Aaron blinked hard, his mind reeling from what had just happened. One moment, he was standing in the middle of some kind of barren, twisted wasteland, the air thick with darkness, and the next… he was back in his room. His bed was unmade, his desk cluttered with textbooks, and the faint hum of the city outside filtered through the window. The familiar weight of his phone was in his pocket.
But the feeling—the overwhelming sensation that something had shifted—remained.
"What the hell is going on?" Aaron muttered under his breath, his voice sounding hoarse as if he had just woken up from a bad dream. But the dream wasn't over. No, this was something else.
The message, that voice, the world that swallowed him—he had been in ....., no question about it. But now, he was back. Or was he?
Aaron moved cautiously to his desk, his mind still whirling. His laptop sat open, the cursor blinking in a sea of blank tabs. With a grim resolve, he opened a new search bar. His fingers hovered over the keys for a moment, then he typed in the words that had been on his mind since the moment he left the twisted world behind.
"Horror Game World."
He hit "enter," and a wave of cold disbelief washed over him as a series of links appeared on the screen. His eyes flicked from one title to the next, none of them making sense at first glance. Some were personal blog posts with cryptic names. Others were videos with titles like "Survival Guide for the Horror Game World ". It felt like a rabbit hole he wasn't sure he wanted to fall down, but he clicked on one of the links.
It led to a poorly designed forum, its homepage covered with random user-generated posts. But one post caught his attention.
"The Horror Game World: What They Don't Tell You."
The forum thread was filled with cryptic messages. People describing their own experiences—stories that sounded too strange to be true, but Aaron knew better than to dismiss anything outright. He skimmed through the posts quickly, absorbing as much as he could.
There were dozens of reports from people who described a "game" that started at the age of eighteen. They described being thrown into nightmarish landscapes and facing challenges that forced them to fight for survival. But there was no clear explanation for why it was happening or who was pulling the strings.
Why hadn't he heard about any of this before? He read further, his mind racing. Apparently, there were a few patterns emerging, with each player receiving strange messages or symbols before being sent to these horrific worlds. But Aaron's experience was… different. It didn't match what others described exactly. And the more he read, the more his unease grew. It didn't make sense.
Something felt off, like there was a missing piece, a detail that would click everything into place. He stared at the screen for a few seconds, his mind racing. But then, a sudden shift in the air made him freeze.
The temperature in the room had dropped.
Aaron's breath fogged in the cold air, a thick shiver running down his spine. His eyes darted around the room. The windows were shut tight, the heat was on—so why was it freezing? He got up from the desk, his feet silently padding against the floor, and moved toward the bathroom door.
Something wasn't right.
His stomach twisted in a way that was all too familiar—like the feeling you get when something is watching you. He reached for the door handle, turning it slowly, and stepped into the small bathroom.
The room was still, dark, and the mirror across from him reflected his pale face back at him. The overhead light flickered once, then buzzed softly. He couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't alone in the space, but he shook it off. Maybe it was just the strange events of the day catching up with him.
Then he saw it.
In the mirror, there was writing. At first, he thought it was just the condensation on the glass, but the letters were sharp, distinct, almost alive in a way. Red, like blood. As if someone—or something—had written on the surface with a finger dipped in fresh crimson paint.
His breath hitched.
What the hell is this?
The message was clear, dripping down the mirror in jagged strokes:
"The game will begin in 2hrs 30min."
Aaron stared at the words for a long time, his breath fogging up the mirror as he stood there, motionless. The chill in the air had grown, and the faint, foul smell of iron hung heavy in his nostrils. Blood. It was real, wasn't it? The blood on the mirror felt tangible, almost as if it had been there for hours, waiting for him to notice.
His eyes flicked back and forth over the letters, searching for any hidden meaning. His mind was racing. Could this be part of the game? Some kind of warning? But… the mirror had never felt like this before. The message was so specific, so deliberate.
"Okay," Aaron muttered to himself, swallowing hard. "Okay, this… this isn't normal."
He reached out with a tentative hand, his fingers trembling ever so slightly as they hovered near the edge of the mirror. He wanted to know. He had to know.
The moment his fingertips made contact with the glass, an icy jolt shot through his arm. It felt like an electrical shock, only cold. Unnaturally cold. His hand jerked back instinctively, and his heart skipped a beat. A wave of nausea rose in his throat. He had expected a strange sensation, but this was something else entirely.
The moment his skin touched the mirror, the blood-red writing seemed to pulse, as though the words themselves were alive. A low, unsettling hum filled the room, and Aaron staggered backward, his pulse quickening. The air felt thick with dread now, heavy with something that defied explanation. He looked at the mirror again, and the message was still there, clear and unmistakable.
He swallowed, trying to steady his breathing. His pulse hammered in his ears. What had just happened? What was that feeling when he touched the mirror? It was like an energy, a power, something that surged from the glass and through him.
This is real. His mind raced, piecing things together. The game, the voice, the warning. It wasn't a joke. It wasn't some hallucination. It was a message. It was part of whatever twisted reality he had been thrust into.
He stood there for several long moments, staring at the mirror, his reflection now an eerie, distorted version of himself. The message lingered, stubbornly hanging in the air. But what did it mean?
Two hours and thirty minutes.
The game would begin in that time. What game? Who was behind it? And what kind of challenges would it bring? He didn't know, but something told him he wasn't going to have any choice but to play. He had already been selected. That was clear. The figure in the other world had told him so. The game was real, and he had no way of escaping it. Not unless he figured out the rules—and fast.
He turned back to the laptop on his desk, his mind working overtime. The clock on his phone told him it was 3:12 p.m. He had until 5:42 p.m. to figure out what was going on. He wasn't about to sit around and wait for whatever they had planned.
He wasn't a victim. Not by a long shot.
Aaron took a deep breath, running his fingers through his hair as his mind raced. The threads of a plan began to form in his head. He couldn't let this thing—this game—take control. He needed answers. He needed to prepare.
His first move was clear.
He would figure out everything he could about the game before the clock ran out.