The sentence appeared without a sound.
Not engraved.
Not written.
Not projected.
It was simply there.
Suspended in space, as if the white itself had decided, this time, to articulate something.
I saw it before I read it.
Because my body reacted before my mind.
A slight tension in my chest.
An instinctive alert.
That unpleasant sensation you get when someone has just laid down a rule… without explaining why.
The sentence hovered before me, clear, restrained, almost elegant:
MOVING FORWARD IS NOT MANDATORY.
STAYING IS NOT WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE.
I remained still.
Not out of caution.
Out of instinct.
A sentence like that is never neutral.
I glanced around.
The space was no longer exactly the same as before. The white seemed… more stable. Less pulsating. As if the mere act of formulating something had soothed it.
As if the Arena liked to speak when we stopped struggling.
I murmured, more to myself than to the space:
"So… that's it?"
My voice did not return altered.
It came back normal.
That detail worried me more than anything else.
Because it meant that, for once, the Arena wasn't contradicting me.
I took a step.
Not forward.
To the side.
Nothing happened.
No pain.
No resistance.
No vibration.
The sentence remained there.
Unchanging.
That was when I understood what made it dangerous.
It wasn't forcing me to do anything.
I felt a strange weight in my stomach.
Not a threat.
A responsibility.
Elsewhere.
Amad stopped.
The sentence was there for him too.
Not identical.
Formally, yes.
But he immediately felt it wasn't speaking to him in the same way.
He ran a hand over his face.
His fatigue seemed… contained. Less crushing than before.
"Moving forward isn't mandatory…" he murmured.
He smiled faintly.
An automatic smile.
The one he used when he tried to reassure someone — even when no one was watching.
"Alright. I can stay."
The thought brought him immediate relief.
Almost guilty.
His body relaxed.
His shoulders dropped slightly.
For the first time since arriving, he no longer felt the urgency to hold on for others.
And somewhere inside him, a thought slipped in, soft and dangerous:
If I stop just a little… no one will blame me.
Further away.
Bintou stared at the sentence with contempt.
"Seriously? That's it? That's your big trial?"
She clenched her fists.
The ground beneath her feet vibrated faintly.
"Moving forward isn't mandatory."
She scoffed.
"You really think I'm going to stand here waiting?"
She lifted her gaze.
Not toward the sentence.
Toward the space beyond.
She had no desire to understand.
She wanted to cut through.
And the fact that the sentence gave her a choice drove her mad.
Because not being constrained felt, to her, like a provocation.
Ayyi, on the other hand, did not move.
He didn't read the sentence immediately.
First, he observed what it caused.
The silence.
The stabilization of space.
The absence of immediate punishment.
Then he read it.
Once.
Twice.
He closed his eyes.
"This isn't a rule," he said calmly.
His voice wasn't directed at anyone in particular.
But the space seemed to listen.
"It's a posture test."
He inhaled slowly.
"The Arena isn't telling us what to do.
It's watching how we decide to do something."
He opened his eyes.
"And more importantly… why."
That realization brought him no comfort.
Because a vague rule is more dangerous than a clear prohibition.
Around them, the other participants began to react.
Some sat down immediately.
Relieved.
As if they had finally been given permission to stop struggling.
Others moved forward without thinking.
Out of defiance.
Out of fear of being left alone.
Out of a need to prove something.
And almost immediately, the consequences appeared.
A man who had sat down too quickly collapsed to the side.
Not unconscious.
Just unable to get back up.
A woman who walked straight ahead began to limp.
Then her nose started bleeding.
Without understanding why.
The sentence had lied to no one.
It simply hadn't promised anything.
I looked again at the words floating before me.
STAYING IS NOT WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE.
That was when I understood.
The Arena wasn't testing courage.
Nor intelligence.
Nor willpower.
It was testing internal justification.
Why you move forward.
Why you stay.
Why you hesitate.
And above all…
Who you believe you are when you make that choice.
The sentence began to dissolve slowly.
Not disappearing.
Integrating into the space.
As if it had never been an instruction.
But a question.
I felt a familiar pressure behind my temples.
Not pain.
Focus.
And a cold certainty imposed itself on me:
Those who followed this "rule" as a law would fall.
Those who rejected it out of pride would fall too.
Because in the Arena…
Certainty is already a mistake.
The most disturbing thing wasn't the pain.
It was the apparent normality.
After the sentence vanished, the space seemed to… breathe more calmly. The white was still there, of course, but it no longer crushed. It almost felt balanced. As if simply stating a directive — even an ambiguous one — had reassured something.
The participants began to talk.
Not all of them.
Not loudly.
Short sentences. Murmurs. Awkward attempts to recreate human logic in a place that wasn't human.
"Maybe you're supposed to move slowly."
"Or stay, but not too long."
"It probably depends on each person…"
A shiver ran through me.
Because that was exactly what the Arena wanted.
Not obedience.
Not rebellion.
Interpretation.
A man in his forties stood up cautiously. He looked around, as if to make sure he was being seen. Then he took a step forward. Nothing happened.
He smiled.
"You see?" he said. "You just can't panic."
He took a second step.
Still nothing.
His smile widened, reassured by his own success. He turned slightly toward the others.
"The important thing is to stay in control."
And at that exact moment, his knee gave out.
Not violently.
Not dramatically.
He simply dropped to his knees, as if his muscles had received the order to shut down. His expression shifted from confidence to total incomprehension.
"Wait… no…"
He tried to get up.
His body refused.
I saw his hands tremble against the white floor, his fingers sinking slightly, as if the surface were too soft to offer real support.
No one approached.
Not out of cruelty.
Out of caution.
Because now, every movement felt dangerous.
Amad watched from a distance.
He had neither sat down nor moved forward. He stood there, motionless, suspended between two decisions. His breathing was steadier than before, but the tension in his shoulders was unmistakable.
"It's unfair…" he murmured.
I turned my head slightly toward him.
"What?"
"He was careful. He didn't rush. He didn't provoke."
He shook his head.
"And still, he falls."
I understood what really disturbed him.
It wasn't the fall.
It was the absence of comforting logic.
Ayyi, a bit farther away, had noticed something else.
He was watching those who had remained seated.
Some looked better.
Calmer.
Almost rested.
But something was wrong with them too.
A girl curled in on herself had stopped trembling.
Too quickly.
Too completely.
Her gaze rested on the floor with a strange, almost vacant gentleness.
Ayyi approached slowly.
"How do you feel?" he asked.
She looked up at him. Her smile was peaceful. Empty.
"Fine, I think."
Her voice was flat.
Without texture.
"I don't hurt anywhere anymore."
Ayyi felt his stomach tighten.
He asked a simple question.
"Do you know how long you've been sitting here?"
She blinked.
Once.
Twice.
"No."
No concern.
No fear.
Just a complete absence of reference.
Ayyi straightened.
He understood now.
Staying didn't cause immediate pain.
But it dissolved something else.
Continuity.
Bintou hadn't moved an inch.
Her fists were still clenched.
Her gaze swept the space as if searching for an invisible weakness.
"They want us to choose wrong," she spat.
"They want us to sabotage ourselves."
She took a sharp step forward.
Nothing.
A second.
Still nothing.
She stopped.
Not out of fear.
Out of irritation.
"It pisses me off," she muttered. "When I can't feel what I'm supposed to hit."
I noticed something strange.
Every time she advanced in anger, the space seemed to… tighten around her. Not to stop her. To let her pass, while memorizing something.
Like invisible friction.
That's when I realized the rule didn't act immediately.
It accumulated.
Every decision left a trace.
Not visible.
Not measurable.
But real.
A man advancing out of pride.
A woman staying out of relief.
Another hesitating without ever deciding.
And every time, the Arena recorded it.
Not in a register.
Not with words.
In the very structure of space itself.
I felt a diffuse presence.
Not an entity.
Not a voice.
A gaze.
Not directed at me specifically.
But at the whole.
As if something were observing variations.
Choices.
Internal justifications.
A cold certainty settled in me:
The rule didn't exist to guide us.
It existed to classify us.
Ayyi met my eyes.
He had understood the same thing.
"We're revealing ourselves," he said softly.
"Not by what we do."
He looked at the participants sprawled, frozen, injured, absent.
"But by the way we explain our choices to ourselves."
Amad clenched his teeth.
"So what? There's no right decision?"
Ayyi hesitated.
Then answered:
"There is."
He paused.
"But it isn't universal."
That answer helped no one.
And that was exactly the problem.
The space vibrated slightly.
Not enough to alert the others.
Just enough for me to feel it.
Something had changed.
Not a new rule.
Not a new sentence.
An intensity.
As if the Arena, satisfied with this first harvest of behaviors, was preparing to move on to the next stage.
I felt a familiar pressure behind my temples.
Not painful.
Analytical.
And a clear thought imposed itself:
Next time, there might not even be a sentence.
Because now…
We had learned to lie to ourselves on our own.