The timer hit zero.
The system's weight smashed down on him all at once—a force that didn't care if he lived or died, only that the time was up.
Darkness tore through the edges of his mind, ripping past what little focus he had left.
Elias's body sagged forward.
Face-first into the blood-soaked floor.
The last thing he felt was the sticky warmth soaking into his skin, the last thing he heard was Dot's faint, desperate hum.
And then the world slipped away.
The first thing Elias noticed was the silence.
Not the silence of death—he knew that sound too well—but a thick, waiting hush that seemed stitched into the air itself.
He opened his eyes slowly, the motion dragging like his eyelids were glued shut. Light bled in — soft, gray, colorless.
The floor beneath him was rough and dry, the texture of packed sand and loose gravel biting against the bare skin of his palms.
He blinked.
Then again.
No blood.
No pain.
No scorched flesh or acid burns eating through his clothes.
