Consciousness returned like a slap.
I was lying on something cold and smooth. Not stone. Not metal. Something that had no texture at all – like touching the surface of a dream. I opened my eyes.
White.
Endless, blinding white. No horizon. No ceiling. No shadows. Just an infinite void painted the color of bone.
I sat up slowly. My body felt strange – lighter, as if gravity had loosened its grip. My school uniform was gone. In its place, rough white cloth – thin, cheap, like a shroud. It hung loosely on my frame, offering no warmth, no protection.
Around me, people were appearing.
They materialized out of the white – popping into existence like bubbles surfacing from deep water. Some landed hard, their knees buckling. Others appeared standing, as if they had been walking and simply stepped through a door. Some fell to their knees and vomited.
Tens of thousands. Maybe more.
I couldn't count them all. The white stretched in every direction, and in every direction, there were people. Children no older than fourteen. Adults pushing fifty. Men, women, every shape and size, every color of skin and hair.
All wearing the same white cloth. All wearing the same expression of terror.
I heard crying. Hysterical laughter. Someone was praying – a desperate, rapid-fire prayer to a god I didn't believe in. Someone else was shouting about a dream, a nightmare, a mistake.
This wasn't a dream.
The cold was too real. The weight of the cloth on my shoulders was too real. The smell – ozone and something else, something ancient – was too real.
A voice filled the white space.
It was not loud. It was not quiet. It spoke directly inside my skull, bypassing my ears entirely, as if my brain had become a speaker and someone had pressed play.
"Welcome to God's Game."
The crying turned to screaming.
The praying stopped. The shouting stopped. Everyone went silent, then everyone spoke at once, then everyone screamed.
"You have been invited to conquer one hundred floors. At the top, a power beyond imagining awaits. Perhaps even a god."
A figure appeared in the distance.
He was walking toward us. Not running. Not floating. Just walking – one step at a time, his boots clicking on the white floor that had no texture.
The Ferryman.
But different.
His face was the same – tired eyes, ordinary features, the shadow of stubble. But his presence had changed. The air around him seemed to bend, to recoil. He walked like a man who had killed a thousand people and remembered every face. He walked like a man who had stopped caring a long time ago.
He stopped in front of the crowd. Spread his arms. His coat billowed despite the absence of wind.
"I am a Watcher. Your guide. Your judge. Your executioner."
A man near the front – muscular, shaved head, angry – lunged forward. "I'm not playing your sick game!"
The Ferryman didn't move. Didn't blink.
The man exploded.
Not blood. Not gore. He just… popped. Like a balloon filled with air. One moment he was there, shouting, his face red with rage. The next, there was nothing. His white cloth fluttered to the ground. Empty.
Silence.
Then someone laughed.
A woman, maybe thirty, with wild eyes and a trembling smile. "That was funny," she whispered. "It was funny."
Others laughed too. Hysterical. Broken. The kind of laughter that came from a place beyond fear, beyond sanity.
Some cried. Some screamed. Some stood frozen, unable to move, their eyes wide and unblinking.
The Ferryman watched it all. His expression didn't change.
"Some will laugh. Some will cry. Some will hesitate. Some will charge. It doesn't matter. In the end, you all play."
My stomach turned to ice.
"The rules are simple. Missions are compulsory. Conquest is mandatory. Refuse to participate, you die. Fail to complete objectives, you die. Refuse to rank up when required, you die."
He smiled. It was the worst thing I had ever seen.
"But team up, survive, conquer – and you may live. You may even win."
A girl to my left caught my eye.
She was maybe fifteen, with scarlet hair that fell past her shoulders like a river of blood. Her eyes were the same color – red, vivid, almost glowing. Her face was pale, beautiful, and utterly expressionless.
She stood perfectly still while chaos raged around her. She wasn't crying. Wasn't laughing. She was watching. Observing. Her gaze swept the crowd with the ease of someone who had done this a thousand times.
When her eyes met mine, something flickered across her face. Recognition? Surprise? Then it was gone.
"There is a system," the Ferryman continued. "An exchange. An inventory. You will learn. For now…"
He gestured.
Weapons began to rain from nowhere.
Knives. Clubs. Broken swords. Rusty axes. Shards of glass. A length of pipe. A hammer. A meat cleaver. A screwdriver. They clattered across the white floor, scattering among the tens of thousands.
"Your first mission. Kill one person. Any person. Use any weapon. Only then do you proceed to Floor One."
The silence lasted one heartbeat.
Then chaos.
A woman snatched a knife and drove it into the man beside her. A teenager swung a pipe at an older woman's head. A group of five men grabbed weapons and started swinging at everyone around them.
Screams. Blood. The white floor turned red.
I didn't move.
I couldn't.
Kill one person.
I had never killed anything. Not a spider. Not a fish. Not a—
A boy crashed into me.
Dark-skinned, white dreadlocks pulled back from his face. He held a broken sword, dripping red. His eyes were deep blue and burning with rage.
"Move or die," he snarled.
I moved.
He didn't follow. He was already gone, cutting through the crowd like a blade through flesh. Efficient. Brutal. He wasn't just surviving. He was thriving.
I looked down.
A short dagger lay at my feet. The blade was rusted, the hilt wrapped in cracked leather. It looked old, cheap, like something from a flea market.
I picked it up.
The weight was wrong. The balance was wrong. Everything was wrong.
People were dying around me. Some fought back. Some begged. Some ran.
The Ferryman watched. Smiling.
Some will hesitate.
I was hesitating.
A middle-aged man stumbled toward me. He held a bloodied rock. His eyes were wild, unfocused. He wasn't attacking. He was fleeing something worse.
He saw me.
Saw the dagger.
"No," he whispered. "Please. I don't want to—"
Behind him, a woman with a club brought it down on his skull.
He crumpled.
The woman looked at me. Her face was splattered with blood. She was crying.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm—"
She ran.
I stood there. Dagger in hand. Surrounded by death.
For Yuki.
My sister had survived ten years in this hell. She had killed. She had suffered. She had become someone I didn't recognize.
If I died here, in this place, before I even started…
I would never see her again.
I tightened my grip on the dagger.
For Yuki.
I stepped forward.
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