*[Countdown to thirty seconds]*
Then the murmurs began.
Voices overlapped one another in a chaotic wave. Confused, frightened and desperate.
"Where is this place!"
"What's going on?"
"Too hot."
"How did I get here?"
"Where is my phone?"
He frowned.
This didn't feel like the cramped space he had been held in. No chain around his wrist.
[00:30]
[00:29]
[00:28]
A sharp, resonant ticking tone pierced through the silence, not from the outside, but from somewhere deep within his mind, as though a bell had been struck inside his skull. It lingered unnaturally, vibrating through his thoughts, forcing his eyes open before he even understood why.
For a brief moment, he thought he was still held in that dark room, but the dark screen before him said otherwise.
[00:20]
[00:19]
[00:18]
"A countdown?"
His dark orbs lingered on the screen with an absurd calmness.
"What sort of dream is this?"
The murmurs intensified. They did not belong to any single direction. They surrounded him. It felt like sleeping in the center of a crowd.
His breath hitched as he pushed himself up. Heat answered him.
It was immediate and merciless, searing through his clothes and pressing into his skin as though the ground itself had been waiting for him. His palms dug into coarse sand, and instinctively, he jerked back, only to realize there was nowhere cooler to retreat to.
[00:05]
The air was dry, suffocatingly so, each inhale scraping against his throat as he forced himself to sit upright.
[00:03]
Endless dunes stretched before him, rising and falling like frozen waves beneath a pale, unforgiving sky. There were no buildings, no roads, no signs of anything familiar. Only sand… distance, and people as confused as he was.
[00:01]
His mind struggled to catch up with what his eyes were already telling him. Instinctively, his hand clutched the pendant around his neck.
[00:00]
This wasn't his cage.
This wasn't anywhere he knew.
The screen before his eyes hit zero.
*[TRIAL INITIATION COMPLETE]*
The words settled in front of him with quiet certainty.
"Trial?"
He stared at them, his thoughts stalling, refusing to process what he was seeing even as his eyes traced each letter.
"What is this...a joke?" Someone waved at the air before them. "I didn't sign up for a movie."
Subconsciously, he took a step back.
"I'm not the only one seeing this."
A second line followed, just beneath the first.
*[Environment: Scorched Trial Grounds – Sector 7]*
*[Participants: 1,000]*
"A thousand?" He glanced around. "A thousand people?"
They were real. Scattered somewhere across this endless desert, just like him.
A chill ran through him despite the heat, and before he could fully grasp the implication, more text appeared.
*[Objective: Reach the Safe Zone]*
*[Time Limit: 05:00]*
*[Failure Condition: Annihilation]*
*[Trial in progress]*
For a moment, nothing happened.
[OBSERVATION IN PROGRESS]
Then the number shifted.
[04:59]
His heartbeat lurched as his eyes locked onto the countdown.
"Observation?"
"Five minutes."
"Five minutes for what?"
"Where was the safe zone?"
"How far—"
For a few seconds after the message settled, nothing happened.
No immediate attack. No visible threat. No sign of whatever "annihilation" truly meant.
And that… was exactly what undid them.
The tension that had coiled tightly in his chest loosened just enough for doubt to creep in. Around him, the scattered voices began to rise again, no longer sharp with panic, but uncertain—testing the edges of the situation.
"…This has to be some kind of prank."
"Where's the camera?"
"Safe zone? Does anyone see anything?"
[04:04]
He turned slowly, scanning the horizon once more, forcing his dark eyes to focus beyond the endless repetition of sand and light. If there was a destination, it did not announce itself. There were no markers, no structures, no obvious path to follow.
Just distance.
And heat.
Someone laughed—not because anything was funny, but because the alternative was worse.
"It's probably a test. They said five minutes, right? Maybe it activates after."
A few others seemed to cling to that idea, their movements slowing, their urgency dissolving into cautious waiting. Some stood still entirely, shielding their eyes as they squinted into the distance, as though the answer might eventually reveal itself if they looked long enough.
Even he hesitated.
Five minutes sounded short, but in the absence of danger, it stretched deceptively, each second losing its edge as nothing came to enforce it.
The countdown continued its silent descent.
[03:17]
The number reflected in his eyes as he swallowed, unease settling back into his chest. Something about the stillness felt wrong.
"…Shouldn't we be moving?" someone called out, their voice thinner now.
"To where?" another snapped back. "It's all the same!"
That was the problem.
There was no direction to trust.
No indication of progress.
Just the growing awareness that time was passing—and they were not moving.
[02:15]
Someone got a hiccup. "I want to —hick! Go home...I want to go home."
He recognised the voice. The familiarity was a hundred out of hundred. He turned.
"Casy?"
The terrified girl turned around.
"Elias!"
She closed the distance in a blink, and crashed into his arms.
"I'm scared. Where is this place!"
Elias was equally perplexed. His small hand went around her back to calm her down, even as he shook.
"A dream maybe?"
"We can't be in each other's dream yunno," she sobbed. "I just want to go home."
[01:03]
The murmurs began to fracture again, uncertainty sharpening into something closer to fear. A few people started moving at last, picking random directions, their pace uneven, hesitant, as though expecting the ground itself to reject them.
He remained where he was, jaw tightening as his gaze swept across the dunes again, faster this time, searching for anything he might have missed.
There had to be something.
There had—
[00:10]
The number hit him like a blow.
A collective shift rippled through the unseen participants, a shared realization crashing down all at once.
The scorching sun was now hotter. A rumbling started in the distance.
"We're running out—!"
"Move! Just move!"
Sand scattered as people finally broke into motion, their earlier hesitation collapsing into frantic, directionless movement.
[00:03]
The air grew heavier.
[00:01]
And then:
[00:00]
Silence.
*[First trial countdown complete]*
*[Zero participants in safe zone]*
*[Initiating penalty for failure: Annihilation]*
Then the desert answered.
The ground beneath them convulsed.
It wasn't a tremor this time. It was a violent rupture, the sand collapsing inward in multiple places at once as if something beneath the surface had forced its way upward without restraint. The dunes distorted, split, and burst apart, sending plumes of burning grains into the air.
Screams erupted instantly.
Real panic now. Uncontrolled. Raw.
Shapes emerged from the collapsing sand, not rising cleanly, but tearing their way out in jagged, unnatural motions. Limbs. Too many, too long, forced through the surface, followed by bodies that seemed half-formed from the very desert itself.
Creatures. If they could even be called that.
Their movements were aggressive, as though driven by a singular, violent purpose the moment they breached the surface. The nearest one lunged without hesitation, its form blurring across the sand toward the closest human presence.
The scream that followed didn't last long. Blood splattered across the clearing, long enough for the participants to see, before the sun licked it dry.
"It's a Neus!"
"There are Neus everywhere!"
Elias staggered back, heart slamming violently against his ribs as instinct finally took over where logic had failed.
"Neus?!"
So that was "annihilation."
"RUN!"
The word tore from his throat. He yanked Casy along with him, ignoring her startled scream. It didn't matter. The reaction was immediate.
The desert, once still, became chaos.
People scattered in every direction, no longer pretending to understand, no longer waiting for clarity. Sand kicked up beneath frantic steps as survival instinct drowned out everything else. Some tripped, some collided, some didn't get back up.
The creatures followed.
They moved faster than anything born of flesh should have, cutting across the dunes with terrifying ease, their presence turning the open landscape into a hunting ground.
Their lungs burned as they ran, vision shaking with each step, mind racing just as desperately as their body.
_Where was the safe zone?_
There had to be one.
There had to—
A flicker caught his dark eyes. He squinted his eyes, taking a moment to observe the unnatural wave in the distance. Probably the safe zone, or just his eyes playing tricks on him.
Not in the distance everyone was escaping to, but to his left. A direction only a madman would take at this point.
Of course, you have to be mad to survive in the dune.
"That's it—!"
He changed direction instantly, forcing his exhausted body to respond and Casy almost losing her footing. He turned left, and pushed toward the barely visible boundary.
"Are you nuts?!" She tried to wiggle free. "Those creatures are coming! They will get us!"
"I think that's the safe zone!" He yelled back.
"No! No! Elias," She glanced side. "We're supposed to run away from them! They'll get to us in no time!"
"Trust me!" He yelled back.
She went silent.
Around him, others began to notice as well, their paths shifting, converging toward the same point with renewed desperation.
Behind them, the creatures surged into their direction, giving them a death chase.
The distance felt endless, each step heavier than the last as the boundary slowly sharpened into something more defined. A translucent barrier, thin but separating chaos from stillness.
"That's it!"
One of the runners ahead of him reached it first.
For a split second, nothing happened.
Then the man stumbled forward—
and passed through.
No resistance, nor rejection.
Just… safety.
*[Number of participants in safe zone: One]*
Hope ignited violently in his chest.
He pushed harder, ignoring the burning in his legs, the dryness in his throat, the sound of something closing in behind them.
Closer.
Closer—
The boundary loomed just ahead, its presence undeniable now.
He didn't slow down.
Didn't think.
Didn't hesitate.
And as the shadow of something lunged behind them.
*[Number of participants in safe zone: Three]*