The day began with Samer barely able to maintain his vertical posture. He was abnormally pale, his skin drawn tight over his facial structure, his eyes deeply recessed as if he hadn't slept in weeks. His hand trembled continuously, not from the external cold, but from a profound internal tremor—something wrenching his body apart from within.
He spent most of the time in silence, fixated on a specific patch of ground amongst the trees outside the perimeter. There was nothing there: bare earth, sparse trunks, ordinary shadow.
But he saw it.
He said it once, then a second time, then with mounting, desperate impatience: "It's there… I'm certain."
They told him it was non-existent. They all pointed toward the identical empty space. One survivor approached the edge, stamped the spot with a foot, and turned over the soil with his hand. Nothing.
Samer did not argue. He simply sat. He stared. He shook.
The hours crawled by. As the daylight advanced, his agitation intensified. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the chill, his jaw was clamped tight, his breathing shallow. He looked like a man physically restraining an animal within himself, and when his gaze locked onto that particular patch of ground, a sick certainty gleamed in his bloodshot eyes.
Around dusk, something shifted.
He could no longer remain seated. He rose abruptly, as if an internal decision had been made without his permission. He did not look at the others. He offered no explanation. He only said:
"I'll be right back."
And he walked toward the forest.
They waited.
The sun dipped entirely below the horizon. The light fractured and died between the trees.
He did not return.
Night closed in completely. The forest sounds intensified, and the anxiety spread among the remaining five like a heavy shadow. They called his name once, twice, the sound swallowed by the deep woods. No answer. No movement.
At dawn, as the fog began its slow, ghostly retreat, they saw him.
His body was sprawled on the earth, far beyond the perimeter, much farther than he would have needed to reach any perceived object.
No movement. No tremor.
Just a body that had ended where the illusion had begun.
There had been no substance, no hidden drug, no reward. There was only the withdrawal—a pathological craving that had guided him, step by measured step, to his final conclusion. The system, once again, had not physically killed him; it had simply orchestrated the conditions for his self-destruction.