No one moved.
Eighty-five players stood frozen, staring at the seventeen doors in front of us.
Seventeen games. Only seventeen winners. Then what will happen to others?
There were seventeen doors lined up.
Alone. Nothing behind or front. Just the doors, Aligned. Waiting for us.
I stood there, staring at the seventeen doors, trying to understand what my destiny was supposed to be. Eighty-five of us were meant to enter those games, but only seventeen would walk out alive. That meant sixty-eight players would lose… disappear… become nothing more than another memory of this nightmare. My mind kept racing with questions. Which game should I choose? Would it decide whether I live or die? And what about the others standing around me—people who had survived everything until now? Soon, most of them would be gone. Only seventeen destinies would survive tonight. The rest of us were simply waiting to find out whose fate had already been sealed.
The doors were different, yet they all looked the same.
Everyone stared at them, trying to guess which one meant life and which one meant death.
One boy slowly stepped toward the door closest to him. No one stopped him. We just watched in silence.
The moment his hand touched the door, his body dropped to the ground.
He collapsed instantly.
Shock ran through the crowd. People stepped back, fear spreading like a wave.
Then the familiar mechanical voice echoed through the air:
Meerab Hossain has entered the game. Eighty-four players remain.
Now, what could that possibly mean?
He touched the door, collapsed… and somehow entered the game. The door now showed a sign — 1/5.
So that was it. The doors weren't exits. They were entrances.
We had to touch them to enter the game.
And by seeing only I could guess. The games were happening somewhere else.
In our minds. Our bodies would stay here… while whatever waited behind those doors pulled our consciousness into the real battlefield.
Not only me but everyone figured out what to do here. They started entering into the battlefield. One by one everyone was gone.
"He is the hunter, right?" Sarah asked quietly.
"Yes. What about it?" I replied.
"Then ask him," she said, glancing toward the doors, "which game will be easier… the one we can survive."
"Don't ask me," Omar replied. "I don't know anything."
Sarah and I exchanged a confused look. We had expected at least a hint from him.
Disappointed, we turned back to the doors.
"We can't play one game together," Sarah said quietly. "That means only one of us will survive."
"Yeah," I replied with a small nod. "See you after the game."
"You're confident," she said. "Alright… see you after the game."
I walked toward a door and placed my hand on it.
But nothing happened.
I didn't fall. I didn't lose consciousness.
Confused, I looked back.
No one was there.
Sarah, Omar, the other players… everything was gone.
When I looked forward again, something stood behind the door—a courtroom.
All of a sudden, the door stretched upward, turning into a tall iron gate. I pushed it open and stepped inside.
A huge courtroom.
Empty.
But I clearly remembered the mark on the door I touched: 4/5.
Where were the others?
Suddenly, the gate slammed shut behind me. The sound echoed through the hall. I quickly turned around.
"So here he is," a voice said. "We were just talking about you."
I looked toward the center of the courtroom.
A large table stood there with five chairs.
Four of them were occupied.
One was empty.
Mine.
The other players were all boys.
(It surprised me, but I didn't care. Every time a girl played a game with me, it ended up being her last one… except her)
Whatever.
They were staring at me.
"Why were you talking about me?" I asked.
"Nothing," one of them replied. "We were just wondering if the hunter's friend would actually play. You're not like us."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
They leaned toward each other and began whispering, their eyes occasionally shifting toward me.
I understood immediately.
They already saw me as the enemy.
They would team up against me.
Which meant I was completely alone.
But the real thing I couldn't understand was this place.
The doors, the players, the entire field… all of it had vanished. A courtroom had appeared instead.
Was this a hallucination?
Or was this the game inside my mind?