Charles learned early that life did not negotiate.
The ceiling above his head was cracked in three places, thin lines branching like dead veins across yellowed plaster. When it rained, water crept through them, dripping steadily into a plastic bowl his mother kept on the floor. Every night, the sound lulled him to sleep—not comfortingly, but as a reminder that even shelter could fail.
He lay awake now, staring at those cracks, counting them the way some people counted stars.
Hunger twisted low in his stomach, familiar and dull. It wasn't sharp anymore. Hunger stopped hurting once it became routine. It just… existed.
Outside, the city breathed—a distant chorus of engines, voices, the occasional shout. Other people were awake, living lives Charles didn't pretend to understand. People who talked about dreams, about futures, about what they wanted to become.
He had stopped wanting long ago.
Wanting made disappointment sharper.
The small room smelled faintly of damp clothes and instant noodles. His mother slept on the other side of the thin curtain, her breathing shallow and uneven. She worked double shifts when she could get them, and when she couldn't, she apologized too much.
"I'm sorry," she said often, for things she didn't control.
Charles hated that more than the hunger.
At nineteen, he had already learned the rules of the world he lived in. Work hard, get paid little. Be polite, get ignored. Hope quietly, so no one could hear it break.
He sat up, rubbing his face with rough hands. His palms were calloused from warehouse work—lifting, stacking, repeating the same motion until his muscles screamed and his mind went blank. Blank was good. Blank didn't ask questions.
Tonight, sleep refused to come.
There was a pressure in the air, subtle but wrong, like the moment before a storm. The lightbulb flickered once, twice, then steadied. Charles frowned.
Then the room went dark.
Not just dark—empty.
Sound vanished. The city's breathing stopped. Even his mother's breathing fell silent.
Charles stood abruptly. "Mom?"
No answer.
His heart began to pound. He reached for the curtain—and froze.
Words burned themselves into the air in front of him, written in pale, shifting light.
[NIGHTMARE SPELL INITIALIZATION]
[SUBJECT: CHARLES MORROW]
[PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE: ACCEPTABLE]
His breath caught.
"What…?" His voice sounded too loud in the stillness.
The letters rearranged themselves, uncaring.
[YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED]
[TRIAL WILL COMMENCE]
Fear surged, raw and animal. This wasn't hunger. This wasn't exhaustion. This was the kind of fear that scraped against instinct and screamed run.
"Selected for what?" he demanded, even as his legs trembled.
The light deepened, turning from pale white to something darker, heavier.
[SURVIVE]
The floor vanished beneath his feet.
Charles fell—not downward, but inward. The room stretched, folded, and shattered like glass. Cold wrapped around him, seeping into his bones.
Then he hit the ground.
Hard.
He gasped, sucking in air that tasted of ash and iron. The sky above him was wrong—too close, too dark, streaked with slow-moving clouds that glowed faintly red.
He scrambled to his feet, heart hammering, scanning his surroundings.
Ruin.
Broken stone pillars jutted from cracked earth. Bones—human and not—littered the ground. The air vibrated with distant, echoing howls.
Charles swallowed.
"This isn't real," he whispered. "This can't be real."
Something moved.
From between two collapsed walls, a shape emerged. It walked on too many limbs, its body twisted, skin stretched thin over sharp angles. Its head tilted, as if sniffing the air.
Its eyes locked onto him.
A message flared before his vision.
[NIGHTMARE TRIAL: BEGINNER]
[OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE FOR 10 MINUTES]
The creature shrieked.
Charles ran.
He ran the way he had run from debt collectors, from hunger, from the quiet despair of home—without looking back, lungs burning, legs screaming.
Behind him, claws scraped stone.
Ten minutes.
He didn't know if he could survive ten seconds.
But as terror surged through him, something else stirred—deep, cold, and patient.
A whisper, not in his ears, but in his chest.
If you are going to die, it seemed to say, do it standing.
Charles clenched his fists.
For the first time in his life, the world had noticed him.
And it wanted to see if he would break.