back in his dark room, Steve crawled and found a small door. He opened it and light—thin and sickly—spilled from it. Inside was a small boy, no older than ten, with mud streaked on his face. He stared at Steve with eyes too old.
"Why did you wake us?" the boy asked. His throat sounded like dry leaves.
Steve wanted to hug him, to tell him they would take him out. But the boy's mouth opened wide and out came a voice that was not only his.
"We wanted to play," said many voices at once, both soft and full of hunger. "We wanted to be seen."
Steve felt their boredom and hunger. He felt how long they had waited. He felt their name-calls like hooks in his mind. "Save us," they all said, and the room moved and the floor groaned.
He slammed the little door and ran. He ran because the dark thickened.
The rooms around the house began to pulse. A low drum beat in the walls like a heart. Each test had a bell. Each bell counted down.
Steve met up with Tom first. Tom's face was ashen. Liam's jacket was torn. Maya's candle was a stub. Alisa's hands were ink-smudged. Arin had soot under his nails.
They stood in the hallway, breathing fast, and with each breath they heard the bell. The sound was cold.
"Did you… did you see them?" Tom asked. His voice was small.
Steve looked at his friends. He felt every fear, and also a strange fierce love for them. "They weren't just trying to scare us," he said. "They were testing us. They want us to break."
Arin wiped a page from his sleeve. "They test the weak first," he said. "But we are not weak."
A shadow crossed the ceiling. The voice of the house turned soft and bright and it said, "Round Two ends in one hour."
Liam's mouth moved. "One hour? To do what?" He swallowed.
"To survive," Steve said. "To prove we can hold on. To show we are more than what they want."
They pressed their backs to the wall. Outside the windows, the moon was a thin eye. The house hummed, satisfied.
Steve closed his eyes and heard the whispers again, closer this time.
"Steve… save us…"
He opened his eyes. The game had not ended. It had only just begun.