"Not all wounds bleed. Some echo."
Kayaks stood silently in the dormitory's reflection pool, watching the water flicker between real and illusion.
The Playhouse had shifted again.
It always did after a major event. This time, instead of a new game, a "free day" was declared. But Kayaks didn't trust it. Nothing in the Playhouse was ever free.
---
In the East Wing, Eli was decoding a piece of forgotten code embedded in the gift they received from the market: a sealed tablet labeled **"Playhouse Directive: Alpha-Shift."**
"You sure you want to open it?" Lena asked him.
"No," Eli replied. "But the system gave this to us for a reason. Which means it wants something."
He cracked the seal.
The lights in the room blinked red for two seconds.
Somewhere across the Playhouse, three contestants vanished without warning.
---
In the South Wing, **Merris** stood at the balcony of the glass tower, watching his hands. They trembled—though he no longer had the emotional capacity to understand *why*.
He had traded away his moral compass. Yet something inside still fought.
He remembered Kayaks' words in the Trait Market.
"Power isn't worth becoming the thing we're running from."
For a brief moment, his Echo flickered gold instead of gray.
---
Kayaks wandered into a quiet room.
He found **a boy sobbing**.
"They took her," he said. "They took Mila. No announcement. No vote. Just gone."
"What happened?" Kayaks crouched beside him.
"We were talking… and then she screamed. She vanished. And the ceiling whispered something—something I didn't understand."
Kayaks heard it, too. A phrase left hanging in the air like ash:
> "**False Choice: Silent War initiated.**"
---
> **Event Type:** Hidden Faction Conflict
> **Status:** Active
> **Participation:** Unannounced
> **Elimination Rules:** Unknown
> **Objective:** ???
> **Player Informed:** No
> "Some games… aren't announced."
---
Kayaks gathered Eli, Lena, and the few remaining players he trusted.
> "We're under attack, and we don't even know the rules," he said.
> "Which means the ones who do… are already playing it," Eli added.
> "And someone just sacrificed Mila to make their first move," Lena concluded.
From the shadows of the chapel corridor, **Torran** listened—expression unreadable.
He whispered to the wall, where a familiar face flickered into view: a godlike figure of blue light, half-smiling.
> "They've begun to resist," Torran said.
> "Let them," the voice replied. "It makes the collapse sweeter."
---
By nightfall, four more players were gone.
No deaths. No screams. Just… missing.
The gods weren't playing anymore.
The contestants were.
---
**End of Chapter 5**