There are places that change the way you breathe — spaces where the air feels too clean, too smooth, almost… manufactured.
When I opened my eyes, I first thought I was still in Room 3-C. The proportions felt similar: four walls, a floor, a ceiling. But that was where the resemblance ended.
The light had no source. It fell on us as if it simply existed — without windows, without shadows, without warmth.
Ayyi stood up first, calm as always, as if he had expected this place. Amad rubbed his forehead and inhaled too quickly. And Bintou… Bintou scanned the room like a beast ready to strike.
As for me, I couldn't tell if I was dreaming or if something in me had finally snapped.
The room was white — not normal white. A narrow white. A white that swallowed the edges of things. A white that forced your eyes to admit they no longer understood where they were.
"What… is this place?" I murmured.
The question slipped out before I could stop it. It didn't need an answer. It only meant:I'm lost.
Ayyi took two steps forward, his movements precise, almost too deliberate. The floor echoed under his shoes as if it were hollow.
"This isn't a dream," he said, voice steady. Of course it was steady. It was Ayyi.
"How can you know that?" Bintou snapped, narrowing her eyes, ready to attack something she couldn't see yet.
"Because I feel my breathing. In dreams you don't control it this clearly."
I wasn't sure it was true. But it sounded right.
Amad turned on himself, panicked. "I don't like this, guys… We're not… we're no longer…"
His sentence never reached its end.
A sound cut him off — a sound I had never heard before. Not even a sound, really. More like a vibration, the rustle of something that had never been alive.
The light flickered for barely a second. A subtle tremor. Then a symbol appeared on the far wall.
A symbol? No — a line. Thin, black, like a frantic stroke of ink. Then another. Then another. The lines connected, separated, crossed, as if an invisible hand were writing right in front of us.
Amad backed away. "No, no, nope — get me out of here."
"We can't," Ayyi said.
"How do you—"
"There's no door."
I checked the walls. He was right. No joint. No handle. No outline. Just uninterrupted white. And the symbol still drawing itself, still becoming.
When it finally completed, something inside me tightened. A chill behind my neck. A déjà-vu with no memory attached.
"You feel that?" I asked.
Bintou nodded silently. Her fists were clenched — not in anger, but in fear. Or cold. Or both.
Ayyi stared at the symbol far too long.
"We're being watched," he said.
Amad swallowed. "By who?"
Ayyi didn't answer. He looked at the wall the way someone looks at a puzzle whose shape they recognize but not its meaning.
Then the light shifted again. An shadow passed — brief, silent, almost imaginary. But it was there.
Not a human shadow. Not a defined shape. A movement. A presence. As if something stood behind a veil too thin for the eye.
I stepped back. My heart beat too fast, too high in my chest.
"There's someone here," I whispered.
The white vibrated. The light contracted. And a voice fell into the room.
Not loud.Not close.A voice that sounded like it came from inside the wall. Or inside us.
"You have been called."
Amad gasped. Bintou cursed under her breath. My hands trembled.
Ayyi breathed deeply, then asked:"Called… for what?"
Silence.
Then the voice again:
"To see what you still refuse to acknowledge."
That was all.
The presence behind the walls retreated as quickly as it had appeared. The room normalized. The light steadied. The symbol remained — like a closed eye.
Silence returned. Heavy. Coherent.
"Who… was that?" Amad whispered.
None of us answered. Because deep down, we already knew — it wasn't a teacher, or a human, or a dream.
And because at that moment, in the corner of my vision, I saw a second shadow.
This one had my height. My posture. My lack of expression.
And when I turned to face it, it was gone.
My breathing stumbled. My jaw tightened. A cold truth climbed my spine like a warning.
This place wasn't empty.This place was reflecting us.This place had been waiting.
And deep inside me, a sentence formed — one I had never thought before, one that felt like a verdict:
The Arena doesn't show reality.It shows what it already knows about us.
And if it already knew…then something inside us had been broken long before we arrived here.