“What the hell was that?” Alice asked, her grip firm as she grabbed Sam’s hand and hoisted him effortlessly off the dusty floor.
“Just some… stupid traps,” Sam panted, brushing the debris off his clothes.
As he straightened up, he realised they weren’t alone.
Alice was surrounded by a substantial crowd of other contestants.
Sam counted them instinctively.
Including himself and Alice, there were eight contestants gathered in the room—nearly half of the remaining survivors.
“Who’s this, Maria?” a booming voice asked.
The speaker stepped forward, his massive frame casting a long shadow.
He resembled a towering minotaur—a muscular humanoid body crowned with the broad, menacing head of a bull.
Sam froze.
The sting in his arm vanished from his mind.
Why did that thing just call Alice ‘Maria’?
“This is Leon,” Alice said smoothly, slinging a casual arm around Sam’s shoulder.
She gave it the slightest squeeze—a silent warning.
“We met back during the Labyrinth game.”
Oh.
I get it, Sam thought as the pieces clicked into place.
His confusion vanished, replaced by admiration for her quick thinking.
Alice was using aliases.
With both of them sitting at the top of the leaderboard, revealing their real names would paint targets on their backs.
Still, a knot of anxiety tightened in Sam’s stomach.
It was a massive gamble.
If anyone remembered the leaderboard well enough, they’d realise that neither “Leon” nor “Maria” existed.
And in a game with a secret murderer, getting caught in a lie was a one-way ticket to looking like the Killer.
“Nice to meet you all,” Sam said, forcing a warm smile onto his face.
He went around the room, going out of his way to shake hands with the surrounding contestants to cement his cover.
The variety of life in the room was staggering.
Some looked human, just like Alice, while others were a surreal mix of alien features and mythical biology.
Once the introductions were out of the way, Sam wiped the dust from his palms and got straight to business.
“Any progress on finding the exit?”
“No,” Alice replied, a tight frown crossing her face as she shook her head.
“No luck so far.”
Sam couldn’t help but wonder about the design of this game.
Was there actually a method to finding the exit, or were they expected to just stumble across it by sheer luck?
“What about traps?” Sam asked aloud.
“Encountered any yet?”
“There was a corridor we passed through earlier where the walls tried to crush us,” Alice responded, pointing toward the massive minotaur.
“But thanks to Bert’s insane strength, he managed to hold the walls apart long enough for the rest of us to sprint through safely.”
Bert merely grunted, crossing his massive arms in a modest acknowledgment of his power.
A corridor again?
Sam thought, his brow furrowing.
Is it just a coincidence?
“And how was that trap triggered?” Sam pressed.
“We’re not entirely sure,” Alice admitted, shaking her head.
“We were just walking through, and the walls suddenly started closing in.”
Sam’s mind raced.
Had they triggered a tripwire without noticing, just as he had?
Or was something else inside the mansion setting these traps off?
Then he remembered.
“Oh! I almost forgot!” Sam suddenly exclaimed, snapping his fingers.
“I ran into two other contestants earlier. I should probably go back and let them know I found you guys.”
He turned and took a few confident steps toward the corridor he’d escaped moments earlier, only to stop dead.
The pitch-black tunnel yawned before him, the floorboards still splintered and littered with the sharp, iron-tipped arrows that had nearly taken his life.
He absolutely needed to warn Ellie and Bella, but the sheer volume of traps made it a suicide mission to just stroll back in.
“Everything okay?” Alice asked, stepping up quietly beside him.
“Not exactly,” Sam said, his eyes narrowed as he peered into the oppressive darkness of the hallway.
“I just need to figure out how the hell to get past these arrow traps safely.”
“I have an idea,” Bert rumbled, stepping forward.
“Woah—!” Sam gasped, the breath completely knocked out of him.
Before he could even ask what the plan was, Bert scooped him up, tucking Sam under one massive arm like a sack of groceries.
Without a second thought, the minotaur charged straight into the pitch-black corridor.
Pure panic surged through Sam.
He slammed his eyes shut, wrapping his arms around his head as the familiar sound of arrows hitting the floorboards echoed through the hallway.
But the expected pain never came.
Instead, a chaotic storm of metallic clangs erupted around them.
Sam tentatively opened his eyes and witnessed a miracle.
Iron-tipped arrows rained down in a frenzy, but they couldn’t even pierce Bert’s skin.
They simply bounced off his hide with loud, useless clinks.
Within seconds, they barreled through the gauntlet and burst out the other side.
Bert skidded to a halt and gently set Sam back onto his feet.
“Thanks for the lift,” Sam wheezed, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead.
“Next time, maybe mention the plan before you kidnap me…”
Bert let out a booming, guttural laugh that shook dust from the walls.
When the laughter finally subsided, Sam turned toward the opposite corridor where Ellie and Bella had gone.
“Ellie! Bella!” Sam cupped his hands around his mouth, shouting into the dark.
Nothing.
No footsteps, no voices.
Just an empty, suffocating silence.
A knot of anxiety tightened in his throat.
It looked like he’d have to go after them himself.
But remembering the lethal gauntlet he had just survived—and the crushing walls Alice had described—his chest tightened.
This hallway was almost certainly rigged with another trap.
He glanced up at the towering minotaur.
“Hey, Bert… would you mind helping me get through this one safely, too?”
Bert grunted, tilting his massive horned head.
“More arrows?”
“I don’t know,” Sam admitted, peering into the gloom.
“But in a place like this, there’s a damn good chance something just as bad is waiting.”
Bert thought it over for a moment before giving a firm nod.
“Shall I pick you up again?” he asked cheerfully, lumbering toward Sam with his massive arms spread wide open.
“I think I’ll walk this time!” Sam said quickly, holding up his hands and taking a step backward.
“Suit yourself. Let me go through first, then,” the minotaur rumbled, completely unfazed.
He struck a dramatic pose, flexing his boulder-like biceps.
“I’m tough, so I’ll be able to handle whatever this dump throws at us!”
With that, Bert turned and marched confidently into the dark corridor.
Left alone at the crossroads, Sam lowered himself against the wall and waited, his ears straining for the slightest sign of trouble.
“All clear, Leon!” Bert’s booming voice echoed from the far end of the hallway.
Sam stood up, brushing himself off, and made his way down the corridor.
A wave of relief washed over him when no hidden mechanisms snapped to life beneath his boots.
However, something immediately caught his eye.
As he walked, he noticed a new row of bizarre paintings lining the walls.
Unlike the solid-coloured canvases from before, these all featured a stark white background with a single, vivid handprint stamped dead centre.
The colours of the handprints varied from frame to frame.
He didn’t know if they bore some sort of sick symbolism, but they disturbed him to his core.
They looked less like artwork and more like the final marks of desperate people.
Stepping out of the corridor, Sam entered a sprawling, derelict kitchen.
Rusted appliances and shattered kitchenware were scattered haphazardly across the counters and floor.
But Sam’s eyes were instantly drawn to an enormous wooden knife rack mounted on the wall.
The rack had space for at least fifteen knives, but most of the slots stood empty.
Only a few remained.
Unlike everything else in the room, the remaining knives had been spared by time.
They were coated in dust, but their blades were razor-sharp and completely free of rust.
“I don’t see anyone here,” Bert said, his massive shoulders slumping slightly as he approached Sam.
“Maybe they went through there,” Sam suggested, pointing toward a heavy, lonesome wooden door at the far end of the kitchen.
Before Bert could even look, a sound tore through the air.
“AHHH!”
It was a blood-curdling shriek of pure terror.
The sound came from the opposite side of the door Sam was pointing at.
And it wasn’t just any voice.
It was Bella.
“Bella!” Sam yelled, his heart instantly leaping into his throat.
“Are you okay?!”
Silence.
No answer came, only the heavy, terrifying quiet of the kitchen settling back in.
“She’s in trouble!” Sam panicked, his eyes locked on the door.
“We have to—”
“I’m on it!” Bert roared.
Without another word, the minotaur seized the door handle.
With a savage grunt, he tore the heavy wooden door clean from its frame and hurled it to the floor, where it exploded into hundreds of splinters.
Together they burst through the ruined doorway, but the sight beyond it stopped them dead.
They had burst into a grand, high-ceilinged dining room.
A massive stone fireplace loomed at the far end of the room, while a colossal dining table dominated the centre.
There, huddled on the floor beside the table, was Bella.
She was sobbing uncontrollably, her arms wrapped tightly around Ellie.
A silver kitchen knife protruded from the centre of the small girl’s back.
“Bella?! What the hell happened here?!” Sam cried, dropping to his knees beside her on the blood-spattered floorboards.
“There… there was a man,” Bella choked out through her tears, her white rabbit ears trembling violently against her head.
“He suddenly appeared out of nowhere. And he… he stabbed her!”
It was an exact match to the blades he had just seen on the kitchen rack.
A chilling, logical thought pierced through his panic: Did Bella do this herself?
No!
There’s no way!
He immediately shot back.
He had seen the way Bella had thrown herself around Ellie moments earlier.
That embrace had been too fierce, too instinctive, too genuine to have been an act.
But if it wasn’t Bella, then how was this possible?
Sam’s eyes rapidly swept the grand dining room.
He scanned the decaying walls, the heavy drapes, the cold fireplace.
No other doors.
No windows.
Nowhere for anyone to disappear.
If a male killer had stabbed Ellie and fled, he would have had to run directly through the kitchen—right past Sam and Bert.
The cold, hard facts of the moment pointed squarely at Bella.
But with Ellie bleeding out right in front of them, there was no time for an interrogation.
He had to take her word for now.
“We need to get her help! Fast!” Sam urged, his hands hovering over Ellie’s small frame, unsure of what to do.
“No… there’s no point,” Bella whispered, her voice cracking as a fresh wave of tears spilled down her cheeks.
“She’s already gone.”
“Are you sure?” Sam pressed, his heart hammering against his ribs.
“Bella, are you absolutely sure?”
“Yeah…” Bella choked out, resting her forehead against Ellie’s blue hair.
“She’s not breathing… She doesn’t have a pulse.”
The realization hit Sam like a lead weight.
They were too late.
If he hadn’t hesitated at the crossroads… if they’d just been a little faster… maybe Ellie would still be alive.
“Okay,” Sam said softly, forcing himself to swallow his own panic.
“Look, Bella… we managed to find a large group of other contestants. Come with us. It’s too dangerous to stay here, but you’ll be safer with the group.”
“Surely we can’t just leave Ellie here like this!” Bella wept, clutching the girl’s sleeve.
“If she’s dead, there’s no point in carrying her,” Bert grunted, his deep voice entirely devoid of malice, but brutally matter-of-fact.
“It’ll just slow us down and cause trouble.”
Sam closed his eyes for a brief moment.
Bert’s words were painfully blunt, but he couldn’t argue with them.
In a mansion filled with lethal traps and a hidden killer, carrying Ellie’s body would only put the living at greater risk.
“We have to keep moving, Bella,” Sam said gently, placing a supportive hand on her shoulder.
“Ellie wouldn’t want you to die in a place like this.”
Bella didn’t respond immediately.
She closed her eyes, taking a long, shuddering breath, and wiped the tears from her face.
“You’re right,” she whispered.
Gathering her resolve, she slowly stood up.
She knelt back down one last time to carefully lay Ellie’s body flat on the dusty floorboards, straightening her clothes with trembling hands.
“I’ll miss you, Ellie…” Bella murmured, her voice barely a breath in the cold room.
She turned her back on her friend, joining Sam and Bert as they began their somber march back toward the kitchen.
Since they were familiar with the layout now, the trio managed to safely navigate the corridors and make their way back to the main room.
“What happened?” Alice asked the moment they burst in.
She didn’t even wait for them to sit down; she could tell from their grim expressions and the blood on Bella’s clothes that something had gone horribly wrong.
“One of the girls I was with earlier is dead,” Sam said, keeping his voice low but steady.
“She was killed by someone.”
Alice didn’t respond.
She just stared at him, her eyes completely blank, her expression unreadable as she processed the devastating news.
“It seems the Killer is already getting started,” Bert rumbled, crossing his massive arms.
“We should make haste with finding the exit.”
“Agreed,” shouted one of the other contestants, a tremor of panic rippling through the rest of the crowd.
The group immediately huddled together, voices overlapping as they frantically began discussing plans for a sweep of the mansion.
Sam stepped forward, about to join the circle, when a firm hand gripped his wrist.
Alice pulled him sharply over to the side, away from the prying ears of the group.
“Something wrong?” Sam asked, his confusion mounting at her secretive behavior.
“So… you guys really think that girl died because of the Killer?” Alice asked in a strained whisper.
She pressed a palm against her forehead, closing her eyes as if nursing a massive, throbbing headache.
“Yeah. At least, that’s what Bella told us,” Sam said, casting a quick glance back at the grieving rabbit girl.
“But… it doesn’t make sense,” Alice muttered, her breath hitching.
She lowered her hand and met Sam’s eyes.
“What do you mean?”
Alice leaned closer, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I’m the Killer, Sam.”