The silence after the man’s death wasn’t just heavy—it was suffocating. Elias couldn’t look away from the lifeless body sprawled on the grass. The man’s timer, once bright with the final moments of his life, now displayed a black, empty void. No numbers. No light. Just a dead screen, like a lamp that had gone out forever. Someone had died—because their timer hit zero. It wasn’t a coincidence. It wasn’t symbolic. It was real. “What the hell is this place?” a man muttered near Elias, pacing back and forth with his hands in his hair. “Where are the cities? The roads? What is this timer thing? Who’s doing this to us?” No one had an answer. But the fear, the panic—it was spreading like fire. Kaia, a girl with sharp cheekbones and unsteady hands, leaned against a tree and stared down at her wrist. Her lips were pale. She was whispering numbers beneath her breath. Elias stepped toward her slowly. “How long do you have?” She blinked at him, her breath catching in her throat. “

The wind swept across the open plain where they had chosen to bury the bodies. The sky was a muted gray, heavy with silence. They had no shovels, so they had used whatever they could find—metal trays, broken seat backs from the crash, even bare hands. The two shallow graves were carved side by side, surrounded by a somber crowd. There were no prayers, no final words. Just silence.Kaia stood with her arms folded tightly around her chest. Her eyes were swollen, her face pale. Some of the others cast glances at her—some sympathetic, some suspicious. After all, death had come fast and brutal to this place.Zane showed up late. His boots crunched against the dry earth as he approached the gathering. All heads turned. The air grew colder.“What are you doing here?” Leon asked, stepping forward. “You here to finish the job?”Zane’s eyes scanned the group, resting briefly on the fresh graves. “I have a right to be here,” he said.“No, you had the right before you stabbed Kul,” someone else m

Chapter 6 Kaia had only four hours left. Her timer blinked relentlessly on her wrist: 00:04:00:00. Every second felt louder now, echoing in her ears like a ticking bomb. But she wouldn’t spend those final hours trembling or waiting. She needed to make them count. That morning, as the camp stirred under a cloudy sky, Kaia walked with purpose toward the storeroom. The others had gone quiet around her lately—not out of cruelty, but out of helplessness. How do you speak to someone whose life is measured in hours? She had been tasked with checking the food supplies, counting the inventory, making sense of what was left and how long it could sustain them. A task meant for someone who might not live to see its benefit. Still, Kaia welcomed the duty. It gave her something to do—something to focus on. But just before she pushed open the storeroom door, the weight of memory overtook her. She paused, leaning against the wooden frame, eyes fluttering shut as the past surged forward. It had b

Kaia felt the weight of her body crash against the cold, hard floor. Each breath felt as if it were drawn through a tight, constricting hole in her chest. Her body burned with the memory of the violence she had endured only hours earlier. She could feel the blood from her wounds sticking to her clothes, the ache of her ribs bruised from the struggle, the sharp pain in her shoulder where the man’s grip had crushed her. But none of that compared to the emotional toll—the shame, the fear, and the confusion that kept swirling in her mind like a storm that wouldn’t stop.The man had been more than an attacker. He had been a reminder of the danger lurking in every corner of this strange, lawless place. The assault, the fight for her life, was only the beginning. She had killed him—self-defense, yes, but something deeper gnawed at her soul. Had she killed him because he had hurt her, or had she killed him because she wanted his time?The thoughts circled relentlessly in her mind as she dragg