They finally reached the first floor.
For a moment, everyone stood frozen.
The floor was... eerily clean. Empty.
It looked almost like an arena — polished, silent, unsettling.
Only three people were there, standing near the sides: two men and a woman. All three stared at them with hollow, dreadful eyes, as if they had already given up.
The layout was familiar — a wide path in the middle, leading straight to a single window at the far end. The same design as every floor so far.
But this time, there was something different.
Near the window, piled neatly on the floor, were food packets — eighteen of them.
Eroan cautiously stepped forward, squinting at them. "Food..." he muttered.
"Take three!" barked one of the men, his voice cold and mechanical.
He looked to be in his early thirties — pale, thin, and exhausted beyond belief.
Everyone hesitated, glancing at each other.
"The hell is this now?" Caldria muttered, scowling.
Without waiting for an answer, he marched up and grabbed three packets. The three people already present did the same, each collecting three packets mechanically, as if they'd done this many times before.
Liora, Rikuto, and Veni moved forward, each taking three packets as well.
Caldria turned, glaring suspiciously at the man who had spoken. "Hey! What's this crap, Kiroth's idea?!" he shouted.
Rikuto stiffened but didn't respond, avoiding his gaze.
He knew better.
Kiroth — the fat, lazy landlord everyone whispered about — was a greedy bastard, sure. But a sadistic puppet-master behind all this horror? Rikuto had never believed the rumors.
And now, he knew for sure — this wasn't Kiroth's doing.
"It's not Kiroth," said the older man quietly — the one who had first spoken. His name was Althas.
"What?!" Caldria snapped.
Althas stared at her, hollow-eyed. "I've been living here for four years. I can tell you — it's not Kiroth. Someone else is pulling the strings. Someone... worse."
"What do you mean?" Eroan demanded, his voice sharp with unease.
Before Althas could answer, the woman with him — Sovahr — spoke up, her voice barely a whisper. "Look outside."
They hesitated, but one by one, they walked toward the window.
And what they saw —
The blood drained from Liora's face.
Outside, the world was unraveling into madness.
Buildings collapsed like sandcastles against invisible hands. Fires raged uncontrollably, devouring entire streets. Vehicles were flipped over, smoke curling high into the blood-red sky.
People were running — no, sprinting — in blind terror. Some fought each other in the streets like rabid animals. Others simply screamed and fled nowhere. The ground itself looked cracked, bleeding black mist.
The air was thick with sirens, shouts, and distant explosions.
The entire world was falling apart.
"What... what is this?" Liora whispered, her voice barely audible.
Rikuto pressed a hand against the cold glass, his heart pounding.
No matter how hard he tried to rationalize it, there was only one thing he could tell —
This wasn't just a game anymore.
It was the end.
And then, suddenly —
A voice boomed from nowhere, deep and cruel:
"This game is called Scarcity."
The sound echoed across the wide floor, rattling through their bones.
Everyone froze. Even the three survivors who had been there before bowed their heads lower, as if they had already given up.
"You must survive for... days."
"Survive — or die."
The voice ended, vanishing into a chilling silence.
Slowly, they turned their heads.
Behind them — where the stairs leading to the second floor should have been —
A new obstacle had appeared.
A thick, dark red string stretched across the stairway entrance, vibrating slightly, as if alive. It was thicker, darker, and far more dangerous-looking than the strings before. It pulsed with a sick, deep glow.
An impassable wall.
They were trapped.
Here, on this floor — with strangers, with limited food, with fear —
For days.
--------------------------------------------------
Excerpt from "The Last Testament" by Riven Caelvane:
"Everything came to an end — not only the Nuvion and its creatures, but the stars, the heavens, the breath of the world itself. When the End arrived, the skies blackened for countless days, and the heavens split apart like torn cloth, swallowing all that lived beneath them.
It was said some things are written in the stones of fate — and no man, no god, could undo them. Yet there is an old whisper among the ancients: If you despise your fate, then summon the courage to change it.
I despised the end.
I loathed it with every fragment of my being.
For I believed-no —, I knew—we did not deserve such ruin.
Again and again, I fought against it.
Again and again, I failed.
Until the day I stumbled upon Heaven — a place untouched by death, a place where we could remain. A place where fate itself could not reach."
They called Riven Caelvane mad for daring to write such words in a nonfiction book. A relic of an unhinged mind, the critics said. A fairy tale dressed in delusions.
But Daigo didn't think so.
He didn't know why — he couldn't explain it — but that strange, desperate tale rooted itself in his mind, wrapping around his thoughts like ancient ivy.
He still heard those words echoing inside him as his car pulled to a slow halt in front of his house.
Daigo shifted the car into park, frowning slightly.
Something was wrong.
The iron fence lining his property — tall, once sturdy, meant to keep dangers out — was broken. Not merely rusted or bent by time. Shattered, as if something had torn through it with unnatural force.
Cold air seeped into the car despite the closed windows. He sat there for a moment, engine humming softly, staring at the wreckage ahead.
The front gate swung crookedly, creaking in the wind, tapping rhythmically against the battered stone post.
The world felt too still.
His house — a narrow, gray-brick building with sloped eaves and tall windows — loomed in the darkness beyond the gate, its shape skeletal under the dying light of evening.
The memories of Riven Caelvane's words gnawed at him. About endings. About swallowing skies. About fate refusing to be undone.
Daigo clenched the steering wheel for a long moment. Then, exhaling, he opened the door.
Gravel crunched under his boots as he stepped out, the chill biting sharper than it should in late spring.
Ahead, his broken fence yawned open like a warning mouth.
He crossed the threshold.