The air in the chamber turned to lead, pressing down on my lungs with every shallow breath I managed to take.
My temporary teammates stood in a loose circle, their faces etched with the grime and exhaustion of their own separate ordeals, a fragile, cautious relief at our reunion already beginning to crack.
Tobias stood like a granite pillar, his arms crossed, his thoughtful expression a thin veil over the warrior's calculation in his eyes.
Lily's fingers, usually so steady, fidgeted with her bowstring, her lips pressed into a tight line.
Marcus leaned against a crumbling pillar, the picture of lazy indifference, but his fingers tapped a frantic, silent rhythm on the hilts of his daggers.
Behind them all, Evelyn looked small, her knuckles bone-white where she gripped her staff.
"So what's next?" Lily finally broke the silence, her voice cutting through the oppressive quiet.
Tobias let out a slow breath.
"Honestly, I'm still trying to figure it out. This place… it feels like a dead end."
And then it happened.
Ding!
The sound was a shard of ice driven directly into my brain.
It wasn't heard; it was felt, reverberating in the marrow of my bones.
[You Have Reached The Final Floor Of The Dungeon!]
The words hung in the air for a single, suspended heartbeat.
Ding!
[Eliminate All Others. Only One May Advance.]
The world froze. Every one of us stiffened as if turned to stone.
The words weren't just a message; they were a physical law, rewriting the reality of the chamber, suffocating the last vestiges of camaraderie.
"What the hell!?" Marcus's voice was a whip-crack, all traces of his usual playful drawl gone, stripped down to raw disbelief.
Evelyn took a stumbling step backward, her hand flying to her mouth.
"It… it wants us to fight each other?" Her whisper was thick with horror.
Tobias's jaw was a hard line, his knuckles white where they gripped the air, his weapon still strapped to his back.
"No," he stated, the word a command to the world itself. "This has to be a mistake. This doesn't happen in dungeons."
But his eyes, hard and scanning each of us, betrayed his own doubt.
But it is happening.
My gaze involuntarily drifting to the far shadows, to the throne only I could see.
The figure hadn't moved, but those burning coal eyes were fixed on me, drinking in our despair.
He wants this.
Lily's voice was clipped, a soldier trying to hold the line.
"We should stay calm." But the sharp edge in her tone and the way her feet shifted into a more balanced stance belied her words. "The dungeon system might be messing with us."
Marcus let out a harsh, bitter laugh.
"Messing with us? Lily, it just told us to kill each other. That's not exactly a joke." His eyes, sharp and calculating, landed on Tobias. "And let's be real… we all know who'd come out on top."
A muscle in Tobias's jaw twitched. He didn't reply.
"If it is messing with us, then we don't have to follow it." I said.
[FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN TERMINATION.]
The finality of the word slammed into us.
Termination. Not defeat. Not failure. Just termination.
Evelyn gasped, a small, broken sound.
"Termination? Does that mean…?"
"Death," I said, the word flat and final. It tasted like ash.
Lily shook her head, a frantic motion.
"There has to be another way! Maybe if we wait long enough, it'll—"
The entire chamber groaned, a deep, subterranean rumble that shook dust from the ceiling.
The ground trembled beneath our feet. A silent, unseen clock had just started ticking down.
My own internal alarm screamed.
Time's up.
Tobias was the first to move, his eyes locking onto mine with an almost desperate intensity.
"We're not doing this," he declared, his voice a low growl, a mantra against the inevitable.
But I saw the subtle shift in his stance, the way his shoulders tensed, preparing for a blow he didn't want to throw.
Marcus, however, had already made his choice.
He pushed off the pillar, putting distance between himself and the group, his daggers now held low and ready.
"Look, I like you guys and all," he said, his voice dangerously calm, "but I'm not dying here."
Lily's bow was half-raised, the tip of the arrow wavering between Marcus and the empty air, her face a mask of torn loyalty and survival instinct.
"Marcus, don't—"
The air in the chamber became a soup of fear and paranoia.
I could see the doubt metastasizing in their eyes, the terrible calculus of survival overwriting every bond forged.
No one wanted to be the monster. No one wanted to be the first to stain their hands.
But everyone was painfully aware that the last one standing was the only one walking out.
My mind raced, scrambling for a third option, a way to break the system, to defy the thing on the throne.
But every path led to a dead end, blocked by the chillingly simple, brutal ultimatum.
The dungeon didn't just want us dead. It wanted us to tear each other apart.
And as the silence stretched, fraying at the edges, the only question that remained was who would shatter it first.