"Time is a healer for those who live in peace,but it's a nightmare for those who don't."
The silence of the battlefield was worse than the noise.
I lay there, pinned under the crushing weight of thirty kilograms of cold-forged steel. Every breath was a battle against the leather straps of my breastplate, which felt like they were trying to snap my ribs. I was sixteen. I was a student. I was supposed to be in Minokia, safe behind my desk, worrying about my future. Instead, I was staring through a thin, horizontal slit of a helmet at a world that had been painted in shades of iron and crimson.
I managed to twitch my fingers inside the heavy gauntlets. *Clink.* The sound was deafening in the stillness. I tried to push myself up, but my muscles—limbs that had only ever known the weight of a volleyball or a piano key—failed me. This body was powerful, I could feel the density of the muscle beneath the skin, but I didn't own the "manual" for it. I was a pilot in a machine I didn't know how to drive.
Slowly, painfully, I dragged my chin through the freezing mud and looked to my left.
The air left my lungs in a silent sob. A few feet away, a knight in silver-crested armor lay propped against a shattered wooden cart. Or rather, half of him did. A massive war-axe had split his breastplate down to the navel, leaving a jagged, yawning cavern of splintered bone and grey organs that were steaming in the cold morning air. To my right, the earth was littered with what looked like discarded rags, until I realized they were human hands, still clutching the hilts of broken swords.
This wasn't a game. There was no "Respawn" button here. The copper tang of blood was so thick I could taste it on the back of my tongue.
*"Why did I do it?"* the thought screamed in my head. *"Why did I open that app?"* I thought about the "Soul Roulette" icon on my phone. I thought about the boredom of my life in the city, the desire for something "different." I wanted an escape, but I had jumped into a furnace. I was a child in a killer's suit, surrounded by the debris of a thousand ended lives.
Then, the world glitched.
A sharp, digital static tore through my brain, like a needle being dragged across a record. My vision swam, and for a second, the grey sky turned a violent, bruised purple.
**[SOUL ROULETTE: INITIALIZATION COMPLETE]**
A translucent screen flickered into existence, floating barely an inch from my eyes inside the darkness of the helmet. The text was jagged, glowing with an unstable violet light that made my eyes ache.
**[USER: RIAN]**
**[WORLD: SEPHTIS]**
My heart hammered against the steel. "Get me out," I whispered, my voice sounding like gravel grinding together. "Please, just take me back."
The screen flickered again, and massive, glowing digits appeared at the center of my vision. It wasn't a "Level Up" screen. It was a clock.
**[DURATION REMAINING: 09 YEARS | 364 DAYS | 23 HOURS | 59 MINUTES]**
I watched as the last digit ticked down. *58. 57. 56.* Ten years. I was being told I had to survive ten years in this graveyard. The weight of the armor suddenly felt ten times heavier. I wasn't just trapped in steel; I was trapped in time. Every second that ticked away felt like a drop of my own blood hitting the mud.
How was I supposed to survive a single hour? I couldn't even stand up. My legs felt like lead pillars. If a scavenger or an enemy soldier walked over right now to check for survivors, I was a dead man. I was a turtle flipped on its back, waiting for the knife to find the gaps in my shell.
I tried to roll over, my gauntlet splashing into a puddle of thick, dark liquid. It wasn't water. It was the pooled blood of the fallen. I pulled my hand back instinctively, but the heavy metal plates caught on each other, locking my arm in place.
I began to shake. The armor rattled, a frantic, rhythmic *clink-clink-clink* that echoed inside the visor. I was hyperventilating, the carbon dioxide building up in the small space until my head began to spin.
*"Stand up,"* I told myself. *"Rian, stand up or you die."*
But the body wouldn't listen. It was too much. The sky, the blood, the smell, and that glowing purple timer—it was all too much for a sixteen-year-old mind to process. I closed my eyes, hoping that when I opened them, I'd be back in Minokia, listening to the rain against my window.
But when I opened them, the timer was still there.
**[09 YEARS | 364 DAYS | 23 HOURS | 58 MINUTES | 12 SECONDS]**
And then, I heard it.
The sound of a heavy boot splashing in the mud. Then another. Someone was walking through the field of the dead. And they were coming toward me.