The night everything began was unremarkable—gray clouds, faint drizzle, streetlights flickering over cracked pavement. Ethan Graves had walked this route home a thousand times before, cutting through the aging industrial district behind his apartment. It was the sort of place where nothing ever changed, where routine settled over the world like a familiar, breathable fog.
Tonight, however, the fog felt heavier.
It pressed against his ribs as if trying to warn him.
Ethan tugged his hoodie closer and kept walking. "Just tired," he muttered to himself. After three double shifts at the printing warehouse, exhaustion felt like a permanent limb. His mind was still half-lost in the day's monotony—stacks of cardboard, the hum of conveyors, the rhythmic clatter of machines.
Normal things.
Safe things.
He didn't know that in ten minutes, he would no longer remember what safety felt like.
He reached the stretch of road leading to the underpass, a place where the lights always buzzed out, one by one, as though surrendering to the dark. Tonight, the lamps flickered faster, almost spasming. Ethan frowned and slowed.
A strange scent drifted through the air—hot metal, burnt ozone, and something else he couldn't place. Something… wrong.
The drizzle stopped abruptly.
A silence settled, thick and absolute, swallowing the distant highway noise, the dripping gutters, even the soft scrape of his own footsteps.
"What the hell?" Ethan whispered.
His voice didn't echo.
Before he could make sense of it, a sharp CRACK split the air, like a cable snapping under enormous tension. The sound came from the street behind him. Ethan spun around.
A man stood fifty meters away—thin, trembling, his eyes wide with animal terror. Ethan didn't recognize him, but the fear on his face was unmistakable.
"Hey! Are you okay?" Ethan called out.
The man tried to answer, but his lips only twitched. His hands shook violently as if something were pulling invisible threads inside his body.
Ethan took a cautious step forward.
The man suddenly convulsed—back arched, limbs flailing as though seized by invisible jaws.
Then Ethan saw it.
A red glyph—no bigger than a fist—burned into existence above the man's head. It spun like a rotating emblem, dripping trails of crimson light.
Ethan froze.
The symbol felt alive.
The man screamed. A wet, choking sound.
His body was yanked upward by nothing at all, suspended in midair like a puppet on a hook. Skin split along his arms, peeling back in smooth, impossible lines. Ribs flared outward like opening wings.
Ethan's knees nearly gave out.
"What—what is happening—"
The red glyph flared brighter.
A low mechanical tone reverberated in Ethan's skull.
SYSTEM CALIBRATION COMPLETE.
CANDIDATE IDENTIFIED.
Ethan staggered backward, clutching his head as the voice thundered through his mind—not heard with ears, but pressed directly into his thoughts, like a hand rooting through his memories.
He gasped, "This isn't real. This isn't real—"
Another tone. Lower. Colder.
INITIATING FIRST TERMINATION.
The suspended man's body twisted violently, then exploded into a rain of blood and bone fragments. Shreds of flesh slapped wetly onto the sidewalk, onto the walls, onto Ethan's jacket. A chunk of skull rolled to a stop by his shoe.
Ethan stumbled back, slipping on the slick pavement, breathing in short, panicked bursts.
His hands trembled uncontrollably.
He wanted to scream.
He wanted to run.
But he couldn't move.
The red glyph turned slowly in the air—then drifted toward him.
"No." Ethan backed away. "No, no, no—stay away from me!"
The glyph accelerated.
He broke into a sprint.
The world warped around him—streetlights stretching like melted candles, shadows twisting into ropy tendrils. Ethan pumped his legs harder, lungs burning. Every instinct in his body screamed run or die.
But the glyph stayed behind him, floating silently, like a predator savoring the chase.
He burst into the underpass.
For one breathless moment, he hoped he could lose it in the maze of concrete.
Then the ground shuddered.
A message slammed into his skull—bright, merciless, inescapable.
WELCOME, ETHAN GRAVES.
YOU HAVE BEEN ENTERED INTO THE SURVIVAL STRUCTURE.
OBJECTIVE: OUTLIVE ALL OTHER CANDIDATES.
FAILURE CONDITION: DEATH.
Ethan's sprint faltered.
"What…? What 'structure'? I didn't sign up for anything!"
The voice ignored him.
It always ignored him.
The air thickened with static. A second glyph materialized ahead—this one blue. Its edges crackled with neon arcs.
Ethan skidded to a stop, trapped between red and blue.
The blue glyph spoke.
UPLOADING PERFORMANCE PARAMETERS.
BEGIN TEST: AVOID TERMINATION FOR 60 SECONDS.
Ethan's pulse thundered in his ears. The red glyph behind him pulsed hungrily.
"A minute? That's it? I just have to last a minute?"
The voice responded instantly.
COMMENCING.
The red glyph shot forward.
Ethan dove aside as a streak of crimson light slashed through the concrete pillar where his head had been. The pillar split cleanly, collapsing in a roar of rubble.
He staggered to his feet, chest heaving. He sprinted deeper into the underpass.
Another slash of crimson tore through the air.
He rolled.
Another.
He jumped.
He didn't have time to think—his body moved on pure instinct, dodging, sliding, scraping skin against broken pavement.
The glyph's attacks were impossibly fast, carving through steel beams like butter, tearing through the ground in neat geometric shapes.
Ethan realized something horrifying.
These weren't random strikes.
They were aimed.
It was learning how he moved.
It was adjusting.
It wanted him alive—barely—right up until the timer ended.
Ethan dodged another strike, landing painfully on one shoulder. His vision blurred. His breath came in ragged gasps.
He heard the countdown inside his head:
20 seconds remaining.
"Come on," he hissed through clenched teeth. "Come on!"
A crimson slash cut across his thigh. Pain exploded, white-hot, and he dropped to one knee.
The glyph hummed, preparing another strike.
10 seconds remaining.
Ethan forced himself up, blood soaking into his jeans.
He limped toward the exit of the underpass.
The red glyph descended rapidly.
5 seconds remaining.
Ethan stumbled out into the rain.
He felt the heat of the glyph behind him.
3.
He threw himself behind a parked truck.
2.
The red light bathed the truck in a glowing halo—
1.
—and vanished.
Just like that.
The sudden silence was deafening.
Ethan collapsed to the pavement, panting desperately, hands shaking uncontrollably.
TEST COMPLETE.
CANDIDATE VIABILITY: CONFIRMED.
COMMENCING NEXT SEQUENCE SOON.
"No—please—stop—" Ethan begged, voice cracking.
But the system didn't respond.
The blue glyph dissolved into sparks.
The red one flickered once, like a heartbeat—
—and then disappeared into the night.
Rain returned. Sound returned. The world seemed to snap back into place, as if someone had turned reality on again.
Ethan knelt there, soaked, bleeding, trembling.
His mind replayed the scene again and again—the man's body exploding, the symbols tracking him like prey, the voice announcing his death like an automated procedure.
His stomach twisted violently, and he vomited onto the wet pavement.
When he finished, he wiped his mouth with a shaking hand and looked around.
Everything was normal.
Nothing was normal.
He whispered, "What the hell have I been dragged into?"
And for the first time, he felt it:
A presence watching him.
Listening.
Waiting.
The night of collapse had only just begun.