After the instantaneous demise of the first man, the nine survivors remained rigidly within the gray circle. No one dared to rush, but one figure—a woman named Lena, recognized by her sharp, analytical gaze—began to cautiously approach the perimeter. She moved with deliberate, minimal effort, rejecting the reckless speed that had killed the man in the suit. She held a broken, dry branch, which she used to tentatively probe the ground inches beyond the perceived safety line. She was trying to deconstruct the environment, to extract the hidden logic.
She tested the soil, once, twice. The atmosphere thickened, silent save for the ragged breathing of the group. Then, she let out an abrupt, piercing shriek—a sound that was pure, visceral terror, tearing the forest's silence apart. It was a noise of unadulterated suffering, too primal to be mere pain. The remaining eight flinched simultaneously, their muscles seizing. They had not seen the mechanism of her attack, only the sound that followed it—unexplained, horrifying.
A full minute later, she reappeared.
She was crawling back toward the sanctuary, dragging her lower body, her expensive blouse now shredded and soaked with blood that stained the mossy earth. Her movement was frantic, desperate, driven by a vanishing reserve of adrenaline. She was badly injured, and the blood loss was heavy and rapid.
A young man—impulsive, driven by a reflexive sense of duty—took a half-step forward, his hands outstretched in a futile gesture of aid.
A harsh, authoritative voice sliced through the tension. It belonged to Elias, the oldest and most composed of the group, whose eyes held a cold, unwavering focus.
"Stop." He didn't shout, but the word was a physical barrier. He raised a hand, palm outward, halting the young man. "Two have left this circle, and both are gone. Do you intend to make yourself the third data point? No one moves outside this perimeter until we understand what is killing us."
The young man recoiled, his face a mask of shame and fear, the urge to help smothered by the chilling practicality of the threat.
They watched her bleed. Lena gasped, her chest heaving against the cold, damp ground, her wide eyes locked onto the faces of her indifferent saviors. Slowly, agonizingly, her body stretched out, becoming still. Her final breath evaporated into the silent air, and her corpse rested at the very edge of the safety line, a final, horrifying marker.
The true dread was not just the fact of the death, but the ambiguity of its cause. The first death was rapid, defined by recklessness. This one was slow, resulting from caution and calculated risk. And yet, the result was identical. The collective realization was a suffocating pressure: any hypothesis, any action, whether cautious or impulsive, led inexorably to the same terminal conclusion.