The heat hit them before they could see the flames.
Arden stumbled through the orange door and immediately felt the air sear her lungs. It was like breathing through a furnace, each inhale scorching her throat, each exhale bringing no relief. The door slammed shut behind them with a sound like a crematorium sealing. When she tried to turn back, there was only a brick wall covered in ash and scorch marks. No door. No exit. Just heat and smoke and the distant sound of things collapsing.
Kael grabbed her arm and pulled her forward. They were standing on a rooftop. Cracked concrete beneath their feet, rusted metal railings at the edges, a water tower that had melted into surreal shapes like a Salvador Dali painting. Beyond the rooftop stretched a city that had become hell.
Every building burned. Not metaphorically. Not partially. Every single structure as far as Arden could see was engulfed in flames that reached toward a sky choked with black smoke. The fire wasn't natural. It moved wrong, burned wrong, existed wrong. Orange and red and blue flames mixed together, some burning upward, others burning sideways, a few burning downward in defiance of physics. The smoke formed shapes that looked almost human, almost intentional, like the fire itself was conscious and hungry.
This was her second novel. The one her editor had said was too depressing, too bleak, too honest about what climate apocalypse really meant. She had written it after months of research into wildfires, urban conflagrations, and the psychology of helplessness in the face of overwhelming destruction. She had titled it "The Burning Hour" as a callback to her first book, creating a thematic duology about water and fire, drowning and burning, two ways the world could end.
Now she was standing inside that ending.
"How bad is it?" Kael asked. His voice was steady but his eyes scanned the burning cityscape with military assessment. Calculating threats, escape routes, survival odds. All of them terrible.
"In the book, there are no survivors," Arden said. She had to shout over the roar of flames and the sound of buildings collapsing blocks away. "The city burns for seven days and seven nights. Everyone dies. Some from fire, some from smoke, some from dehydration, some from choosing to jump rather than burn. I killed them all because I wanted to make a point about inevitability. About how some disasters can't be survived, only witnessed."
"Well that's cheerful." Kael moved to the edge of the rooftop and looked down. Fifty stories straight down to streets filled with fire. No way down except falling. He turned back to Arden. "So if there are no survivors in your version, what's the Game's version? There has to be an exit."
"I don't know. I didn't write an exit. I wrote an ending."
"Then we write a new ending." Kael pulled her toward the water tower. "First priority, breathe. This smoke is going to kill us before the fire does. Second priority, figure out the rules. Every station has rules. What were the rules in your book?"
Arden tried to think through the heat haze in her brain. Her shoulder still throbbed from the injury in Station Two. Her body ached from Station Three's electric shocks. She was dehydrated, exhausted, traumatized from three stations of death and survival. But Kael was right. There were always rules.
"The fire spreads in patterns," she said slowly, memory returning. "It moves through the city based on wind patterns, fuel sources, and time. In the book, I mapped it all out. The fire starts in the industrial district at dawn. Spreads to residential areas by noon. Reaches downtown by evening. The entire city is ash by the seventh sunrise."
"So we have a timeline. How long?"
"If dawn was when we entered, we have maybe twelve hours before this entire rooftop is engulfed."
"Then we move before that happens." Kael tested the water tower's access ladder. The metal was hot enough to blister skin but still structurally sound. He climbed up quickly, moved with the efficiency of someone who had trained for exactly this kind of disaster scenario. At the top, he forced open the access hatch and looked inside. Then he laughed. It wasn't a happy sound.
"What?" Arden called up.
"The water's boiling. Literally boiling. This tower is a fifty foot tall tea kettle." He climbed back down, jumping the last few feet. "So no water. What else?"
Before Arden could answer, a sound cut through the roar of flames. Human screaming. Multiple voices crying for help. The sound came from a building adjacent to their rooftop, maybe thirty feet away across an alley filled with fire. Through a window on the twentieth floor, Arden could see shapes moving. People trapped inside.
"Please!" A woman's voice, desperate and hoarse from smoke. "Please help us! We can't get out! The stairs are blocked!"
Kael moved to the edge of their rooftop, assessing the distance. "Could jump it. Maybe. If the landing doesn't collapse."
"It's a trap," Arden said. The words came automatically, born from knowing her own stories too well. "In the book, people hear screaming and try to rescue survivors. But the buildings are unstable. The floors collapse. The rescuers die with the people they're trying to save. It's about the psychology of helplessness. About how empathy can be weaponized in a disaster."
"So we ignore them?"
"I'm saying it's probably not real. The screaming. The people. It's like the mannequins you mentioned from watching other players. The Game creates false survivors to test us. To see if we'll risk ourselves for others."
The screaming intensified. Now Arden could see the people clearly. Four of them. Three women and a man. They were pounding on the windows, their faces pressed against the glass. One of them was holding a child. A little girl, maybe five years old, crying silently behind the thick window glass.
"If it's a trap, we let them burn," Kael said. It wasn't a question. Just a tactical assessment of the situation. "If it's real, we let them burn anyway because we can't save them without dying ourselves."
"Yes." Arden felt something cold settle in her chest. This was the Station Four she had created. Not physical danger like the castle or the fall. Moral danger. Forcing players to choose between empathy and survival. Making them become monsters to stay alive. She had written this to make readers uncomfortable, to challenge the hero narrative, to show that sometimes there are no good choices.
Now she had to live inside that challenge.
The building across the alley erupted in a fresh wave of flames. The people in the window screamed louder. The little girl's silent crying became visible sobbing. Arden could see her mouth forming the word "Mama" over and over.
"We need to move," Kael said. "Find a way down, find the exit, get out before this whole area collapses." He turned away from the screaming. Started examining the rooftop for access points, fire escapes, anything that could get them to ground level.
Arden stood frozen. Always frozen. Always hesitating. The little girl looked directly at her through the smoke and flames. Made eye contact. Mouthed, "Please."
Forty seven seconds. That's how long Arden stood there counting heartbeats while deciding whether to act.
Then the building collapsed.
Not gradually. Not with warning. One moment it was standing with people screaming inside. The next moment it folded inward like a house of cards, fifty stories of concrete and steel imploding in a cloud of fire and ash and human screaming that cut off abruptly when the rubble hit the ground. The debris crashed into the alley between buildings, sending a wave of heat and smoke across the rooftop that knocked Arden backward.
When the dust cleared, the building was gone. Just a pile of burning rubble. No survivors. No bodies visible. Just destruction.
Arden stared at where the little girl had been. Felt nothing. That was worse than feeling guilty. She had hesitated again, but this time she didn't feel guilt. Just cold calculation. They might have been real. They might have been traps. It didn't matter. They were dead and she was alive and that was how Station Four worked.
She was becoming the monster she had always written about.
"Arden." Kael was beside her, hand on her good shoulder. "Look at me. Not at that. At me."
She looked at him. His face was covered in ash and sweat. Blood still crusted under his nose from Station Three's shocks. His eyes were the only clean thing about him, brown and clear and focused entirely on her.
"We couldn't have saved them," he said quietly. "Real or fake, we couldn't have reached them in time. You made the right choice."
"Did I?" Arden heard her voice come out flat. "Or did I just hesitate until the choice was made for me? Like I always do. Like I did with Lira. Like I did with your original self. I don't make choices, Kael. I just wait until circumstances make them for me. Then I pretend I decided something."
"That's not true."
"It is. You know it is. I didn't choose to save you in the castle. I just knew the layout. I didn't choose to use the Codebook in the fall. I just panicked and wrote something. I didn't choose to tell the truth in Station Three. The shocks forced it out of me. I'm not brave. I'm not a survivor. I'm just someone who keeps accidentally not dying while everyone around me does."
Kael opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, a new sound cut through the roar of flames. Not screaming this time. Music. A tinny, distorted version of a song Arden recognized. A pop song from a few years ago. Something about survival and being unstoppable. The kind of song that played in workout playlists and motivational videos.
The music was coming from a nearby rooftop. Three buildings over. And standing on that rooftop, silhouetted against the flames, was a figure in designer athleisure holding up a phone. Filming.
Lira.
Even from this distance, even through the smoke and heat distortion, Arden recognized her sister. The platinum blonde hair. The perfect posture. The way she moved like the world was her personal runway even while surrounded by an apocalypse.
Lira lowered the phone and waved. Big, exaggerated, pageant queen wave. Then she cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted across the burning city.
"Love the moral dilemma content, sis! Very on brand! The Audience is eating it up!" Her voice carried with impossible clarity. Maybe the Game was amplifying it. Maybe Arden's guilt was making it louder. "Watching you not save those people? Chef's kiss! You're finally embracing your inner villain!"
"She survived Station One," Arden said numbly. "The door left her behind but she's here. How is she here?"
"Does it matter?" Kael's voice was hard. "She's a threat. She's already planning something. We need to move."
But Arden couldn't look away from her sister. Lira was holding up her phone again, filming herself now instead of Arden. Doing what she always did. Performing. Creating content. Turning everything into entertainment for an audience Arden couldn't see but could feel watching. Millions of dead souls feeding on this drama. Sibling rivalry as bloodsport.
Lira's voice carried again. "By the way, you might want to check out the building behind you! I think I hear more screaming! More opportunities to prove what kind of person you really are!"
Arden spun around. The building their rooftop was attached to, the structure they were standing on top of, was a high rise apartment complex. Fifty stories of residential units. And now that Lira had pointed it out, Arden could hear it. Faint but growing louder. Voices calling for help from inside the building beneath their feet.
"It's a trap," Kael said immediately. "Your sister is setting traps."
"Or there are real people in there and she knows I won't save them because I think it's a trap." Arden moved to a rooftop access door. It was locked from the inside. She kicked it hard. The door shuddered but held. Kicked again. On the third kick, the lock broke and the door swung inward.
Beyond was a stairwell filled with smoke. Emergency lights flickered red along the walls. The stairs descended into darkness and heat. From somewhere far below came the sound of fire crackling and people crying out.
"Don't," Kael said. He grabbed her arm. "Arden, listen to me. If you go down there, you might not come back up. Structural collapse. Smoke inhalation. Any number of things that can kill you. And if it is a trap, you're walking right into it."
"And if it's not a trap? If there are real players down there who made it past three stations just like we did? People who deserve a chance to survive?"
"Then they'll die. Like everyone else in this game dies eventually. Like we'll die if we don't focus on finding the exit."
Arden looked at Kael. Really looked at him. At the man who was either real or a construct. Either the actual Kael Draven who jumped on a grenade or something she had written into existence. It didn't matter which. What mattered was that he was right. Going into that building was stupid. Dangerous. Likely fatal.
But maybe that was the point. Maybe Station Four wasn't testing whether they could survive the fire. Maybe it was testing whether they were willing to sacrifice their chance at survival for others. Whether they would choose empathy over self-preservation.
Or maybe Arden was overthinking it and this was just another death trap in a city designed to kill everyone inside it.
"I'm going down," she said. "You don't have to follow."
"Like hell I don't." Kael checked his belt, wishing for weapons he didn't have. "But we do this smart. We go down three floors. Check for survivors. If we find anyone real, we bring them up. If we don't, we leave. Five minutes maximum. Any longer and we're dead."
"Five minutes."
They descended into the stairwell together. The temperature increased with every step down. The smoke thickened until Arden had to pull her shirt over her mouth and nose just to breathe. The emergency lights cast everything in hellish red. Somewhere below, something exploded. The building shook.
"That's floor forty seven collapsing," Kael said. He had his hand on the wall, feeling vibrations. "We're on floor fifty. When the fire reaches floor forty eight, this whole structure could go."
They reached the forty-ninth floor landing. The door was slightly open. Smoke poured through the gap. Kael pushed it wider with his boot and they stepped into a corridor filled with apartment doors. Most were closed. A few hung open, showing empty units inside.
At the far end of the corridor, someone was pounding on a door. A man in his thirties, covered in ash, coughing violently. He looked real. Solid. Not like the mannequins from the burning buildings outside.
"Help!" he choked out when he saw them. "My wife! She's trapped in here! The door's jammed! I can't get it open!"
Kael moved fast. Reached the man in seconds. Examined the door. The frame had warped from heat, jamming the door in place. "Step back," he ordered. When the man moved, Kael kicked the door hard. Once. Twice. On the third kick it flew inward.
Inside the apartment, a woman was huddled in the corner of the living room with two children. Real children. Not game constructs. Arden could tell by the way they moved, the terror in their eyes, the way they clutched their mother. These were actual players. Actual people who had died and entered the Game and somehow made it to Station Four.
"Thank you," the woman sobbed. "Thank you. We've been trapped since the fire started. My husband went to find help and I thought he wasn't coming back and "
"We need to move now," Kael interrupted. "This building is collapsing. We go up to the roof. Three floors. Can you make it?"
"Yes. Yes, we can make it."
They ran. The family of four and Arden and Kael, all running up the stairwell as the building groaned and shook around them. The smoke was thicker now. The heat unbearable. Arden's lungs burned. Her vision blurred. But she kept moving. Kept climbing. Kept pushing.
They burst back onto the rooftop just as the forty-eighth floor collapsed with a sound like thunder. The entire building tilted slightly. Arden stumbled, nearly fell over the edge. Kael caught her, pulled her back to safety.
Across the gap, Lira was still filming. Still smiling. But something in her expression had changed. She looked surprised. Maybe disappointed. Maybe impressed.
"Well well," Lira called out. "Look at you being all heroic. Saved the nuclear family. Very heartwarming. The Audience is conflicted half of them love the redemption arc, half of them wanted you to leave them to burn." She lowered her phone. "But here's the thing, sis. Those weren't the only people in the building."
Arden's stomach dropped. "What?"
"There were five more players on the forty-sixth floor. Different apartment. Different corridor. You walked right past them." Lira's smile widened. "So you saved four people. Let five die. Still net negative on the survival count. Still more monster than hero."
"You're lying."
"Am I?" Lira gestured to the building behind Arden. "Listen."
Arden listened. And through the roar of flames and collapse, she heard it. Faint. Far below. Screaming. Different voices from the family they'd saved. Five voices. Crying for help from a floor that was about to collapse completely.
"You have maybe two minutes to go back down and get them," Lira said cheerfully. "But if you go, you probably die. The building won't hold. So what's it going to be? Save everyone and die trying? Or save these four and live with the guilt of letting five more burn?"
This was it. The real trap. Not the fake survivors outside. Not the challenge of entering the building. This. The impossible choice. Save everyone or save some. Risk death for strangers or guarantee survival by abandoning them.
Station Four's true test.
Kael already knew what she was thinking. "No. Absolutely not. We got these people out. That's enough. We're not going back down."
The father of the family stepped forward. "I'll go. They saved us. I can help save others."
"You have two small children," Kael said flatly. "You go down, you don't come back up, they lose both parents. That's not heroic. That's stupid."
"Then what do we do?" The man looked at Arden desperately. "Just let them die?"
Arden pulled out the Codebook.
She had been carrying it since Station Two, tucked into her jacket. The leather was warm from being pressed against her body. When she opened it, the pages glowed softly in the firelight. Most were filled with her handwriting. Stories she'd written. Manifestations she'd caused. But toward the back, blank pages remained.
She flipped to the first blank page and started writing.
"The fire retreated from floor forty-six. The smoke cleared. The five players trapped there found the stairwell accessible. They climbed to safety. No collapse. No deaths. A moment of mercy in hell."
The Codebook glowed brighter. The words shimmered. Arden felt something inside her chest twist and pull, like invisible hands reaching into her ribcage and taking something essential. The cost of manifestation. The price of playing god.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then from inside the building, the sound of running footsteps. Getting closer. Moving up. Five people emerged from the stairwell access door, coughing and crying and alive. Two men. Three women. Real players. Real people Arden had just saved with words instead of action.
Across the gap, Lira stopped smiling. "Oh," she said quietly. "You found the Codebook. That changes things."
The building beneath them gave a final groan and began to truly collapse. Not just lower floors. Everything. The entire structure folding in on itself like a dying star. Arden and Kael and the nine survivors ran for the edge of the rooftop. There was a maintenance bridge connecting this building to another. It was narrow. Rusted. On fire in several places. But it was the only way across.
They ran single file. The bridge swayed and buckled. Metal screamed. Behind them, the building they had just left imploded completely, sending a wave of debris and heat that nearly knocked them all into the burning alley below.
But they made it. All eleven of them reached the next rooftop and collapsed gasping and crying and alive.
Arden's hands were shaking. She looked at the Codebook. The page where she had written the rescue was now blank. The words had vanished after manifesting. And in their place, burned into the leather cover, was a new mark. A scar shaped like a flame.
Each use left a mark. A record. A price.
"That was incredible," one of the women they'd saved said breathlessly. "You saved us. Both groups. How did you do that? How did you make the fire stop?"
Arden didn't answer. Just stared at the Codebook and wondered how many more uses it had before it stopped working entirely. Before the cost became too high.
Kael was scanning the cityscape, looking for the next move. "We need to keep moving. This rooftop won't last either. The fire spreads in patterns, you said. Where does it go next?"
Before Arden could answer, the rooftop beneath them rumbled. Not from fire. From something else. A sound like machinery. Like gears turning.
The concrete split open. Right down the middle. Creating a massive gap that divided the rooftop into two halves. On one half, Arden, Kael, and the family of four. On the other half, the five people Arden had saved with the Codebook.
And rising from the gap between them, emerging from the burning building below, was a figure made entirely of fire. Not flames covering a person. Not a person on fire. A being constructed from fire itself. Humanoid in shape but twice the size of a normal person. Its eyes burned white-hot. Its mouth was an inferno.
When it spoke, its voice was the sound of a forest burning.
"The Burning Hour demands sacrifice. You saved nine where five were meant to die. The balance must be restored. Choose five to burn, or all burn together."
This was what Arden had written in her novel. The personification of fire as a conscious entity. A god of destruction that didn't hate humanity but didn't care about them either. It simply was. And it required fuel. It required bodies. It required sacrifice to continue existing.
She had created this. Had written it to represent the inevitability of disaster. How nature doesn't compromise or negotiate. How some forces simply consume until there's nothing left to consume.
Now that force was asking her to choose who died.
The nine survivors were all looking at her. The family of four on her side of the gap. The five individuals on the other side. All of them alive because of her. All of them waiting for her decision.
"This is insane," the father said. "We're not sacrificing anyone. We fight it. All of us together."
"You can't fight fire," Kael said. He had positioned himself between Arden and the fire entity. Protective to the end. "It's not alive. It's not mortal. It's a force given form."
"Then what do we do?"
Arden looked at the Codebook. Looked at the blank pages remaining. She could write something. Could try to banish the fire entity or save everyone or break the rules. But the cost was increasing with each use. And something told her that if she tried to save all nine people again, the price would be more than she could pay.
Station Four's truth was becoming clear. This wasn't about surviving fire. It was about surviving the choice. About whether you could live with yourself after deciding who lives and dies. About whether the guilt of letting people burn was worse than the guilt of choosing who burns.
"Arden." Kael's voice was quiet. "We need to decide. Now."
She looked at the nine people. The family with small children. The five individuals who were strangers. All of them equally human. Equally deserving of life. Equally valuable.
And Arden realized, there was no right answer. That was the test. Not finding the right answer but accepting that sometimes there isn't one. Sometimes you just have to choose and live with the consequences.
Or refuse to choose and face different consequences.
"No," Arden said. She closed the Codebook. Looked directly at the fire entity. "I'm not choosing. You want five deaths? Take me five times. I'll die and respawn. I'll die over and over until you have your five sacrifices. But I'm not choosing between them."
The fire entity tilted its head. "That is not how the balance works. Five distinct souls. Not one soul five times."
"Then the balance stays unbalanced. I'm not doing it."
"Then all burn."
"Then all burn."
Kael grabbed her arm. "Arden, what are you doing? You're going to kill everyone including yourself."
"No. I'm refusing to play. That's different." She raised her voice, projecting across the rooftop, making sure Lira heard this too. Making sure the Audience heard. "I've been playing by the Game's rules since Station One. Surviving. Adapting. Making choices I regret. Becoming someone I don't recognize. But this? Choosing five people to burn alive? That's not survival. That's murder. And I won't do it."
"You'll die," the fire entity said without emotion. "They'll all die. Your refusal changes nothing."
"It changes me. That's enough."
For a long moment, nothing happened. The fire entity stood there, burning silently. The nine survivors held their breath. Kael looked at Arden like she had lost her mind. Maybe she had.
Then the fire entity began to laugh. The sound was like a wildfire consuming dry brush. Crackling and roaring and oddly joyful.
"Entertainment value, maximum. The Audience is satisfied. The girl who hesitates finally makes a choice to refuse the choice. Unexpected. Refreshing. You pass Station Four."
The entity dissolved into flames that flowed back into the gap in the rooftop. The concrete sealed itself back together. And in the center of the rooftop, where the entity had stood, a door appeared.
Not orange this time. Green. The color of things growing despite fire. The color of life persisting.
The door to Station Five.
"That's it?" One of the five survivors Arden had saved with the Codebook looked stunned. "We just... survived? Because she refused to choose?"
"The Game wanted to see if she'd become a monster," Kael said slowly. Understanding dawning in his eyes. "If she'd sacrifice others to save herself. When she refused, it became entertainment of a different kind. A character actually developing. Growing. That's rare enough to be valuable."
Across the gap, Lira was visible on her distant rooftop. She wasn't filming anymore. Just standing there. Watching. Her expression was impossible to read through the smoke and flames.
"The green door," Arden said. She was shaking. Adrenaline crash hitting her hard. "Everyone through. Now. Before the Game changes its mind."
They moved as a group. All eleven of them crowding around the door. The father reached it first, pulled it open. Beyond was not another terminal but something different. A transitional space. A corridor lined with screens showing their statistics.
STATION FOUR COMPLETE PLAYERS ENTERED, 11 PLAYERS SURVIVED, 11 AUDIENCE SATISFACTION, 94% ENTERTAINMENT VALUE, MAXIMUM SPECIAL NOTATION, PROTAGONIST DEVELOPMENT ACCELERATED
"All of us survived," the mother said in wonder. She was holding her children close. "That's never happened before. In the other stations, people died. Lots of people. But we all made it through this one."
"Because she saved us," one of the five Codebook rescues said. He looked at Arden with something like reverence. "You could have left us. Could have chosen to sacrifice us to save yourself. But you didn't. Thank you."
Arden wanted to tell him not to thank her. That she'd only survived by refusing to choose, which was just another form of hesitation. That she was still the same person who counted seconds while her sister drowned. That one good choice didn't erase a lifetime of cowardice.
But before she could speak, Kael pulled her aside. Away from the others. His expression was troubled.
"You used the Codebook again," he said quietly. "What did it cost? Last time in Station Two, you said it felt like something was taken. What happened this time?"
Arden opened the Codebook and showed him. Not just the new flame-shaped scar on the cover, but something worse. When she flipped through the pages, entire chapters of her past stories had vanished. Blank pages where there had been words. Memories of writing those stories felt faint now. Distant.
"It took my work," she said. "The stories I wrote before dying. It's erasing them. Consuming my creativity to fuel manifestations." She laughed bitterly. "The ultimate cost for a writer. Not just using your words to create. Losing the ability to remember what you've already created."
"Can you still write new things?"
"I think so. But every time I use it, more pages go blank. Eventually there will be nothing left. No memories of my stories. No record of what I wrote. Just empty pages and the knowledge that I used to be a writer but can't remember what I wrote about."
Kael was quiet for a moment. Then, "Was it worth it? Trading your work for their lives?"
Arden looked at the nine people moving through the corridor. The family with children who would have burned. The five individuals who would have suffocated. All alive. All moving forward. All because she had written four sentences.
"Yes," she said. And meant it.
They followed the others through the corridor. The screens on the walls showed more than just statistics now. They showed clips. Moments from Station Four. Arden refusing to save the first group that collapsed. Arden saving the family. Arden using the Codebook. Arden refusing the fire entity's demand.
And in one screen, isolated in a loop, was Lira. Not filming. Not performing. Just standing on her distant rooftop watching Arden walk away. And on her face, just for a moment before the loop restarted, was an expression Arden hadn't seen since they were children.
Not hatred. Not rage. Not satisfaction.
Loneliness.
The corridor ended at another door. Green like the first but glowing softly. When they opened it, beyond was water. Not a room filled with water. Not a pool. Just water extending infinitely in all directions. An ocean.
"Station Five," Arden said quietly. "The Silent Ocean."
From her second novel. The one about drowning. The one about Lira.
The one where no one could hear you scream.
They stepped through together and the door sealed behind them. Immediately, sound died. Not gradually. Instantly. One moment Arden could hear her own breathing, her heartbeat, the shuffle of feet. The next moment, absolute silence.
She opened her mouth to speak. Nothing. Not muted. Not quiet. Literally no sound emerged. She couldn't even hear her own voice inside her skull. Couldn't hear her thoughts as sound.
Kael was beside her, also trying to speak. His mouth moved but produced nothing. They were underwater but could breathe. Could move normally. Could see clearly. But sound had been completely removed from existence.
The other nine survivors were panicking silently. Mouths open in screams that produced no noise. Hands clawing at their throats trying to produce sound that wouldn't come.
And ahead of them, floating in the water like they had been waiting, were other players. Arden counted quickly. Eight of them. Making nineteen total players in Station Five.
Nineteen out of the original forty-seven.
One of the floating players swam closer. It was the woman in yoga pants from Station Two. The one who had been ruthless, violent, willing to kill for survival. She looked different now. Less aggressive. More desperate. She was holding up a makeshift sign written on fabric torn from her clothes.
The sign said, BEEN HERE FOR DAYS. CAN'T FIND EXIT. GOING INSANE FROM SILENCE. HELP.
Arden realized with cold certainty what Station Five's challenge was.
Not fire. Not monsters. Not moral choices.
Communication.
In a place where sound didn't exist, where you couldn't speak or hear or call for help, how did you coordinate? How did you work together? How did you survive when the most basic human tool language had been stripped away?
This was going to be worse than burning.
Because fire killed the body.
But silence killed the mind.