"Hey, wake up."
The voice came like a thread through darkness—thin, wavering, but just sharp enough to pierce the fog.
"Hey—wake up. We don't have much time."
It pressed in again, more urgent now, cutting through the weight on Noah's chest like a knife. His eyelids fluttered, dragging open with the resistance of rusted iron.
The world blurred in motionless gray. Silent. Suffocating. Cold seeped into his bones like water into stone.
For a second, he thought he was dead.
Hovering above him, backlit by a sickly glow, stood a young man. Blond hair wind-tossed, sharp blue eyes brimming with something between warning and resolve. His features were too perfect—like a statue that had decided to breathe. A face untouched by the ruin around them.
"Good, you're awake," the stranger said. His voice was controlled, like he couldn't afford panic. "We have to get out of here. Now."
Noah groaned, rolling upright. His limbs screamed, nerves frayed like snapped wires. "Why…? What's going on?"
The blond man didn't answer right away. He just swept a hand across the horizon.
"Does this look like somewhere you want to stay?"
Noah turned his head—and the illusion of Earth crumbled completely.
The trees had no leaves. No life. Just blackened limbs clawing at the sky like bones desperate for mercy. The clouds churned with soundless thunder, pulsing with veins of lightning, each one echoing like some forgotten god still breathing.
The wind brushed past, too warm, too dry. It carried the scent of ash.
And something beneath it.
Rot.
He blinked hard. "This isn't Earth."
"No," the man said. "It's not."
Silence hung between them like a held breath.
Then the stranger turned and crouched beside another figure. "We need to wake the others. Every second we lose… someone might not get another."
Noah forced his legs under him. They trembled, protesting. Everything inside him wanted to scream—What the hell is this? Where are we? Who are you?—but instinct overrode fear. Screaming never helped.
Not in the orphanage. Not on the streets.
It wouldn't help now.
There was a girl nearby.
Already awake.
She stood with the poise of someone who had done this before—whatever this was. She didn't give orders, didn't raise her voice, but people moved around her as if drawn by gravity. Her silence wasn't empty; it was commanding.
Her eyes… dark, endless. Reflecting the flicker of lightning. Like they'd seen stars die and hadn't looked away.
Her hair floated lightly, like it remembered what water felt like, catching silver threads of light as the sky cracked above them.
Noah stared—not because she was beautiful, but because she didn't belong here. Not in this graveyard of worlds.
She was something else.
He blinked, shook it off, and moved to the nearest unconscious form—a boy, no older than fifteen.
"Hey," Noah whispered, tapping the boy's shoulder. "Wake up. Come on."
The boy stirred, eyes wide with fear. Noah steadied him with a hand, offered a lie with a voice that almost believed it:
"You're okay. Just breathe."
It felt like waking the dead.
They moved in fragments—whispers, murmurs, the quiet terror of children pretending they were older than they were. Some wept. Others stared into the scorched woods like they were still dreaming.
And then the lightning struck.
CRACK.
A bolt ripped through the air, slamming into the earth less than fifty feet away. The sky flashed white, and the world shook. The trees groaned like they remembered how to scream.
Noah fell to his knees, breath caught in his throat.
The blond man—carrying a limp girl now—shouted from across the clearing, his voice thin against the wind.
"Hey! Hurry up!"
Noah rose, legs stiff, heart hammering. The air felt thick. Not just with heat or fear—but with something watching.
This place was alive—but not in the way life should feel.
It watched. It waited.
He looked again at the girl. The stillness around her was deliberate, controlled. She walked like she belonged here. Like she'd bled here once, and the ground remembered.
Then—for just a moment—she looked at him.
Not past him. Not through him.
At him.
You see me?
Noah swallowed hard and looked away.
She was terrifying in her calm.
By the time the last of them woke, the group had grown into a wandering mass—twenty, maybe more. All teenagers. All half-shattered, held together by disbelief and raw instinct.
The blond man returned from the treeline, sweat slick on his brow. "Path to the east. Narrow. Shrouded. Safer than here. We move in five."
Noah stepped forward, his voice rough. "What's your name?"
"Ryan." No hesitation.
"Noah."
They shook hands, fast and hard—no ceremony. Just the unspoken truth:
We survive, or we don't.
The girl was already at the front. Others followed without question. Like planets orbiting a sun they didn't understand but couldn't leave.
As they moved, Noah counted.
Dozens. Then hundreds. Pale faces in the dark. Ghosts who hadn't realized they were dead yet.
He remembered the stories then. From broken radios. Whispers behind locked doors.
Anubis.
The Trial.
A realm cursed by blood and ruin. Where monsters didn't just hunt—they tested. Bent minds. Broke bodies. A place where death was a mercy.
A place that swallowed hope.
They reached a clearing. A cave yawned open before them—dark, jagged, like the mouth of some slumbering beast. It smelled like secrets and stone.
Inside, they rested. Silent. No fire. No food.
Noah sat on cold rock, head in his hands, body aching like it remembered too many past lives.
Anubis.
He'd heard it whispered in the orphanage. Among the boys who didn't make it past twelve. A name no one dared to say out loud. A place no one returned from.
He glanced toward the girl.
She didn't sit. Didn't rest.
She stood like she was waiting for the world to wake up and challenge her again.
Ryan didn't rest either. He moved like a soldier trained for war his whole life.
They're from the Inner City, Noah realized. The golden ones. Groomed. Trained. Fed like royalty and told they were strong because they deserved it.
He clenched his fists.
He hated them.
He hated what they stood for.
He had nothing—no training, no name, no family. Just scars and the will to keep moving.
He breathed out, low and bitter.
Not now.
The storm outside wasn't finished. It was just waiting.
He whispered into the dark:
"Guess this is it."
Then he looked up.
Not a dream.
Not Earth.
This was Anubis.
And the trial had only just begun.