[Arc 1 - No Light Left For Us]
...…
The Last One collapsed to his knees, spitting a mouthful of ooze onto the floor. It was really a peculiar substance, the ooze. Clinging to their bodies in an almost impossibly pervasive manner, as if it possessed a will of its own.
"Where… am I? What's happening?"
His voice was crisp. Delightful, even—yet it seemed to have no audience. Why was that?
There was no mystery to it. Helping hands were scarce these days. After all, how can one save another when they could not even save themselves?
The students stood frozen.
Astounded—implications and all.
Thus, the Last One wiped the ooze from his face, revealing a peculiar visage. He rose to the ground and confronted a few familiar faces. Some were friends. Others were mere passing acquaintances.
Fear hung thick in the air but he was not one to cower.
Yet… had he known what was coming—-had he'd known the horrors, he wouldn't have acted so brave. He would have yearned desperately for solace in that instant. He would have begged for its comfort and warmth.
He would have wished for death.
….
Once again, time slipped by. Even more cliques formed and the long wait finally started to feel like it was reaching a boiling point. Raven wasn't surprised. Put ten people in a room, and society starts to bloom. It begins subtly, but eventually, the human animal shows its teeth.
'Pretty,' Raven noted, letting his gaze drift around.
The last student was undeniably a looker, and a composed one at that.
'What's his deal? Is he actually calm or just a dedicated poser?' Raven's lips curled.
Focusing on appearances in the middle of a nightmare probably seemed weird, but Raven didn't feel weird, so he figured it was fine–probably. Everyone coped differently. His way just happened to be the best.
'Of course, it just had to be someone like that. Well, I don't mind. Plus, he has enough stares from the others to the point that even I am getting unnerved. And I'm not the recipient. '
Raven felt guilty. Maybe the guy was barely holding it together, clinging to a calm facade while spiraling inside. And here Raven was, enjoying every second of it.
"Geez, he sure is a looker!" Mist whistled.
Yeah, the guilt was gone. To be honest, fuck that guilt. It was very misguided.
Raven shook his head. Now was not the time for petty thoughts and grudges, no matter how justified they felt.
"Let's go!"
Mist took a sharp breath, then nodded.
A crowd had formed near the metal door. Students clustered together, mingling, discussing, not that it made any difference, in his opinion. By the time Raven and Mist reached the front, voices were already raised.
"Are you saying we just wait? Wait for what? For who?"
The voice was high and raging. Raven recognized her instantly. She was the kind of popular that was impossible not to know.
"Jesse, just think about it. We don't know—"
"We don't know! That is the whole point, Jordan. How do you know anyone is coming to save us? You gotta start thinking for once, Jordan."
Someone intervened. "Wait, I'm with Jordan. I'm not going anywhere. We wake up in a cold room, and the first thing we do is leave? No way. I've seen enough movies to know how this ends."
A wave of voices rose in support of Jordan, and just like that, the gathering split into the two sides. At first, they posed logical arguments, and when that wasn't enough, shouting took its place. Rampant noises filled the chamber.
"Oh, this is gold. Absolute gold," chuckled Mist.
Raven glanced at her. If he didn't know any better, he would think she was eating popcorn as she watched the debacle.
"Enough!"
Jesse's voice was enough to shatter the fight. "Enough."
"You all act like we have a choice. We fucking don't. My idiot brother might be right, but that doesn't mean he isn't wrong. Think about it. Stay or leave? Surely, we can sit here. But for what? We have no food. We will be starving to death by tomorrow."
Her voice wavered.
"I'm scared. Really fucking scared. And I'm sure we all are. But we must do something. If anyone has a better idea, then go ahead and say it. Now."
"..."
Silence was once again the answer.
"Cool. So, my friends and I are opening that fucking door. If you want to stay, go ahead and sit. We are not fucking babies. We are responsible for our choices."
She looked towards the door.
"My choice is to find what happened to us and make sense of it. It's my choice. I will not force anyone to do anything they don't want to do. Decide for yourselves."
Raven gave a silent whistle. "She is good. Really good."
"I know right!" said Mist, grinning.
Jesse was a powerful speaker. She was the type to become a politician, run for office, and win by a landslide on her first try. When she spoke, a calm air engulfed the room and the agitation washed away. Fear turned into something quieter and submissive, or maybe it was Raven's imagination.
After she finished her speech, Jesse and her friends walked to the door and shoved.
It barely bulged.
They pushed again. Harder.
Slowly, hesitation faded. Jordan joined in, followed by the rest of the students, even the ones who had argued loudest.
By the moment Raven placed his hands on the door, a cold chill shot across his spine, sinking deep into his bones. Not cold—revulsion. As if the door had noticed them.
He recoiled, taking a step back. The same look had spread across the others' faces.
This wasn't metal.
Touching it felt… intimate, obscene. It felt like a violation, like they were laying hands on something forbidden. No known metal should feel this sickening.
"Keep pushing!" Jesse gritted her teeth and exerted all her strength.
Mysterious, glowing markings began to bleed through the door's surface. Faint at first, then brighter—lines and symbols crawling like living things. With every push, the markings burned, resisting their strength with a callous, mocking force.
A fight.
"Push!"
A mocking one.
"Push!"
A senseless one.
"Push!"
The chamber screamed.
A violent boom rocked the foundation of the chamber as the markings erupted, spewing vengeful light that swallowed the chamber whole. A chilling gust of wind followed, smashing coldly against their faces, forcing screams from their throats.
But the students didn't recoil. They were anything but grieving.
They had won.
The door yielded. To the sheer might of thirty-one humans.
They could finally leave the suffocating chamber. But as the light faded, what laid before them was a hallway of blackness, offering two paths; one to the left and one to the right.
Choices. Always choices.
….
Minutes later, Raven was moving down the dark hallway of doom with his newfound group. It was almost too dark to breathe but the walls were etched with the same glowing symbols, providing dim light . Just enough to walk without stumbling into a hole or a cliff, if a hallway could even have a cliff. He wouldn't put it past the shenanigans.
The student had decided on parting ways after exiting the chamber, segmenting themselves to two groups. Each group's aim was to discover what lay at the end of the hallway.
So, just like that, Raven found himself in the west group led by Reece, a school jock. Really, the populars were thriving at the moment. They get to lead others, commanding attention, and look cool while at it.
Suffice to say, he had made a few acquaintances. Naturally, they were as tight as it gets.
Reece pondered aloud, "Could we be in another world? If that was the case, this would be an isekai. But where are the kings and yandere princesses? I really could use one right now."
"..."
It is safe to say west group was led by a weirdo.
"What?" protested Reece. "I read books too! Is that surprising?"
"You haven't read a single book in your life," his friend countered.
"You—"
Raven's mind drifted, 'An isekai… another world. One severed from modern civilization.'
What would that even look like?
Soon, they arrived at a closing.
"… another door!"
The door ahead was quite different from the chamber door. For starters, its dimensions were wholly wrong; thinner. Slim enough to make the regular-sized human uncomfortable. The engravings were brighter, too, pulsing with a restless, hungry energy.
Reece glanced at his group and then nodded. They had reached the same conclusion.
Together, they pushed against the door. Its marking resisted their might and a familiar battle ensued. Might against might. Grit against grit.
The hallway came to light as the markings began to vibrate, the air humming with tension. Suddenly, someone screamed.
A student fell to his knees with blood streaming down his arms and head.
"Stop! Stop pushing!"
More students cried out. Deep gashes tore open across their skins and clothing.
The group paled in fear. The door, this time around, was different. It didn't just resist. It lashed out!
"What do we do now?"
"We are going back to regroup. Let's hope the east end found something better than a rabid door." Reece clenched his jaws.
It took nearly two hours to find the others. As it turned out, there was another door at the end of the hallway but it was wooden and even slimmer than theirs.
Raven studied it, frowning. "Its markings are broken."
They flickered like a dying lightbulb.
Jordan and Jesse met with Reece. After a brief discussion, it was decided the east group would head to the west end, to verify Reece's words. Trust, it seems, was a scarce commodity. Not that he blamed them. They were probably scared that the west group was playing a prank on them.
When they returned, their expressions had changed. There was a look of conviction on their faces. Together, the students pushed against the door. It didn't resist. It flung open revealing a winding stairwell— dark, circular, carved from cold stones.
The stairs were laid in a spiral and bolted to the stone walls. Looking up, the path was a mess. Several steps were missing with gaps wide enough to spell doom. They could probably bulldoze the challenge but Raven wasn't sure all of them could survive the leaps. He knew couldn't.
The path downwards, however…
"Holy shit, it's deep!" A scream echoed across the stairwell.
The downward path twisted and descended like a bottomless throat. It was a dangerous and glooming path, one designed to swallow them whole. But it was the only path given to them, and thus, they embraced it.
Second bled to minutes. Minutes turned to hours.
They descended in silence, surrounded with nothing by their own breathing and the unfeeling walls they desperately clung to. The cold pressed closer, wrapping around them in a slow, suffocating embrace. The darkness felt heavier the deeper they went.
Time lost meaning.
Then–subtly at first–they noticed it. The darkness was retreating, clinging to the corners.
A faint glow crept into view, weak but undeniable.
Light. They saw light!