The afternoon sun had been pale and weak, filtering through the grime-streaked windows of our fourth-floor walk-up. It was a Tuesday, I was sorting through a stack of overdue utility bills, wondering if I could stretch a single box of pasta across three days, when I saw it.
The box didn't arrive by mail. There had been no knock, no heavy thud of a delivery driver's boots on the stairs.
It was just there.
Sitting in the center of our scarred wooden coffee table. it was wrapped in a heavy, matte-black paper that didn't reflect the light; it seemed to drink it. Tied around it was a silk ribbon, redder than a fresh wound, fashioned into a perfect, mocking bow.
"Linus? Did you buy something?"
I looked up. My younger sister, Lily, was leaning against the doorway, her school backpack hanging heavy off one shoulder. She was fourteen, at that age where the world still felt like it owed her something—even if that 'something' was just a birthday gift our father hadn't sent in five years.
"I didn't buy it, Lil," I said. My voice sounded thin, even to my own ears.
A strange, metallic chill was radiating from the table, a cold so intense it made the hair on my arms stand up. "Stay back. It's... it's probably for the neighbors. A delivery mistake."
"The neighbors in 4B? They can't afford matte-black gift wrap," she joked, but she didn't move forward. The air in the room had become thick, like breathing through wet wool.
A sound started then. Low at first, a rhythmic thump-thump that I thought was my own pulse. But it wasn't, it was coming from the box. It was the sound of a heavy, ancient heart beating inside the cardboard.
Thump-thump. "Linus, it's vibrating," Lily whispered, her eyes wide.
Before I could shout at her, before I could grab her hand and drag her into the hallway, she stepped forward. "Maybe there's a card?"
Her fingers brushed the silk ribbon. She didn't even pull it. The moment her skin made contact with the fabric, the knot unraveled as if it were alive.
The apartment didn't just vanish; it melted.
The sound was the worst part. It wasn't an explosion; it was the screeching, agonizing groan of physics being rewritten. My kitchen table turned into a swarm of golden pixels. The peeling wallpaper dissolved into grey mist. I reached for Lily, my fingers inches from her denim jacket, but a wall of absolute, freezing darkness slammed down between us.
"Lily!" I screamed.
My voice didn't echo. It was swallowed by a vacuum.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZING...]
[SYNCING PLAYER 092: LINUS...]
[LOCATION: THE CELESTIAL STADIUM – ARENA 4.]
[GLOBAL STATUS: LIVE.]
I hit a hard, dusty surface face-first. The impact rattled my teeth, and the metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I gasped, sucking in air that felt like it had been filtered through a graveyard—dry, cold, and smelling faintly of ozone and old copper.
I scrambled to my knees, my head spinning with a violent vertigo. "Lily? Lily, where are you!"
The answer was a roar.
It wasn't a human cheer. It was the sound of a million voices screaming through a distorted radio, a cacophony of hunger and excitement that made my skin crawl. I looked up and felt the world tilt.
I was standing in the center of a colossal arena, a patch of dead, ash-grey grass beneath my palms. The "stadium" was impossible. Its walls were made of polished obsidian that rose miles into the air, and above them, the sky was a flickering dome of golden monitors. Thousands of them, each the size of a skyscraper, showed different angles of the field—including a high-angle shot of me, looking like a panicked ant.
And behind those monitors? The Audience.
They sat in tiers that vanished into the clouds. They weren't human. They were shadows with too many limbs, entities made of static, things with glowing eyes that watched us from the safety of their seats.
"Is this... a prank?" A woman a few feet away was hyperventilating, clutching a grocery bag. "Hey! Where are the cameras? This isn't funny! I have a shift at the hospital in an hour!"
"It's VR," a man in a business suit muttered, though his knees were knocking together. "It has to be. Haptic feedback, neural link. Some tech startup is going to get sued into the ground for this."
Everyone was doing it—clinging to the mundane. They were looking for the 'seams' in the reality. They were looking for the hidden speakers or the exit signs. They stood still, rooted in the human belief that if you don't play along with a joke, it eventually stops.
But the screens above us flickered. A figure floated down from the golden sky, hovering fifty feet above the grass. He wore a tuxedo that shimmered like oil on water, his face hidden behind a porcelain mask with a single, painted-on crying eye.
"Welcome, Tributes!" The Host's voice boomed, vibrating in our very marrow. "To the 100th Centennial Gala! We have a record-breaking viewership today! Three billion souls are watching you live!"
"Let us go!" the businessman yelled, stepping forward with a trembling finger pointed at the sky. "I don't know who you are, but I have a contract with—"
The Host didn't even look at him. He simply snapped his fingers.
A bolt of crimson lightning hissed from the golden sky. In a heartbeat, the man in the suit was gone. There was no blood. No body. Just a pile of fine, white ash drifting in the artificial wind.
The silence that followed was absolute. The 'denial' died right there, replaced by a cold, hollow terror that paralyzed the lungs.
[TASK 1: THE HUNGER RUN.]
[OBJECTIVE: Reach the Central Altar.]
[TIME LIMIT: 10:00.]
[FAILURE CONDITION: 50% of Players will be 'Cleaned' to maintain Audience engagement.]
The heavy iron gates at the far end of the stadium groaned open. From the darkness within, dozens of pairs of glowing, violet eyes ignited. A pack of creatures—wolves the size of small cars, their fur made of jagged, translucent crystals—sprinted onto the field.
This isn't a game, I realized, my hands digging into the grey dirt. It's a slaughterhouse. And we're the cattle.
"Run!" someone screamed.
The panic was instantaneous and violent. People who had been crying seconds ago now trampled over each other. I saw the woman with the grocery bag get tackled by a crystal wolf; its fangs didn't just bite—they shattered like glass inside her shoulder. Her screams were the most real thing I had ever heard.
I started to run. Not because I had a plan, but because the lizard brain inside me was screaming survival.
I dodged a man who was trying to push me into the path of a predator. I leapt over a pile of luggage that had been transported with someone. My eyes were darting everywhere, scanning the hundreds of panicked faces.
"Lily! Lily!"
In the corner of my vision, a blue screen flickered: [Mana Capacity: 10/10 (Grade: F)].
Other people were already discovering their 'Magic.' A teenager a few yards away was throwing bolts of static electricity at the wolves. A girl was running with impossible speed, her legs glowing with blue light. They had been given tools. I had been given nothing.
I rounded a pillar of stone near the East Wall, and my heart stopped.
Lily was there.
She was backed against the obsidian wall, her denim jacket torn at the shoulder. She was holding her school backpack in front of her like a shield, her eyes squeezed shut. And stalking toward her was a wolf—the Alpha of the pack. It was ten feet tall, its crystal fur pulsing with a dark, hungry light.
It crouched, tensing its massive haunches. It was going to spring.