The door shatters into pieces before you even touch the knob.
Shards of glass explode outward, scattering across the room, but the sound of breaking glass is distorted - warped. It echoes and twists, like a thousand mirrors shattering all at once. The walls pulse around you, as though they're breathing, reacting to the chaos.
You step back, your mind struggling to keep up with the rapid shift in reality. The room begins to stretch, pulling in every direction, growing larger, smaller, and then larger again. It's as if the very space itself is caught in the throes of some internal struggle, some cosmic tension that it can no longer control.
The floor beneath you buckles, sending you tumbling to the ground. You slam into the cold stone, gasping for air. The impact leaves you disoriented, but you force yourself to stand.
And then, you hear it.
A voice. A whisper, familiar yet impossible.
"Are you awake yet?"
You whip around, scanning the room. There's no one there.
"Can you see?"
The voice, faint but insistent, is everywhere. It's inside your head, in the air, in the space between the walls.
"Can you see the truth?"
Your heart pounds in your chest. You know - you know - that something fundamental has just changed. The walls are no longer just walls. The floor is no longer just the floor.
It's all part of the same twisted web. You've been trapped in a lie from the very beginning.
You close your eyes and breathe deeply. Focus. Think. The truth is a weapon, but you have no idea what it is yet. No idea how to wield it.
Suddenly, a crack splits the air - sharp and jarring. It's like the entire room itself is splitting down the middle. You flinch, raising your hands instinctively to shield yourself from the imminent collapse.
But it doesn't come.
Instead, you feel it - a strange sensation beneath your feet, a pulling, a tugging - like the room is drawing you into itself, folding inward. The walls around you fold in on themselves, collapsing into one single point, a singularity at the center of everything.
You take a step back, but there's no escaping. The walls are closing in. The cracks are spreading, and before you can fully process what's happening, a blinding light erupts from the center of the room.
You shield your eyes, but the light cuts through you, searing through your skin, burrowing into your bones.
"It's time," the voice whispers, now clearer, louder. It's not in your head anymore. It's coming from somewhere… from the heart of the room.
Then, the light fades, and the room is empty again.
The walls have disappeared entirely. There's no longer any structure, no shape, no boundaries. It's just… space. Infinite space.
And standing before you is something that shouldn't exist.
A thread.
It's thin, golden, almost translucent, stretching out into the void, so delicate you can barely see it. But it's there.
You step forward, reaching out for it. Your fingers graze the edge, and the world shifts again.
Suddenly, you see flashes - disjointed memories. They flood your mind like a rapid-fire sequence of images, none of them belonging to you. Faces you don't recognize. Places you've never been. A woman screaming. A man laughing.
They're all connected. These memories - they're yours, and they're not yours.
And in the center of it all is a figure. A shadow, a silhouette, standing still, just outside your reach.
"Follow the thread," the voice urges, now unmistakably familiar. "Find the truth."
You close your eyes. It's all starting to make sense now. The walls. The shifting rooms. The strange echoes of voices that don't belong. The memories that never felt real.
They're all part of a pattern - a game you didn't even know you were playing.
And the thread… the thread is the key. It's the only way out.
You reach out again, this time grasping it fully.
And with a sickening lurch, the world fractures.
You fall. There's no ground beneath you - just endless blackness stretching forever. You're falling, but the sensation is strange, disorienting. You feel like you're not falling at all, but rather floating, suspended between dimensions.
The thread pulls you downward, drawing you through the void. You don't have to follow it, but somehow, you know you have no choice.
The space around you shifts - fragments of memories float by, some familiar, some foreign. Your childhood home. A city you've never been to. The face of a man you've never met.
And then, a crackling sound. A voice.
"We've been waiting."
The voice is calm, deliberate, like it's speaking from a distant place, but you can feel it in your bones.
You try to speak, but your voice is swallowed by the infinite darkness. You try to move, but the gravity of the thread pulls you forward, tugging at your body as you pass through layer after layer of shifting, distorted reality.
And then, you hear it. A scream. A voice you recognize.
"No! Don't!"
It's Kael's voice. But it's not just him. It's a dozen different versions of him, all screaming at once.
The world around you warps again, and you find yourself standing in a room that is no longer a room at all.
It's a vast, infinite expanse - a place that seems to exist outside of time itself. The golden thread is still in your hand, but it's now part of something much larger - woven into the fabric of the universe itself.
And standing before you is a figure. Not Kael.
Not anyone you've seen before.
This figure is cloaked in shadows, a silhouette that stretches into the very fabric of space.
"The game has only just begun," it says, its voice deep and resonant. "And you, my dear player… are about to learn that the truth is a weapon beyond your comprehension."
You don't breathe.
You can't.
The figure before you seems to distort the space it stands in. It isn't just tall or cloaked - it's impossible. Like it was drawn by a hand that didn't understand physics, or didn't care to. The light bends around it. Reality frays near its edges. Even looking at it feels like something inside you is unraveling.
You want to speak, but the words tangle in your throat.
The golden thread in your hand hums, like it's reacting to the figure's presence. You glance down - and in that split second, the thread is gone.
Vanished.
The figure takes a single step forward.
And everything inside you screams to run.
"You've touched the thread," it says slowly, almost with amusement. "You've seen the cracks."
Your voice finally breaks free.
"Where am I?"
It cocks its head, like the question itself is quaint.
"You're not ready to ask that yet."
The room - or what pretends to be one - shifts again. The infinite space flickers, showing glimpses of the corridors you've been in, the players you've met, rooms that never existed- memories that haven't happened yet.
A girl with a stitched mouth.
A man screaming as mirrors close in.
A spiral staircase made of teeth.
This is not the game.
This is the machine behind the game.
You're in the engine room of unreality.
"Who are you?" you whisper.
It smiles - or at least, you think it does. The shadows fold inward.
"I am the question you were never supposed to ask."
A pause.
"And the answer you'll wish you never found."
Then everything - everything - goes still.
Your body jerks.
A pulse of searing heat shoots through your spine. You stagger backward, and the entire world glitches. Like a video stuttering, your surroundings snap into dozens of versions:
• You're back in the corridor.
• You're lying on the library floor.
• You're in a cell.
• You're in the first room again, holding the matchstick.
All at once.
Then, a voice crackles overhead. Robotic. Female. Cold.
"Reality fracture detected. Reassigning narrative identity. Beginning extraction."
You fall to your knees.
The ground splits beneath you - and you see yourself fall.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
Another you plummets into the abyss, screaming as their skin flickers like static. Another fragment. Another version.
Another pawn.
You look up - and the cloaked figure is still there, untouched by the chaos.
"You're not the first," it says softly. "But you might be the last."
Then it lifts a hand.
A new thread unspools - this one black, shimmering like oil. It writhes in the air, searching for you.
And you realize what it's offering.
Not escape.
A deal.
You flinch. Every part of you screams no.
But something deeper - something older - whispers:
"This is how they survived."
The players.
The ones who made it past the first round.
They didn't win.
They changed sides.
Your hand inches toward the black thread.
The world around you is still glitching. Any second now, you'll be ripped apart again - reassigned, rewritten.
If you take the thread, you might gain control.
You might also become one of them.
A Player. A Pawn. A Masked Observer.
Or worse… the next Kael.
Your fingertips brush it.
It's cold.
It remembers you.
And just before you can make the choice—
The world goes dark.
A voice - your voice - whispers in the black:
"This story doesn't belong to them anymore."
You wake up choking.
There's a bitter, metallic taste in your mouth. Blood. Not yours.
You're lying on tile. Cold. Wet. The scent hits next - antiseptic and rot. You push yourself up, and the first thing you see is writing smeared across the wall in something dark and sticky.
"LIE TO LIVE. LIE TO LEAVE."
The lights above flicker like nervous eyes.
You're in what looks like an abandoned hospital hallway - peeling walls, shattered lights, and gurneys that look like they've been used for things other than healing. The door at the end of the hall creaks open before you can approach it.
Someone's already inside.
You step forward.
And stop.
There are three people in the room.
But only two reflections in the broken mirror on the wall.
One of them turns.
She's tall. Pale. Wearing a surgical mask that's half-melted into her face. One eye is glass. The other burns.
She sees you.
"You made it to the next layer," she says, voice strained like it hurts to speak. "You shouldn't have."
You glance at the others - one man, twitchy, chain-smoking; the other, a girl with blood-soaked gloves, carving words into her arms.
None of them look surprised to see you.
The man exhales smoke.
"Newbie's still warm," he says. "Bet you still think there's an end to all this."
You don't answer.
You're watching the mirror. Why are there only two reflections?
You turn back to them.
"What is this place?"
The girl chuckles. Her voice is cracked glass.
"The liar's level."
She lifts her hand - and carves a new word into her forearm.
"TRUTH."
Blood bubbles up. But instead of pain, she shudders in relief.
The pale woman steps forward.
"Everyone here lied to survive," she says. "We broke the rules. Told false stories. Stole memories. Hid pieces of ourselves in others."
She points at the mirror.
"That's the price. For every lie, a piece of you stops reflecting."
You look again.
This time - your reflection blinks. But you didn't.
The lights die.
A siren wails overhead - shrill and broken, like it's been screaming for years.
"ECHO PROTOCOL ENGAGED. ALL PLAYERS PREPARE FOR MEMORY SWAP."
You feel something tear inside your skull. Not physically - but metaphysically. Like your thoughts are being clawed apart and stitched into something else.
The man stumbles, clutching his head. The girl screams. The pale woman doesn't move.
And then—
It happens.
You're standing in a memory.
But it isn't yours.
You're eight. You're hiding in a closet. There's a fire. You hear footsteps. Screams. Then silence. You clutch something in your hand -
a golden thread.
You blink.
You're back in the room.
Sweating. Shaking.
The pale woman stares at you.
"They gave you one of his memories," she whispers. Her mask twitches. "You touched the thread."
You nod slowly. You don't know why - but yes.
The room begins to peel. Literally.
Walls fold back like pages of a book. Beneath them are layers - rooms beneath rooms, lives beneath lies. All stacked like chapters in a story written by no sane hand.
The pale woman grabs your arm.
"Then you need to find the one who started this."
"Who?"
She leans in.
"The First Liar."
And before you can ask more, the ceiling tears open like paper - and a massive red eye stares down from the sky.
Not mechanical. Not human.
It sees you.
And it knows you're trying to cheat.
"PLAYER 451: TRUTH LEVEL BREACH DETECTED."
"CONSEQUENCE: OBSERVER INTERVENTION IMMINENT."
The girl screams.
The man grabs his gun.
The pale woman simply closes her eyes.
And you—
You run.