The alarm on Xian Chengyue’s phone never had the chance to ring.
At 5:23 AM, the sleek, high-end device in his pocket didn’t emit a digital chime, it simply vibrated once, heavily, like a dead weight dropping against his thigh. When he pulled it out to check the time, the screen flickered violently, cycling through a string of corrupted code before settling on a single, unmoving digital display: 5:24:31 AM.
It didn’t tick forward. It stayed locked in place, frozen in time.
The transition hadn’t been accompanied by a blinding flash or a dramatic portal. One second, Xian Chengyue was stepping off the late-night subway train into the damp chill of the city; the next, the concrete beneath his loafers had dissolved into loose, uncompacted soil. The roar of traffic was replaced by the rustle of half-withered parasol leaves, and the neon glow of the metropolis was swallowed entirely by a thick, oppressive autumn fog.
He wasn’t alone.
Around him, a dozen other people were stumbling out of the mist, gasping and looking around in sheer bewilderment. Some were clutching briefcases, others grocery bags, and a few were dressed in casual loungewear as if they had just been pulled straight from their living rooms.
Panic set in almost immediately. A middle-aged man, unable to cope with the reality-shattering drop, let out a hysterical shriek and bolted blindly toward the sparse tree line. He didn’t make it ten paces before the ground beneath him seemed to swallow his momentum entirely, dropping him with a sickening, wet crunch. He didn’t get back up. The absurd, sudden tragedy of it left the remaining group paralyzed, stripping away any lingering skepticism and replacing it with cold, paralyzed terror.
That was when the veterans, those who had survived this nightmare before began to herd the terrified newcomers forward.
They moved past the barren fields, past the dry well at the entrance of the village, and straight toward the courtyard where an old man with drooping, sinister eyelids waited for them with a bunch of iron keys.
Xian Chengyue kept his face impassive, his hands tucked quietly into his thin, black synthetic gloves. He didn’t run, he didn’t cry out, and he didn’t waste energy asking questions. He simply observed the way the autumn air tasted like iron and old dust, knowing instinctively that the real test hadn’t even begun yet.