They fell without falling.
Time stuttered. Not slowed—broke.
A cold pulse echoed through each of their bodies as they crossed the sigil. It wasn't teleportation. It wasn't entry.
It was assimilation.
Matthew opened his eyes, gasping for air—and found none.
They were floating.
In voidlight.
A room—not a room, but an endless open space shaped like one. Gravity pulsed, erratic, as if reality hadn't committed to whether it existed.
Then the game's rules appeared, scrawled not on walls but across their minds:
GAME: UNMARKED
Objective: Identify the Unmarked Player before the system completes a full recursion cycle.
Failure to identify = absorption into the NULL PATH.
Hints will arrive only when one of you is willing to forget something real.
Trust no thought that repeats.
There are only three players. But four shadows.
Rin spoke first.
"There's a fourth?" Her voice echoed in a strange loop—like it didn't belong to her, or like someone else was trying to speak through it.
Matthew scanned the horizonless space. "There's no exit."
"There is," said Sora. She looked straight ahead. "But it's not in front of us."
She pointed behind them—to the fourth figure.
Standing.
Still.
Wearing no face.
They turned.
And the fourth figure didn't move.
No name, no identifier, no hint—just standing there, motionless, as if it had been waiting long before the game ever began.
Then the system buzzed:
"To proceed, sacrifice a memory."
Sora stepped forward. "Take it."
Matthew caught her wrist. "Don't just give it—"
"It's one I've already let go," she said softly.
And she whispered something under her breath.
The fourth shadow twitched.
For a second, Rin looked like she recognized it.
Then it twisted into her form.
Perfectly. Every detail.
Two Rins.
And one started to cry.
Round One Start
One player is not who they seem.
Guess wrong, and lose what you are.
Guess nothing, and become Unmarked.
They had no tools.
No clues.
Just memories they couldn't trust—and shadows that already knew their worst fears.
Matthew stared at both Rins.
One whispered, "Don't you remember what I did?"
The other whispered, "That's not how it happened."
The game had already started.