The room seemed larger without the goblin in it, as if its voice had been another wall. In the wake of “Good luck,” the only sound was the slow wet breathing of the stones and the faint sizzle of candlewicks trying to live. Kevin kept his arms folded, not because it warmed him but because it made his body feel like a smaller target. The four doorways the speech had conjured still gaped: north, a plain rectangle where the podium had been; east and west, twin cut mouths in the walls; and behind them all, the grand one-arched and veined with a dull, angry glow, a faint sulfur tang leaking out. He tried not to look at it. It felt like being watched back.

  Someone broke first. “?Qué… qué es esto?” The woman in the tracksuit—mid-twenties, hair scraped into a wet ponytail, gooseflesh stippling her skin, her thighs-hugged herself and stared at the western door.

  Kevin understood her. Not just the sound; the meaning carried cleanly into his head, like subtitles burned into vision. Spanish, his brain labeled, uselessly. He had never studied it. He knew a handful of restaurant words, nothing else. But what she’d said—What is this?—landed with the clarity of English.

  He wasn’t sure if he hated that more than the doors.

  The businesswoman turned in the same instant. “你…你也听得懂吗？” She spoke softly, carefully, like trying not to startle a dog. Kevin understood You can understand me too? even as her mouth shaped sounds his ear had always filed under foreign.

  “Da,” the heavy-set man in paint-splattered trousers said. “We are understanding. This is… this is not normal.” His accent carried a block of consonants like a tool bag. Polish? Russian? Kevin’s brain tried on flags and shrugged.

  The schoolboy made a noise halfway between a laugh and a choke. “Are we all—is it like that for everyone?” His blazer had an embroidered crest. His tie hung undone. He clutched his dead phone in both hands like prayer.

  It was a stupid time to speak, which meant Kevin did. “Yes.” His voice sounded like someone else’s in this room. He hated that too. “I can understand all of you.”

  The tattooed woman snorted. Shaved head, ink spiraling down her neck into a collarbone tattoo that disappeared under a ripped vest; eyes that measured edges and exits. British, probably London by the clipped mocking tone. “Well that’s convenient, innit. Bloody magic Rosetta Stone. Would’a been a nice party trick last week.”

  The granddad in the mallard dressing gown blinked as if trying to clear a fog from his eyes. “I… I think I can, too,” he whispered, then louder, with the meekness of someone apologising for existing: “Yes. I can understand.” He wrung his hands, skin like crumpled paper over blue veins.

  The man in boxers didn’t say anything. He stood apart, arms folded tighter than Kevin’s, his jaw grinding under grim stubble. His wedding ring looked too bright in the bad light. He kept glancing at the eastern door the way a dog looks at a gate it knows will open.

  Kevin watched all of them, inventorying. He didn’t want their names. Names were hooks. Hooks meant obligations. But part of him already had a list: the businesswoman (steady voice, smart shoes she didn’t have anymore), the tracksuit woman (frightened but not frozen), the workman (big hands, practical eyes), the granddad (fragile), the kid (shocky, might panic), the tattooed woman (dangerous in ways not related to muscle), the boxer man (cold, already leaving), the other foreign man (Marek? it felt like a Marek), and the quiet East Asian guy in a thin hospital gown-when had he appeared?-shivering and looking at the north door with a blankness that made Kevin’s stomach wobble. That made nine. Plus him. Ten.

  “We should introduce ourselves,” the businesswoman said. Her voice had that office calm that works on rooms with carpets and coffee machines. Here it sounded like pretending. “I’m Amara.”

  “Sofía,” the tracksuit woman said, Spanish sharpening into the name. She hugged herself tighter as if the syllables were heat.

  “Darren,” the heavy-set man said, dragging a forearm over his wet cheeks. He was the type who built shelves for people and never got paid on time. Kevin could smell the solvent still caught in the fabric of his trousers.

  “Colin,” the granddad put in, apologising with a smile. “I’m- I was-” He searched for a noun that didn’t matter anymore. Retired, Kevin supplied and felt mean for it.

  The schoolboy flapped one hand in a self-conscious wave. “Liam.”

  The East Asian man lifted his chin a bare degree. “Wei.” His lips stayed thin. His eyes were not unfriendly; just stripped of anything but calculation.

  The tattooed woman tilted her head. “Kira.” She did not ask for anyone else’s, because she did not care.

  They all looked at the boxer man. He looked at the eastern door. “No,” he said. Not a name. A refusal. He shifted his weight like an argument with gravity, then looked at the rest of them with flat contempt, the kind that usually comes dressed as self-protection.

  Kevin kept his own name inside his teeth. The goblin had said PVP like a joke. He didn’t want to give anyone a label to shout if that joke turned into a rule. You could die, and someone could know who to tell themselves they had killed. His chest tightened. Taking a life? Could I do that? Would I have to? Kevin still wasn’t sure this was entirely real. Maybe he had been hit by a bus, either laying unconscious, or maybe this was some kind of test before entering the after-life. But just a glance down reminded him where he was just before the flash, his numb toes forgetting themselves.

  Amara took a breath that steadied her shoulders. “Listen. We don’t know what’s beyond those doors. We do know the room we’re in is safe for the moment. We should—”

  “We should go,” Kira cut in. “While it’s quiet.”

  Darren bristled. “Go where? Blind? Together makes sense. We can -”

  “Together makes you slow.” She gave him half a smile, a knife grin with the blade facedown. “‘Makes you worth chasing.”

  The kid, Liam, swallowed. “Maybe she’s- maybe there are like… levels? The goblin said adventures. Maybe the doors go to different—”

  “Dungeons,” Wei said, the word flat, not impressed, tasting it like iron on his tongue “this is not a video-game child.” His glance darted from Liam to Kevin in a way that felt like a question: Are you silent because you choose to be, or because you have to be?

  Sofía hugged herself tighter. “We can’t just stand here.”

  The boxer man stopped pretending to listen. He stepped to the eastern doorway and peered in. From Kevin’s angle, there was only darkness beyond it, not the thick black of absence but a layered dark, like stacked velvet. The man grunted and walked through.

  “Wait,” Amara said, but he didn’t.

  There was no dramatic swallow of shadow, no sucking sound, in-fact there was no sound at all, his footsteps just seconds before—on the damp cobbles—where entirely silenced. He just… went. His back shrank. The air did not change. He was gone.

  Kira rolled her shoulders, like a cat about to hop a fence. “That’s one.” She looked to the Eastern European man—the one who had said “Da.” “You coming or not?”

  He met her stare in a way that said he had met women like her in bars and at border crossings. “I do not wait for committee,” he said, which was almost a yes. He looked once at the red door, and the contempt on his face told Kevin something about him that wasn’t useful and therefore stuck. He strode after the boxer without another word and vanished into the east.

  Kira smirked at them as if they had confirmed the only theory she cared to hold: that groups are just bait waiting to become corpses. She lifted two fingers in a lazy, soldier’s goodbye. “Try not to die crying.” Then she went east as well, without looking back.

  Stone moved somewhere inside the wall, deep and indifferent. The eastern doorway’s threshold shuddered. Kevin looked up, ready to… to do what? Stop a door? The jambs slid a fraction closer until they kissed, and the seam sealed as if it had always been stone. The candlelight made a new, unbroken wall. A faint draft left over from their passing died against Kevin’s ankles.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Three. One door closed.

  His heart did something that wasn’t a beat. A flip at a push, but for a split second he feared it would never thump again.

  Liam squeaked, an involuntary sound he tried to turn into a cough. “We should… we should pick one.” His knuckles had gone white around his phone. He looked like a kid on a diving board being told not to look down. Kevin wanted to tell him to put the useless thing away. He didn’t. He had no jurisdiction here. Kevin thought while silently waiting for the others to decide their own fates—How can I… I mean me ‘Kevin’... How can I decide for them? I barely did anything with my life before, nothing good anyway. Maybe if I take agency for myself, just myself, they’ll be ok… Maybe I’ll be ok too…

  Darren nodded too quickly. “We keep together. We got numbers. That thing said PVP’s on—fine, whatever, but three big lads with sticks are a bigger problem than just one at a time, yeah?”

  “Two doors left,” Wei said. “Three if you count the red.”

  No one counted the red, not out loud. It’s crimson light seemed to creep in on them more and more as they talked. They all faced the opposite wall, perhaps in the vain hope that if they couldn’t see it, it wasn’t an option.

  Amara wet her lips. “I guess… well… I would’ve… but that’s gone.” It was obvious to Kevin that she had meant to go with the first group, but it snapped shut before she had the chance. “Right. North, then. It looks… plain enough.” She glanced at the door behind the vanished podium. She did not look at the red—in fact she made the effort, as did the rest of them, not to look at the red door. “We take north. We stay together. We gather information, we come back here if we can.” She spoke like minutes in a meeting—bullet pointed.

  Sofía nodded to her immediately, relief as obvious as tears would have been, but those were already soaking into the cuffs of her tracksuit. “Yes. North.” She reached out, as if to touch Amara’s sleeve, then thought better of it and tucked her hand against her ribs again.

  Darren exhaled. “North it is.” He looked at the granddad. “Colin, mate, you alright with that?”

  Colin’s smile came out trembling. “I’m not alright with anything, son. But I’ll go where there are people who can help me up if I slip.”

  Kevin could see it, groups meant safety until they didn’t. He imagined a narrow corridor. He imagined a trap that triggered on weight. He imagined a decision that needed someone decisive. He imagined Amara being that, and himself not wanting to be outvoted into dying.

  Wei’s gaze flicked between Kevin and the north door. “You?”

  “I’ll… wait,” Kevin said. He did not owe them an explanation for that. He did not have a good one anyway. I don’t want to be under your story, his brain said. He didn’t say that aloud. He nodded at the north. “Go.”

  Amara looked like she wanted to argue, to fold him into a policy. She didn’t. Maybe she had learned enough about people to know when a no was structural. “We’ll look for you,” she said instead, which was the kind of promise people make when they need to feel good.

  Kevin let it hit his chest and fall.

  They went: Amara first, shoulders squared as if that could block an arrow; Sofía on her heels, glancing back over and over even as she moved forward; Darren last, looking once at Kevin with something like apology, or judgment, or both. Their bodies thinned, their edges blurred in the doorway’s dark, and then they were absence too.

  The north door sighed—God, it seemed like it—then braced itself closed, stone kissing stone, the seam sealing like a wound that had decided to become a scar. Two doors left. Two groups worth of choices left before the room decided Kevin’s for him.

  Liam made a small animal noise and wiped at his face with the heel of his palm. “Okay,” he said to no one, to everyone. “Okay.” He turned to Wei and Colin as if he had merely spun a prize wheel and landed on them. “We… we could go west?” He blinked at the still-open west door, then at the east-that-was-not. “Or the other one, east, but that’s… no, west, right? Right?” It was clear that he was dodging that door. That sulfur. It pressed evermore on them, the torches in the room doing battle with the orange hues stemming through.

  Wei watched him for a long half second that dropped like a stone. “West,” he agreed. “We should move before it closes.”

  Kevin bit the inside of his cheek. He wanted to tell the boy to breathe through his nose before he hyperventilated. He wanted to tell the granddad to stay in the middle. He wanted to tell Wei that he admired the economy of his yes. He wanted to say none of it because none of it mattered if saying it made them look at him instead of at the door.

  Kevin was always like this, even before… Not like putting others before himself. More like seeing the value in them more than himself. His mother, who he gave half of his income to help out after his father left. Jess, that he let get away even though she brought him so much joy.

  Colin touched Kevin’s arm with papery fingers. It was the first time anyone had made contact with him since the room began. “You’re sure you won’t…?”

  “I’m sure,” Kevin lied. He wasn’t sure. He just could not bear the thought of being a responsibility. If he died alone, he died on his terms. If he died with them, he would have to watch their faces close around his name. Above all he feared being a cause. That through his action—or worse yet inaction—that he would be the reason they would come to an end.

  At that exact moment and seemingly unprovoked his mother popped into his thoughts, his mind waving back to the past. Kevin wondered, was she out there too? Was she in another cold room just like this one? Debating with 9 others, just like this? Was she doing ok? Would he ever see her again? Futile in the end, the odds were, as he saw them, he would never see her, or anyone else he once knew, again.

  “Alright,” Colin murmured. “I suppose… I suppose we’ll see you soon, then.” He said it like a blessing.

  They went west, Liam tripping a little as if the threshold were higher than it looked, Wei steadying him without comment, Colin shuffling and then straightening as if refusing to look old in front of strangers. Three shadows folded into one longer absence. The door accepted their choice, sighed, sealed.

  Kevin was alone with one door-the red-breathing its faint, egg-sting breath. The candlelight found something oily in its smoke and made tiny colours in it, the way petrol paints puddles. He did not move. He let the silence settle on his shoulders until it felt like a coat.

  In mere moments all their lives had changed. “I wish I had done more.” He said, like a confession in a chapel. Perhaps he was hoping for someone to tell him to say a few Hail Mary’s… That it would all be back to normal then. “You know what?” His voice tightened. “Maybe I can do it better this time. Do more for myself this time. And then maybe I wouldn’t be staring up at the ceiling waiting for a damp patch to meet another damp patch.” He sounded resolute for the first time in his life. It even took him by surprise as the words reverberated against the cold, dark, dampness.

  His head swivelled, his body followed.

  He swallowed. The sulfur taste stuck to the back of his tongue. He tried to think practically because feeling wasn’t changing in the air. Weapons. I need something. Shoes? I need shoes. He looked down at his numb toes and imagined them going black. “I definitely need shoes…” He half-chuckled. He scanned the room for anything he could turn into an edge—a bracket from the candle sconce, a loose stone, a chain link fallen from an ogre belt. The room had been curated with the same bureaucratic malice as the speech. Nothing broke off. Nothing came free.

  Information. He didn’t have any. The groups might bring it back, if the room allowed return. The goblin had said “doors are waiting” and not “doors are one-way.” The goblin had said a lot of things that sounded like promises and weren’t.

  He could wait. He pictured himself standing here for an hour, for a day, for however long air held out. He pictured hunger punching in. He pictured thirst. He pictured the doors opening only for those who played. The mental image was stupid enough to make him huff a laugh that he immediately regretted as it bounced off stone and came back like a stranger’s.

  His mind flipped pages it had been writing since the countdown began. Entertainment. Trials. The Bal’or Games. He pictured stadiums like old Rome, only cleaner because bureaucracy had filed the edges. He pictured betters watching. He pictured rules laminated and posted at every entrance, hundreds of years of notices no one on earth could read. He pictured notices about notices, stamped and countersigned. His teeth gritted silently, air leaving his body as he realised—They have no concept of our world, our cultures, if they even exist anymore.

  He thought of Jess, unhelpfully. He thought of his mother’s last voicemail. He thought of the text messages he had typed out but never sent to his father. He thought of the damp stain above his bed, expanding continent by continent. He had wanted something to break the circle. He was an idiot for wanting that.

  His body shivered finally, the slow arithmetic of cold catching up. He rubbed his arms again. The red door breathed on him: a sauna’s ghost, heat that carried a smell of old matches and rotten minerals. The glow painted a faint blush on the lower stones, like a fever creeping up the room’s skin.

  He could go. Or he could pretend he had a choice.

  He stepped closer. The heat increased by degrees, each step tasting more of sulfur, of struck flint. The arch’s stone was darker than the others, not red itself but stained by the light, veins running through it like a bad bruise. Up close, the smoke wasn’t smoke; it was a mist that made his eyes water and then cleared as if out of politeness.

  He paused on the threshold and looked back once at where the podium had been, as if not looking at the red might tempt a different option into existing. Stone looked back.

  “Alright,” he said, to the damp and to whatever bureaucrat wrote this rulebook. His voice sounded steadier than he felt. You wanted the odd man? Fine.

  He thought, briefly and fiercely, of not dying for anyone else’s entertainment. Then he thought, Don’t be important. Be alive.

  He stepped through the red door. The heat licked his ankles like a testing tongue. The air smelled like the inside of a struck match. Behind him, somewhere inside stone, something moved-patient, careful, permanent. The door began to close. He didn’t look back. He didn’t need to.

  He was already on the other side.