The lights in the bunker flared white without warning.Naomi shot upright, her knife already in hand. Around her, the others stirred—Sky groaning, Claire blinking blearily, Ethan sitting up like he hadn’t slept at all. The air vibrated with static. The floor trembled beneath their feet, as though the entire room had a heartbeat.Then the voice came.> “Quest Three: The Ascent. Objective—reach the summit. Only those who conquer their own illusions may advance. Estimated casualties: seventy percent.”Naomi’s stomach dropped. Illusions.She hated that word. It meant tricks, traps, things you couldn’t punch or stab.The walls shimmered like melting glass, and before she could blink again, the bunker was gone.---They were standing on a platform suspended in the clouds. Beneath them stretched an endless drop, nothing but white mist and the faint glint of distant metal—an entire tower spiraling down to infinity. The only way forward was a narrow glass bridge that led to another platform, f

The silence in the bunker was the kind that hummed — a strange, oppressive quiet after chaos. Ethan was hunched over a piece of metal, lost in thought, and Naomi had finally drifted off to sleep. The light above flickered faintly, throwing tired shadows across the gray walls.Sky lay on his bunk, staring up at the ceiling. Sleep wouldn’t come. It never did.Every time he closed his eyes, he saw lights — blinding white lights and flashing cameras. The sharp scent of hairspray. The sound of his mother’s voice echoing through the dressing room.> “Smile, Sky. Wider! You’re the face of the brand — do you want to ruin everything?”He used to think that voice was love.Back then, he was twelve and small for his age, standing in a room filled with mannequins and mirrors. His mother hovered behind him, a phone in one hand, a makeup brush in the other. Her reflection smiled wider than her real face ever did.She wanted perfection.She wanted fame.She wanted him to be her masterpiece.Sky didn

The bunker was silent. Too silent.Ethan had gotten used to the hum of the air vents, the mechanical buzz of the light panels, the faint metallic click that came every few seconds from the dispenser unit.Tonight, everything was still.The only sound came from the flicker of the console mounted high on the wall — the one that displayed their player status.> [ACTIVE PLAYERS: 13][POINTS UPDATED — 02:13 AM]Ethan sat on his bunk, back against the cold wall, eyes fixed on the screen. It hadn’t updated since the last quest. That wasn’t supposed to happen.The system always refreshed every minute, ticking, breathing — alive.But now?Nothing.A single pixel on the screen flickered, then another. Tiny dots of static blinked across the display like fireflies caught in a jar.Ethan frowned and stood up, heart pounding just a little faster.“System?” he whispered.No response.Usually, the moment someone addressed it, the neutral, artificial voice answered instantly — cold and genderless.Now

The air was damp, thick with the metallic scent of rust and death. Ethan’s boots splashed through shallow puddles as he made his way deeper into the maze. The others had escaped hours ago — or at least he hoped they had. The System had gone quiet since the end of the last trial, but the faint hum of its unseen machinery lingered like a threat that never slept.The glow of his torch flickered against the walls — cold steel etched with strange, shifting runes that seemed to watch him as he passed. He could still hear the overseer’s voice echoing in his mind:> “You think you can outsmart my design, Ethan?”He clenched his jaw. “Watch me.”That was when the ground began to tremble.A low growl reverberated from somewhere ahead — guttural, wet, and impossibly large. The maze’s lights flickered red, and words appeared in front of him in glowing text:> HIDDEN QUEST DISCOVERED: THE DEPTHS OF THE FORSAKEN.OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE. REWARD UNKNOWN.Ethan’s pulse spiked. “Great,” he muttered, pulling

Naomi riffed on circuits like a frustrated surgeon. She found a discarded nodal interface — a battered metal plate with vents and a faded serial number — and set to work, prying it open with the stub of a screw that had once been a monopoly token. She attached Claire’s mirror fragment to act as an optical capture (Claire’s gentle hands on the glass steadied their nerves), braided the wire with the key’s antenna, and Sky held a salvaged battery pack steady while Ethan pushed code into the semi-open console on his tablet. It was brutal, improvisational: code toggled with paperclips, data logged on makeshift RAM loops, and a constant paranoid glance toward the corridor.When they were ready, Naomi nodded. “We have one chance to bind the token without tripping a full audit,” she said. “If the Gateway’s guardian sees a write signature it doesn’t recognize… it’ll escalate.”Ethan’s fingers hovered over the interface. The key hummed against his palm, like a small animal. He took a breath and