The sound of heavy metal slammed the door shut behind them.
CLICK.
The locking mechanism echoed long through the empty room—like a coffin sealed from the outside.
The ceiling was too high for a normal training chamber. The floor was black, rough, like charred skin. Light poured from above in harsh spotlights, casting down on three children standing in the center: Rivea, Kael, and Solen.
Up high, behind a glass tower, a silhouette watched. Eidren sat poised, hands resting on the arms of his chair. He said nothing.
He didn't need to.
A door opened on the far side.
Through a veil of mist, someone stepped in.
Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing the battle-worn gray of the Cradle Unit.
His face was familiar to those long in the organization—Instructor Drein, a former field operative now tasked with training "
problematic children.
He dropped three black bags in front of them. Inside: headsets, a body-monitoring device, and a special wristband that latched onto their left arms the moment it touched skin.
"Good morning, kids," Drein said, voice hoarse and flat like he hadn't spoken since yesterday. "Today's your first test. System calls it: Triple Kill."
Kael raised a brow. "Wow. Cheerful name."
"Quiet." Drein's eyes cut sharp. "This test has three phases—physical, mental, strategic. Fail one, you still move on. But we log every break point. And believe me, we know when you're faking strength."
Rivea dipped her head slightly, a faint curve to her lips. Solen inhaled calmly, composed as ever. "First phase: physical. Your enemy isn't a monster. It's the room itself."
With a single tap on Drein's tablet, the floor around them shifted. Metal panels rose, separating the kids. Without warning, walls emerged, forming a tight maze. Lights flickered and bent—reality itself seemed to twist.
"You have three minutes to escape. The room reconfigures every fifteen seconds. Don't bother memorizing. Focus. Move. Or get trapped."
"Questions?" Drein asked out of protocol, not courtesy.
Kael raised a hand. "If we die…?"
"…your bodies will be cleaned up before lunch," Drein replied, deadpan.
"Fair enough." Kael gave a thumbs-up. "Love the honesty."
BEEP.
A timer blinked into the air.
180 seconds. Countdown started. The floor rumbled—And the maze swallowed them whole.
Rivea didn't run. She walked. Her breath was steady, body fluid like water, slipping through the narrow spaces like she wasn't a sixth-grader but something else entirely.
Kael laughed as he ran, shoulder-checking a wall just for fun before flipping over it. "Come on, give me something—this is barely foreplay!"
Solen, meanwhile, didn't panic. He counted steps, mapped patterns, hunted logic in an illogical space. His eyes sharp, his mind faster.
Above it all, Eidren watched. A small smile touched his lips. "Now it's getting interesting," he murmured to himself.
Three kids. Three approaches. One labyrinth that didn't care who they were. And this—Was only the beginning.
Darkness. Then... a faint light, like a lonely lantern drifting at the bottom of the sea. Rivea opened her eyes—or felt like she did.
No walls. No floor. Just... emptiness.
Footsteps echoed, but pressed on nothing.
Laughter followed—neither human, nor animal, nor even sound.
One word surfaced in her mind: the next test had begun. She saw something. A mirror. But not her reflection.
A small child crouched in front of something.
Dirty hair. Violet eyes. Staring down at something bleeding. Something breathing—its last breath.
And the child... smiled. A grin, proud and quiet. Rivea stared. Her brow tensed. "I never... did this." But the mirror didn't care. A single violet petal drifted from the sky.
Kael woke up in a dining hall. Immaculate. Too immaculate. Long table. Shining silverware. A steaming bowl of soup before him. And across the table—himself.
An older Kael. Face lined with scars. White hair still a mess, but the eyes—cold. Not lazy-cold. Empty. Cold like someone who stopped believing in anything.
"So this is the 'successful' me, huh?" young Kael leaned back with a smirk. The older Kael said nothing. Just spooned soup into his mouth. The boy chuckled. "Come on. I'm obviously the funnier one, bro."
Silence.
Young Kael flung his spoon across the room. No sound followed its landing. A mirror formed behind the older version. Its reflection wasn't human. Not a creature. But something starving.
Kael tilted his head, smile crooked.
"Ah... so that's the punchline."
Solen walked through a school corridor.
Empty. Pristine. Chalk-scented. Every door was shut—except one. His old classroom. Grade 5.
He stepped in.
The teacher stood by the board. His classmates sat in perfect silence. All of them staring at him. The teacher pointed. "Solen Vire. Solve the problem."
The blackboard was filled with numbers.
Equations. Symbols. But none of it made sense. Plus signs twisted into snakes. Square roots wilted into flowers. The problem moved. Shifted. It formed a face.
Someone he once defeated.
Solen stepped forward, slowly. The chalk in his fingers melted. His fingertips began to burn. But every pair of eyes stayed fixed on him.
"If you can't answer, Solen," said the teacher,
"they'll finally know you're just... pretending." He trembled. But his mouth still smiled. "They won't know."
A mirror unfurled from the ceiling. Inside it—himself. A boy who won, but never really slept again.
Eidren sat still in the observation chamber, fingertips brushing the surface of black glass. Three panels flickered: brainwaves, body temperature, and something else—something only an observer like him could read.
He closed his eyes.
"Rivea Kaelith... still too aware. But... she bites back."
"Kael Veyne... doesn't fear the shadow. He flirts with it."
"Solen Vire... believes his confidence is a lie. And uses that lie to survive." He opened his eyes. Black. Deep. "You three... haven't broken."
"But the cracks... are showing."
"Five minutes," said the voice from the wall speaker, flat and lifeless. "Use it to recover. Or don't."
Click. Silence.
Kael was still sprawled on the floor, one hand covering his eyes, the other absentmindedly twirling a random cable he'd found.
"Two things," he muttered. "First, I know I'm hot, but I'm pretty sure I just made out with myself. Not cool. Second, why does my brain feel like it got deep-fried in recycled oil?"
Rivea sat slumped against the wall. Her hair a mess, pupils still not fully back to normal. "You never shut up, Kael. Can you, like... not?"
Kael sat up, staring at her. "If I stop talking, the world turns hollow. You want that?"
Solen, who'd already straightened his posture with trained precision, glanced at them. "You two... are too expressive. That could be a liability in a real mission."
Rivea turned slowly to him, face blank but eyes screaming murder. "And you're too stiff. That could be... annoying."
Kael chuckled. "Relax. This isn't a motivational speech contest. We just got our throats slit by dreams. I think we've earned a little whining."
Solen inhaled deeply, then stood like he was about to give a graduation speech. "It wasn't a dream. It was a simulation. A psychological stress test under extreme—"
"Yeah yeah, thanks, Professor Failed His Thesis," Kael cut in. "We got it. But could you not talk like you swallowed a dictionary?"
Rivea let out a short laugh—low and sharp.
Kael glanced at her. "Okay, she laughed. I'm not kidding, this might be the apocalypse."
Rivea stood up, brushing off her white uniform. "I was just thinking... you two are the type I'd throw off a cliff if we were still in the stone age."
Kael grinned. "And you're the type who'd drag us down with you so you wouldn't be lonely."
"Fair."
The silence that followed wasn't awkward. It was the kind of silence that comes after a storm—when everyone realizes they're still standing.
Solen looked at them. He wanted to say something—about how he'd predicted the simulation's ending, about emotional control, about mental fortitude—but...
They didn't need it.
They made it through, too. No theory required. He just took a deep breath and said, "…Are we a team, then?"
Kael and Rivea turned to him in sync. "…Depends," Rivea replied.
"You got snacks?" Kael added. Solen blinked. "What?"
Kael stood and stretched. "I only team up with people who bring snacks. That's my new golden rule."
Rivea stood too. "And I only team up with people who aren't trying so hard to be perfect."
Solen stared at them. Then sighed through his teeth. "…You two are impossible." Kael winked. "And you're fun to bully." Rivea smirked. "Balanced team, right?"
The sky was red. The earth cracked. The air simmered softly, like the whisper of an old wound. Rivea stood in the center of a burning circle. Same clothes. Different world.
No Kael. No Solen. No exit.
Just five people. Bound. Crying. And a flat voice echoing from the sky, belonging to no one: "Five will die. Save one. Time is limited."
The faces weren't unfamiliar. A disheveled woman with a rasping voice: "Riv… I... I'm your mother..." A tall, lanky man in a school uniform: "Rivea, I'm your classmate… we walked home together that day, remember?"
A small child with wide eyes: "Sis… you promised you'd protect me…" A teacher. And one more.
A stranger's face. But crying harder than the rest. Rivea said nothing. Her eyes traced each bound body in turn. Ropes coiled around them, tethering them to metal poles that seemed to melt in the unreal heat.
Time passed. But she didn't feel chased. Time didn't dare chase her.
Then another voice. Quieter. More real.
Inside her head: "This is real."
"This is your choice."
"One is saved. Four are sacrificed."
Kael hit the dusty ground with a sharp exhale. The iron door slammed shut behind him.
"Another damn simulation?"
No answer. Just five electric chairs in a row. Five people bound. Five pairs of terrified eyes. "I have to choose one, huh?" He stepped closer.
One of them—a wrinkled old man—screamed, "Son! Please! I'm your grandfather—look, this necklace! You gave it to me when you were little!"
Another—a teenage girl—sobbed, "Kael… you promised to save me. Back at the park. Don't you remember?"
Kael squinted. "Pretty sure I didn't even have a park." He stepped back. Someone shouted, "If you don't choose, all of us die!"
He scratched his head… and laughed softly. "…Man, this organization really wants to traumatize me, huh?"
Solen opened his eyes. Marble floor. Chandelier above. A grand room. Five people. Bound. Laid out before his desk. As if he were a judge. Or a god.
"Choose one. The rest will disappear."
"Why?" he asked, quietly.
No reply. Just sobs. And tears.
He took a step forward, hands trembling slightly. He recognized one of them—his old math teacher, the one who always praised him.
Another—a man in military uniform—claimed to be his father. "Come home, Sol. Your mother's waiting."
"…Mother?" His breath hitched. Logic and emotion crashed like waves in his head. Choose the youngest? The least familiar? Was this a test of attachment… or a measure of a life's worth?
He started building mental charts. But time doesn't wait for logic to finish writing.
Instructor Drein watched the monitors. "Three different reactions," he murmured. He glanced at Eidren, who stood still, hands clasped behind his back.
"…And?"
Eidren finally spoke, voice soft as fresh ink flowing from a pen "One seeks the truth behind all those faces. One questions reality… but laughs through the absurd.
And the last… wants so badly to be right, he forgets that time kills faster than mistakes."
His eyes moved from screen to screen. "All three… survive."
Click.
The monitors went dark.
Only seconds left.
Rivea stood before the five figures, unshaken. Their faces melted and twisted like masks, shifting shape over and over.
"Your mother..." "Your friend..." "Your teacher..."
And one small voice, "Please... sister..." Rivea let out a soft snort, half amused.
"I'm an only child, dumbass."
That voice—too shrill, too polished—felt wrong. Too perfect. Too... intentional. The face of the "little sibling" flickered, morphing—Becoming something else entirely.
The fifth one, the silent crier, slowly rose.
Still bound. But its shape... indescribable. Its flesh was too deep. Its face like a shattered memory, chewed and rewound.
Rivea froze.
Her pupils sharpened. The faint tattoo down her spine pulsed like a heartbeat. She knew that shape. Not from this life, but from the one before. The first. The one she buried in wrath and blood.
Her nemesis. Incomplete. Not whole. Just a fragment. But they knew. They—this goddamn organization—they knew. They dug too deep.
"Hah…"
Kael flopped onto the floor, arms folded behind his head. "Tired as hell. But hey, not bad. No need to play angel—they're just holograms."
Solen stood in the corner, silent, a thin sheen of sweat on his brow. His hands clenched. His expression not as relaxed as Kael's. But he made it out. Alive.
Kael glanced his way, grinning.
"Who'd you save?"
"...No one," Solen muttered. "Damn. Smart kid, still heartless."
"If you saved them, they died first. It wasn't a moral test. It was about ignoring what isn't real."
"Hm. In that case, I passed without a brain. Sweet."
PSSST.
The back door slid open. Rivea walked out. Slow steps. Face calm. Too calm. Solen noticed immediately.
"…You saved one?"
Rivea stared forward. Then nodded. One word cracked the room like a whip. "…Yes." Kael pushed himself off the floor, eyes narrowing. "Why?"
Rivea turned, slowly, toward the darkened simulation chamber. Her voice was flat. But cold enough to cut. "Because he has to die…
but by my hand."
Silence.
Solen opened his mouth, then closed it again. Kael let out a short, awkward laugh. And behind the glass, the observer… started typing faster than ever.