The remaining seven survivors—Elias and the young man, Samer, plus five others whose identities remained secondary to their shared terror—remained inert. They were scattered across the gray disk, each retreating into a silent, self-imposed corner. Their eyes tracked the deepening shadows of the surrounding forest as the orange light of the fading twilight bled into a cold, metallic purple. The air grew steadily colder, carrying the damp, earthy scent of the woods.
The silence was a thick, suffocating blanket, interrupted only by the rustle of leaves beyond the perimeter—and the frantic pulse of fear in their own ears.
Samer, the young man whose attempt to aid Lena had been summarily halted, suddenly fractured the stillness. He was a creature of high-octane energy, and the enforced passivity became an intolerable pressure on his psyche.
"Are we just going to sit here? Like this?" His voice was shrill, laced with barely controlled hysteria, violating the thick, tense air. "Until when? We have to do something!"
The utterance shattered the moment, the raw sound vibrating around them as if the sentence itself had physical mass. It was a plea for agency, a rejection of the agonizing stasis.
Elias—the older man, who had enforced the boundary—turned slowly toward him. His gaze was steady, calm to the point of being unsettling. He studied Samer for a long, quiet moment, measuring the young man's kinetic anxiety.
"Are you addicted?" Elias's voice was low, entirely devoid of emotion. "Sit down and stabilize."
Samer pushed back, his hands flexing into tight fists. He wasn't arguing the logic of the situation; he was fighting the inability to act. "No, I mean, we need an actual plan! Something that isn't just waiting to die!"
Elias raised his eyebrows infinitesimally, the action conveying more dismissal than any shout. His voice remained quiet, though its austerity hardened into something like professional finality.
"What, specifically, do you want to do? Exit? Go ahead. No one is preventing you. You are suffering withdrawal symptoms from agency itself, Samer. Sit down, stabilize the input, and you will be safe."
Samer froze. His breathing hitched, shallow and rapid. His body trembled, the reaction of a system overloaded by confinement. The words weren't a simple threat; they were a precise, clinical diagnosis, an absolute boundary set by someone who understood the architecture of Samer's internal distress—the addiction to action and control.
The others remained silent, observing the exchange as if it were a laboratory test. They watched, hoping the conflict would either reveal a hidden flaw in the circle's laws or, worse, confirm their flawless, terrifying consistency.