Pain stabbed through his skull like a thousand needles.
His vision blurred as his face slammed into the dirt, the coarse earth grinding between his teeth.
When the ringing faded, he pushed himself up on trembling arms. In their place stretched an endless wasteland, extending to every horizon under a sky the color of dried blood.
"What the hell just happened?" Hayeon's voice carried across the barren ground. She stood twenty feet away, shaking her head as if trying to clear water from her ears.
Ilwoo climbed to his feet, brushing dust from his clothes. His lips curved into a smirk that he couldn't suppress. The terrain, the sky, even the way the wind cut across the emptiness—he knew this place.
"The Crimson Desert," he said, his voice carrying satisfaction despite their circumstances.
"Do you know this place?" Kim Donghyun asked, scanning the desolation.
"I often find rare items here." Ilwoo pointed at a distant spiral structure that pierced the sky like a twisted spear. "That's our destination."
"Can we really find items there?" Hayeon lifted her spear, feeling its weight under the strange gravity.
"This is the safe place where we end the second trial." Ilwoo scanned the landscape, marking landmarks from his memory. "The good news, I understand the mechanics. The bad news, we came here on foot."
A soft groan drew their attention to Minji, who lay curled on her side several yards away. Her face had gone pale, and her breathing came in shallow gasps.
"Minji!" Hayeon rushed to her side, dropping to her knees beside the fallen woman.
"I'm fine." Minji's voice barely rose above a whisper. She pushed against the ground, trying to sit up, but her arms shook with the effort.
"Just... dizzy."
"You're not fine." Hayeon's hands hovered over Minji's shoulders, uncertain whether to help or give her space. "You look like death."
"Thanks for the pep talk." A weak smile crossed Minji's lips, but it faded as another wave of exhaustion hit her. Her eyes closed, and she slumped back toward the dirt.
Kim Donghyun jogged over, his face grim.
"The transports struck her harder than the rest of us. She drained herself during the first trial."
Ilwoo knelt beside Minji, studying her condition. Her pulse was weak but steady, and her breathing, while shallow, remained regular. Still, the pallor of her skin and the tremor in her hands suggested she was far from combat-ready.
"Can you stand?" he asked quietly.
"Of course I can stand." Minji's eyes snapped open, defiance flaring despite her obvious weakness. "I'm not dead yet."
"That's not what I asked."
His blunt question crushed her bravado. She turned aside, jaw clenched.
"Maybe. If I have to."
"You don't need to prove anything." Ilwoo's voice held firm command, yet carried a gentleness he had never shown before. "This isn't about pride."
Minji met his gaze, searching his masked face for judgment and found none. She relaxed and nodded once, a small motion that conveyed trust more clearly than words.
Ilwoo stood and addressed the group.
"We can't stay here longer, we have to move now."
"So we move toward the giant death spiral?" Hayeon gestured at the distant structure with her spear tip. "That's the plan?"
"That's the objective. The plan is simple: survive the journey." Ilwoo shielded his eyes against the crimson glare and studied the path ahead.
"The desert seems empty, but it's full of hunters, creatures that know we don't belong."
"What kind of things?" Jinhyuk spoke for the first time since the transition, his voice steady despite their circumstances.
"Sand wraiths. Bone scorpions. Mirage phoenixes." Ilwoo listed the threats from memory, each name carrying the weight of countless virtual deaths.
"Wonderful." Kim Donghyun adjusted his grip on his axe.
"Any good news in that gaming knowledge of yours?"
"The trial has rules. It wants us to reach the spiral, which means there's a path through the dangers. We just have to be smart enough to find it and disciplined enough to follow it."
A sound echoed across the wasteland, distant but unmistakable. The hollow roar of something large moving beneath the surface, displacing tons of sand with each movement.
"Decision time." Ilwoo looked at each team member in turn. "Minji, can you walk?"
She pushed herself up, swaying but staying upright. "I can walk."
"For how long?"
"Long enough." Her voice carried more conviction than her trembling legs, but Ilwoo recognized the determination that had gotten her this far.
"Hayeon, you're on point with me. Your reflexes are the sharpest." He turned to Kim Donghyun.
"Donghyun, rear guard. Watch for anything following us."
"And the kid?" Kim Donghyun nodded toward Jinhyuk.
"Stays in the middle with Minji. You're our early warning system. If something feels wrong, speak up immediately."
Ilwoo met the boy's eyes through his mask.
"Your instincts might be the only thing that keeps us alive out here."
Jinhyuk straightened, responsibility settling on his young shoulders like armor. "Understood."
They formed up in a loose column, Ilwoo and Hayeon leading while the others maintained careful spacing behind. The first steps across the wasteland felt like walking on broken glass, each footfall seemed too loud, too obvious, a beacon for whatever hunted in the depths below.
The spiral structure grew larger as they walked, revealing details that made Ilwoo's stomach clench. The tower wasn't built, it was grown, like some massive bone jutting from the desert's heart.
"How far?" Hayeon asked, her breath coming in controlled puffs that dissipated quickly in the dry air.
"Two kilometers. Maybe three." Ilwoo checked their surroundings constantly, looking for the telltale signs of predators. "In the game, this took most players four to six hours to cross safely."
"And unsafely?"
"Most of those runs ended in the first twenty minutes."
Behind them, Minji stumbled but caught herself before anyone could react. The sound of her boots scraping against stone echoed louder than their entire conversation, and Ilwoo felt his shoulders tense.
The underground roar came again, closer this time. Something had noticed them.
"Faster," Ilwoo said, not quite running but no longer walking. "Stay together, stay quiet, and whatever happens, don't run unless I say run."
They picked up the pace, their formation tightening as the wasteland's hostile presence pressed against them like a physical weight. Each step brought them closer to their destination, but also deeper into territory where things with too many teeth waited in the shadows.
Above them, the blood-red sky began to darken toward something that might have been evening, though no sun was visible to set.
The change in light brought new sounds, clicking, scuttling noises that spoke of creatures emerging from hidden dens.
"Movement," Kim Donghyun reported quietly. "Three o'clock, about fifty meters out."
Ilwoo followed his gaze and spotted it, a ripple in the sand, too regular to be wind. Something large paced them just beneath the surface, keeping perfect distance like a predator evaluating its prey.
"Sand wraith," he said, knowing.
"They're testing us, trying to figure out if we're worth the effort to hunt."
"How do we convince them we're not?" Hayeon's grip on her spear had gone white-knuckled.
"By not acting like prey." Ilwoo's voice carried across the group without rising.
"Steady pace, no sudden movements, and absolutely no sign of weakness or fear."
"What if Minji collapses?" Jinhyuk asked, glancing back at the woman who was clearly struggling to maintain their pace.
"Then we carry her and keep moving." Ilwoo's tone brooked no argument. "Nobody gets left behind."
The words were barely out of his mouth when the sand erupted.
***
From the ridge overlooking the desert, a figure in a black hooded cloak watched the small group navigate their first encounter with the wasteland's guardians.
The observer's face remained hidden in shadow, but skeletal fingers emerged from the cloak's sleeves as they adjusted the hood against the eternal wind.
"So," the figure murmured, voice carrying the weight of grave dirt and old bones, "the tower has sent me fresh souls to harvest."
The group below had stopped moving, forming a defensive circle around their weakest member. The observer noted their formation, their weapons, the way they responded to their leader's commands.
Interesting.
"You've done well to reach the second trial," the figure continued, speaking to the distant group as if they could hear.
"But cleverness will only carry you so far. Soon, you'll face choices that will reveal what you're truly made of."
The sand wraith circling the group suddenly dove deep, disappearing entirely. The team below relaxed slightly, thinking they'd avoided conflict.
They couldn't know that the creature was simply reporting back to larger, more dangerous things that stirred in the desert's depths.
The hooded figure smiled, though the expression held no warmth. "Run, little mice. Run toward your destiny. I'll be waiting when you reach the spiral."
With that, the observer melted back into the shadows, leaving no trace of their presence except for a few grains of sand that might have been disturbed by wind.
Below, unaware of the eyes that had marked them, Ilwoo's team resumed their journey toward the bone-white spiral that dominated the horizon.
Each step brought them closer to trials that would test not just their skills, but their willingness to sacrifice for each other.
The second trial of the Tower of Nightmares had only just begun.