(PS; This chapter is from the girl's pov)
She woke to the sound of something dripping. It was slow and rhythmic.
For a moment she didn't open her eyes. Her body was still heavy with sleep, limbs slow and uncooperative like she had been dragged out of a deep dream too quickly.
Then the smell reached her. The smell of stale air mixed with dust and old wood.
Her eyes snapped open.
The ceiling above her was not the one she had slept under. Yellowed paint cracked with thin spiderweb lines spreading from the corners. A dim light flickered somewhere outside the room, throwing weak shadows across the walls.
She pushed herself upright slowly, her hair falling messily across her face.
Another mission.
She rubbed her eyes with the sleeve of her oversized hoodie and looked around.
She was sitting on the floor of a narrow hallway inside a strange house. The wooden boards creaked softly when she shifted her weight.
Seven people stood scattered across the corridor. Some was confused and frightened.
One man was already pacing back and forth nervously. And then she saw him. Across the hallway. It was the boy.
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
Him again?
He stood a few steps away from the others, shoulders tense, scanning the house with sharp attention. His posture was different from the forest mission. He was more focused this time, more active in scanninghis surroundings.
But she recognized him immediately. The boy who survived by hiding. The one who watched. The one who panicked alot and the one who was not panicking now.
Her brows knitted together. Coincidence? This was her fifth mission. And in five missions she had never once seen the same participant twice.
Not once.
Yet here he was.
He noticed her at the same moment. Their eyes met across the hallway. Neither of them spoke.
For a few seconds they just stared at each other like strangers who shared a secret they couldn't say aloud.
Then a translucent panel appeared in the air before them.
[Orientation Phase 3]
[Location: Unknown Residence
Participants: 7]
The message shifted.
[Mission Type: Puzzle Trial]
A quiet murmur passed through the group.
The girl tilted her head slightly.
Puzzle mission. That was… unusual. Another message appeared accompanied by a voice they all heard, but was from no where.
[Trial Rules
• The house contains 7 locked rooms
• Each room contains a puzzle
• Solve the puzzle and find the key before the timer expires]
A red line appeared beneath the text. The voice kept talking, repeating what was written.
[Failure Condition:
If the timer reaches 00:00:00, the room will be cleansed.]
No one needed to ask what cleansed meant. The dripping sound in the house suddenly felt louder.
Then the system window vanished. Silence filled the hallway.
One of the men spoke first.
"What the hell does cleansed mean?" No one answered.
The girl pushed herself to her feet slowly. Her hair was still a tangled mess from sleep, strands sticking out in different directions. She brushed some of it behind her ear, suddenly aware of how ridiculous she probably looked.
Great.
She quickly pulled the hood of her hoodie over her head.
Better.
Across the hallway, the boy was already moving.
He stepped towards the first door and examined the handle without touching it.
The girl watched him carefully.
He wasn't panicking anymore, nor was he arguing with the others.
He was thinking.
The door creaked open.
Inside the room was a small study. A desk, a bookshelf, a locked cabinet.
The moment all seven participants stepped inside, the door slammed shut behind them.
A red timer appeared on the wall.
[05:00]
It immediately began counting down.
[05:59]
Someone cursed loudly.
"Five minutes?!"
The girl folded her arms quietly and leaned against the wall.
Someone said " We have seen worse."
So that's how it works. Each room. A timer. Solve the puzzle. Find the key. Or die.
She watched the boy again. He was already moving around the room, scanning everything with sharp eyes.
Not touching things randomly but observing them closely.
Interesting.
One of the other participants grabbed a stack of books from the desk and began flipping through them frantically.
"Maybe the key is inside one of these!"
Another man began pulling drawers open. Papers scattered across the floor. The girl sighed quietly. It wand too rushed, too noisy.
Across the room, the boy suddenly spoke.
"Stop."
His voice wasn't loud, but something about the tone made several people pause.
"If the key was obvious," he said calmly, "there wouldn't be a puzzle."
The girl raised an eyebrow. He pointed toward the bookshelf.
[03:40]
"Look at the spines."
Everyone turned.
Seven books sat neatly arranged. But something about them looked wrong.
The boy stepped closer.
"First letters," he murmured.
The girl pushed herself off the wall and walked over beside him. She leaned slightly, reading the titles.
Secrets of the Lake
Inside the Mind
Last Winter
Endless Night
Northern Stars
Children of Ash
Empty Roads
Her lips moved silently.
S.
I.
L.
E.
N.
C.
E.
She glanced sideways at him.
"Silence," she said quietly.
He nodded once. Without another word, he pressed the bookshelf inward. A soft click echoed inside the wall.
The locked cabinet popped open.
Inside, a small brass key.
[01:38]
Someone laughed in relief.
"Holy, that was easy."
The door behind them unlocked with a dull thunk as the boy put the key in the keyhole.
The girl looked at the boy again.
He was already walking towards the exit. The other girl followed him, swirling her lollipop in her hand, a smirk on her face.
He's different now, she thought.
Room two was worse. It was a dining room filled with old portraits. It did not feel like a puzzle. It felt more like a place where something had already gone wrong.
The moment the door creaked open, a stale, suffocating smell hit them, like dust, rot, and something faintly metallic underneath. The air was heavier here, thicker, as if it hadn't moved in years.
It was a dining room.
A long wooden table stretched through the center, its surface scratched and scarred, set with plates that had long since yellowed.
Tarnished cutlery lay scattered, as if a meal had been abandoned halfway through. High-backed chairs stood unevenly around the table.
The walls were covered in portraits. There were dozens of them. Portraits on men, women and children. All of them staring.
A faint red glow flickered to life above the far wall and in each player's vision.
[Time Remaining: 04:30]
There were no instructions this time. All of the instructions were already gien and it was upto the players to figure out what needed to be done.
For the first half minute, it was only the ticking that made sound as all of them were just observing.
Someone finally exhaled shakily. "Okay… okay, it's fine. It's just another puzzle."
"Another?" someone else snapped. "You never know what could happen at any time."
Two participants, one broad-shouldered, the other thin and twitchy, moved toward the nearest wall.
"Look at these," the broad one said, pointing. "They've got years on them carved into there frames."
They were small, barely noticeable.
"1804… 1821… 1798…" the thin one read aloud.
"It's obvious," the broad one said quickly.
"We arrange them by year. Oldest to newest."
"Or newest to oldest," the other shot back.
"Why would it be that?"
"Why wouldn't it be? You don't know the system!" Their voices rose, sharp and fast.
Though they had cleared the previous room quiet easily but the dread of the system was still there.
The boy didn't move towards them, he stood silently observing.
The girl diverted her eyes from him towards the walls. She stepped around slowly instead, eyes sweeping across the walls.
There were too many portraits and too many dates. It seemed so easy and that seemed to be the problem.
It cannot be that easy. The first room could have been a trick.
She stepped beside Abraham quietly.
Her steps were soft, almost lost under the ticking of the timer.
She didn't look at the arguing participants.
She looked at the portraits. Her eyes moved from face to face, from one expression to another, their clothing, backgrounds. Every detail.
The boy seemed to notice too.
He shifted slightly, moving along the opposite wall, mirroring her path without meaning to.
[03:58]
"Start moving them!" the broad-shouldered man barked. "We don't have time for this!"
He grabbed a frame off the wall. And the moment it shifted, a sharp creak echoed through the room. Everyone froze. The wood beneath their feet gave a low, warning groan. No one spoke for a moment.
The man slowly… very slowly put the frame back. The groaning stopped. Silence swallowed the room again.
The thin participant swallowed hard. "Okay… okay, maybe we shouldn't just grab things."
"No," the boy said quietly, more to himself than anyone else.
"Not like that."
The girl stopped in front of one portrait. A woman in a dark dress whose hands were folded in her lap. Her eyes were tilted slightly to the left. The girl leaned in closer. Then she moved to the next portrait which was of a man in a formal coat. He was gazing to the right.
Her brows pulled together slightly. Something didn't align. The boy seemed to have noticed the shift in her focus. It was not the dates but the people.
Not the dates but the people.
The clothing styles varied, but not in a clean progression. Some older dates showed more modern stitching. Some newer ones looked… outdated. That wasn't right.
[03:12]
"They're wrong," the girl murmured under her breath. The boy heard it as his head turned slightly towards her.
She didn't look at him. But she spoke just loud enough.
"The dates aren't reliable."
Across the room, the argument was starting again.
"We just pick one direction and go!"
"And if it's wrong?!"
"We don't have time..."
"We don't have time not to think!"
The girl stepped closer to the table. Her fingers brushed lightly over one of the plates. Dust shifted underneath and there was a faint engraving on the plate and another on the table. She examined each portrait and each one was looking at a different place on the table. The engraving on the underside of the plates matched how the people's hands were positioned in different portraits.
"I think I got it." She said loudly enough for the boy to hear.
She felt the boy stepping beside her. "What are you seeing?" he asked under his breath.
"Hands." She pointed subtly.
He blinked. Then looked again.
Each person's hands were positioned differently in the portraits.
"And there eyes." The girl added further.
Each person in each portrait was looking at a point on the table.
The boy followed her movements as she placed a plate which had same sign as the position of the hand of the woman in the portrait on the engraving on the table the woman's eyes were looking at.
The boy understood and started arranging the plates similarly alongside her, while the others stared in confusion.
"Hey!" the thin participant shouted. "Did you figure it out or are we all just going to stand here and die?!"
Both of them didn't answer him as the boy reached for another plate on the table it and placed it accordingly on the engraving on the table a child portrait was staring at.
[00:28]
The girl held the last plate as her hands shook. Her gaze went towards the boy for reassurance who was already looking at her. He nodded slightly. The timer was ticking its last seconds and the fear becoming more overwhelming with each tick.
"What are you doing?" The girl with lollipop shouted. "Just place it already." She grabbed the plate from her hands and placed it.
[00:08]
Everything went silent for a moment, everyone quivering in fear. They still haven't seen what the "cleansed" meant for they had enough time to get out of the previous room way before it was cleansed. but right now, timed seemed to be each of the player's throat like death smiling in a corner.
Everybody held their breath.