Cedric Rivers woke up to the faint smell of rain and the sharp tang of graphite. His sketchbook lay open beside his pillow, pages curled from last night’s feverish drawings. Pencil smudges coated his fingers, and the alarm clock blinked 6:32 a.m. like it was mocking him. Today was his seventeenth birthday. He should have felt excited. Sparkly. Invincible. But all he felt was a tight buzzing in his stomach — a mix of nerves, caffeine withdrawal, and that familiar knot of awkwardness that birthdays always brought. People stared on birthdays. They expected smiles. And Cedric didn’t do smiles unless they were drawn in ink or pencil. He pressed the sketchbook to his chest. Its cover was rough, frayed, worn from years of secrets and imagination. It wasn’t just a notebook. It was his world. Filled with survival games, maps, twisted villains, and alternate realities he could escape to when life outside became unbearable. “Happy birthday to me,” he muttered, pushing himself upright.

The words “Let the games begin” hung over Cedric like a curse that had been carved into his chest. For a long moment, no one moved. Not a student, not a teacher, not even Kevin, his best friend, who was gripping his arm with a white-knuckled intensity that made Cedric’s own heart hammer faster. They weren’t in Alder High anymore. Not really. The ground beneath their feet was no longer concrete or grass but soil the color of dried blood, uneven and coarse under shoes. Buildings that once framed the campus now rose like jagged obsidian cliffs, their sharp edges glowing faintly, as if molten rock had hardened too quickly. Smoke and ozone clung to everything, heavy and choking, curling into their nostrils. The sky overhead had drained to a dark crimson, as if the sun itself had been torn from the heavens. It was a nightmare given form. Cedric’s chest tightened with each shallow breath. The cold, iron-laced wind rattled through the ruins of the school, carrying whispers that we

The corridor outside their metallic room was already changing. The walls pulsed from silver to a deep, electric blue, the signal that the next round was beginning. Cedric felt the vibration in the floor through the soles of his shoes, a low hum that wormed its way into his bones. The walls shivered, reshaping themselves as if the building itself were alive and impatient, breathing in tandem with the hundreds of terrified survivors. When the doors opened again, the survivors stumbled forward—pale, hollow-eyed, trembling. Cedric held tightly to Kevin’s wrist, refusing to let go. Around them, the hallway stretched into infinity, reflecting their faces a thousand times over, each echoing the fear he felt in his own chest. Through the shimmering glass panels at the far end, a maze awaited, twisting impossibly, the paths shifting as though waiting for someone to step wrong. Baran’s voice rolled over them like a velvet blade. “Welcome to the second challenge,” he said smoothly, the w

The exit didn’t lead to freedom. Cedric stumbled forward with Gina and Kevin, the silver shimmer of the doorway dissolving behind them like mist. Relief should have washed over him—but instead, his stomach twisted, bile rising at the sudden, unnatural stillness. The cold wind that had been chasing them vanished. The air thickened, humid and choking, carrying a new scent: something rotting, metallic, and sweet, like blood left to ferment. They were no longer in the labyrinth. The floor beneath them had turned to cracked stone, jagged and uneven. The walls stretched impossibly high, blackened, textured like charred bark. Strange shapes moved just beyond vision—shadows with angles that didn’t make sense, limbs bending the wrong way. The red mist from above had returned, thicker now, curling like a living thing, creeping along the floor toward them with a hiss. “Where… where are we?” Gina whispered, her voice trembling, barely audible over the pulse in Cedric’s ears. Her eyes dart

The cold had followed them like a predator, creeping along the jagged stone and black walls. Cedric’s lungs burned with every inhale, his chest tight, heart hammering so violently it felt like it would rip free. The red mist still curled along the floor, now thick as smoke, winding around their legs like fingers. Every sound—every whisper, every scraping of stone—was magnified to unbearable levels. Gina stumbled beside him, hands pressed to her face. “We’re… we’re going to die here,” she sobbed. Her voice was raw, breaking in jagged shards, and Cedric could feel her panic infecting him. “No,” he said, though the word felt hollow. His jaw ached from clenching his teeth, and a cold sweat slicked his skin. “We’ll… find a way out. Somehow.” But the maze didn’t answer. Instead, it shifted. The black walls pulsed, stretching upward and inward, bending impossibly. Every corner Cedric turned revealed angles that didn’t exist before, floors rippled beneath their feet as though the ston