POV: Aisha Rane
---
When the sky broke apart, I was still crying.
Not the kind of cry that's soft and cinematic, but the ugly kind. The one where your throat hurts and your nose runs and you hate yourself for making noise. I was in the hallway, just past the first stairwell, my phone still warm in my hand.
> "Then maybe I should never have been born!"
That was the last thing I said to my mother. Screamed it, actually. Not because I meant it. But because I didn't know what else to say.
The silence on the other end of the call wasn't new — just longer than usual.
And then everything cracked.
The sound came like paper ripping, but deeper — cosmic, like it was tearing through memory. Light bent sideways. My feet lifted for a moment, or maybe the ground dropped. The hallway evaporated in a curtain of ash-white static.
And the world changed.
---
Now the sky hangs wrong.
It looks melted. Blood-orange with streaks of cobalt lightning that never strike. The air tastes electric — not like ozone, but like biting a battery. The clouds spiral slowly, like ink in boiling water.
And I'm alone.
Not just no one-around alone, but alone in a way that feels engineered. A silence designed to hurt. The world here is full of ruins — temples without doors, roads without ends, and statues.
Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds.
All faceless. All outstretched.
They don't look like gods. They look like people who begged for help before something erased them.
I walk among them with my school bag still on my shoulder. My phone — now just a dead slab — swings uselessly at my side. The only thing that responds anymore is the interface floating near my vision. It still blinks.
> Role Assigned: SACRIFICE.
("To open the locked path, one heart must be surrendered.")
I've tried tapping it. Closing it. Screaming at it.
It just stays there, glowing soft and cruel.
---
At first, I thought it was a joke. Some twisted part of the same simulation the others were talking about in class. That weird glyph explosion. The cow fields. Sherlock Holmes. All of that.
But here? There's no game. No time travelers. Just me.
And statues. Always the statues.
The more I explore, the more of them I find — in the cracks of temple gates, under stone bridges, beneath broken fountains. And they watch. Not literally, but their presence clings. I feel it in the hairs on my arms, in the back of my neck, in my ribs.
Then the whispers start.
Not words. Emotions.
> Regret.
Guilt.
Isolation.
I feel them crawling through me like vines in my chest. They echo things I've tried to bury.
Like the fight with my mother.
The time I shoved Mina during that stupid hallway fight.
The letter I never sent to my father's grave.
The cuts I never explained.
It's like the statues know.
Like they're mirrors of what I deserve.
---
Eventually, I collapse beneath a vine-covered archway. My shoes are torn. My knees are bleeding. My school uniform is so dirty I barely recognize the colors anymore.
I pull the interface close.
> SACRIFICE
Just that word.
Like a sentence without punctuation. Cold. Final.
I whisper, "Why me?"
Nothing answers.
But a new text fades in — thin and pale like mist on glass.
> New Passive Unlocked: Fated Presence
You cannot be forgotten, but you will always arrive last.
The words strike like knives.
Not forgotten. But not included either.
Not heroic. Just… required.
The one you remember too late. The girl the story needs to lose something.
---
I close my eyes.
I think about the birthday parties I was never invited to. The teachers who forgot my name. My mother's voice saying, "Other kids have it worse."
And yet, here I am — in a world where being me somehow makes sense.
Where being sacrificed isn't punishment. It's… function.
---
I hear them before I see them.
Footsteps. Dull crunches on cracked stone.
I press my back to the wall of the archway. My fingers tighten around the edge of my school bag. I don't know what I'll do with it — throw it? Shield myself? — but it's all I have.
Two students walk into view. Upperclassmen. I recognize their faces but not their names.
They look tired. Dirty. Like they've been in this world longer. But it's the look in their eyes that chills me: a look of need.
And calculation.
They glance at my interface.
Their eyes widen.
"We found a Sacrifice," one whispers.
The other steps closer, smiling like someone who just found the missing puzzle piece.
"Then the gate should open."
I shake my head. "Stay away from me—"
"We're not gonna hurt you," one says, with a voice too smooth. "It's just… the rules, right? The system needs a heart."
My own heart tries to tear out of my chest.
I finally understand something I hadn't before.
My death won't be noble.
It won't even be mine.
---
I run.
Faster than I ever have — faster than the track meets, faster than the nightmares where I can't move. I tear through the statue fields. Past shrines with bleeding altars. Through gardens of thorns and smoke.
The sky dims again, like it's watching. Like it's interested.
I feel it: something old.
It doesn't speak in language. It speaks in presence.
And it knows my name.
---
Then, just as the shadows start to stretch like claws around me…
A new notification appears.
Soft. Gentle. Like breath on my neck.
> Hidden Trait Awakened: Refusal
You may be the Sacrifice.
But no one said it had to be willing.
I fall to my knees, breathing hard.
I feel something shift inside me — not power, not magic — but choice.
For the first time in this world, something asks instead of demands.
And my answer is simple.
No.