"The gods didn't design the Playhouse to be fair. They built it to **break** us."
---
Kayaks hadn't slept in two days. Not since the vision in the Hollow Garden—the scar in the earth, the mimic of Mila, the spheres of the Unwritten.
The others had scattered as planned.
But in the hours since, only one transmission had come through.
> "Eli to KAY-7. I'm inside the Game Engine. This place… It's alive. I don't know if I'll make it out."
That was six hours ago.
No signal since.
Kayaks stared at the broken screen mounted in their temporary safe zone—an old rest bay in the East Wall, just below the Bleeding Arena.
The group's map lay on the table, trembling faintly—not from wind, but from **something moving underneath the Playhouse.**
---
### 🔧 *Game Engine Core – Hours Earlier*
Eli had moved like a shadow through corridors of steel and dust.
He had no powers of stealth—his Divine Trait was ***Synthesis***, allowing him to combine small objects and data into greater inventions—but he'd used it well.
> Two glasses = prism scanner.
> Old blade + mirror = invis-reflector.
> Broken scrolls = echo code.
It brought him this far: the **Core of the Playhouse.**
A vast black sphere, suspended over a molten pit, beating like a heart.
He whispered into his earpiece, "Kayaks, I found it. This is where every game, every room, even the players' movements are written."
He stepped forward, towards a floating interface—runic panels, holographic glyphs spinning in twelve dialects.
> "Welcome," the voice said. "Please insert your Will."
> "What?"
The panel pulsed.
A spike of metal jabbed from it—piercing his palm.
> "Accepting Divine Will: ***Eli Vance, Contestant 073.*** Initiating Write Access."
Suddenly, the Core shuddered.
All around him, games flickered alive—hundreds of simulations, impossible landscapes, impossible deaths.
He saw Lena battling shadows in a maze of screams. Merris crossing a lake of silence. Kayaks standing alone, watched by twelve masked figures.
And beyond them, others—players he hadn't met, dozens of them.
> "They're not all dead," he whispered. "The Silent War… is still running. It's a *subroutine.*"
Then he saw something that made him freeze.
The final simulation.
**A black square. No name. No lights. But inside it… was a boy. Crying. Alone.**
Kayaks.
> "They've marked him for deletion."
Before he could react, the Core pulsed again.
> "Unauthorized Access Detected. Initiating Mind Lock."
Eli screamed as the world spun red.
---
### ⛓️ *Back in the Playhouse – Safe Zone*
Kayaks doubled over, his head splitting in pain.
> "Eli," he gasped. "He's in trouble."
Lena ran to him. "You heard him?"
> "No. I *felt* him. Something's happened. I need to go."
> "We all do."
They didn't hesitate. With Iris and Merris reconnected via the South Passage, the full group reassembled for the first time in two days.
Each had changed.
* **Merris** had scars across his arms—wounds that sang when lies were near.
* **Iris** now carried a blade shaped like an old god's fang—she didn't explain where it came from.
* **Lena** wore a bracelet of melted memories—a relic pulled from the Hollow Garden's depths.
Together, they marched toward the Game Engine.
Reaching the Core meant descending through a trial called the **Trial of Versions.**
Each floor confronted them with copies of themselves—false versions, reprogrammed with corrupted traits.
Kayaks faced a version of himself still homeless, still afraid. The boy begged.
> "Don't change. Please. If you forget pain, you'll forget people like me."
But Kayaks pressed forward.
One floor down, Lena faced her "perfect self"—beloved, rich, praised.
She broke its neck without a word.
Merris, strangely, smiled at his copy.
> "I buried you once. I'll do it again."
Only Iris hesitated. Her twin stood silent, weeping.
> "I was erased once too," the twin whispered. "And I remember *everything.*"
When they reached the chamber, Eli was suspended mid-air—threads of red data wrapping around him like veins.
His body convulsed, caught in a battle between mind and machine.
Kayaks stepped forward, placing his hand on the panel.
> "Override. I invoke Trial Clause 99."
The system paused. Then answered:
> "Clause 99: Divine Reckoning. Only accessible by a contestant chosen by the Pantheon."
> "I am."
The Core split. Flames erupted.
Out stepped the **first Game Architect**—a being made of shifting glass and flame, no face, only spinning masks.
> "You wish to challenge the System?" it asked.
> "I wish to free my friend."
> "Then defeat the Simulation of Truth."
Suddenly, the chamber morphed.
They were no longer in the Core.
They stood in a copy of Earth.
On a rainy street.
Where Kayaks had once slept in a cardboard box.
Alone.
Again.
.....
"Welcome back," said the mask.
It gestured at the cardboard, the empty lot, the shattered dream.
> "This is who you were. And who you will become. If you lose."
The mirror showed Kayaks old and broken. The world had moved on.
> "No one will remember you. Because you don't matter."
But he wasn't alone this time.
Lena stepped beside him.
Then Merris. Iris.
Even Eli, though weakened, appeared—his eyes flickering blue with data.
> "We're not forgotten," Kayaks said, stepping toward the mask. "We've seen the system. We've walked the echoes."
He crushed the mirror with his fist.
> "We are **not** your game pieces."
---
The mask cracked.
The Core shattered.
And Eli fell, caught by Iris.
*End of Chapter 7*