Chapter 2

Others started arriving.

Not gracefully.

Some stumbled out of the mist, coughing.

One guy landed face-first in the mud with a yelp.

A woman was crying, her fancy clothes ripped and stained.

They looked as lost and broken as I felt.

The System didn' t care about soft landings.

Then, a familiar voice.

"Alex? Is that you?"

Ben.

He looked tired, his glasses smudged, but he was standing.

Behind him, Chloe, small and trembling, clutched his arm.

"Alex!"

She ran to me, a quick, desperate hug.

"We made it."

I nodded, a small relief in the pit of my stomach. "Us and who else?"

Ben adjusted his glasses. "My new number is twenty-three. Chloe is twenty-four."

"I'm twenty-two," I said.

Chloe' s eyes widened. "The order we survived in? From... before?"

It made a grim kind of sense. The System liked its twisted little rules.

Suddenly, a sound drifted from the manor's upper floors.

Music.

A woman' s voice, singing a lullaby in Creole French.

It was slow, mournful, and deeply unsettling.

The melody was haunting, the words just out of reach, but I caught phrases.

"...amour perdu..."

"...lune en patchwork..."

"...secrets du bayou..."

The song wrapped around us, cold and unwelcome.

The game was starting.