First Challenge Initiated.

All of a sudden, I woke up hearing those words and then I frowned when I felt the cold floor against my back. While making an expression of discomfort after trying to open my eyes, I groaned thanks to the dazzling light in front of me.

‘Did I fall from the bed? And why is the sun so dazzling today?’

I tried to protect my eyes from the light and then eventually got used to it. I still blinked several times in discomfort as I got up and then looked around. This wasn’t my bedroom… I rubbed my eyes and confirmed that I was awake, but around me, I could only see white. An entire white room that emitted a weird white light without any real electric source.

‘Where am I? Is this one of Jason’s pranks?’

I checked my body and I could only see myself with my tiger pants. Even Jason wouldn’t be insane enough to drag me out of my room with only this much clothing. I also wasn’t such a heavy sleeper… I didn’t drink anything weird last night, so it was impossible that I passed out while I was carried on somewhere else.

I got up and then approached the walls, but they were a lot closer than they seemed to be. The room that I was in was no bigger than three meters long, wide and tall as well… when I touched them, they felt as hard as concrete, but with a much more smooth surface.

‘What the hell is this? I can’t see any openings. How was I put here?’

Something was off. Even if some crazy bastard sealed me here, I should be able to find a hole or marks of the entrance that had been sealed off. I began to panic… This seemed to be too real to be a dream and a room like this shouldn’t be able to store much air, either.

Just as I had imagined, soon I began to feel that something was off with the room. The moment I realized something was wrong, it was subtle, a slight tightness in my chest, like I couldn’t draw in a full breath no matter how hard I tried. At first, I thought it was my nerves, maybe even just my imagination, but the air felt... thin, like I was trying to drink from an empty glass.

I tried to calm myself, to breathe slower, but that only seemed to make the air feel escaping my gasp. My heart started pounding, each beat echoing louder in my ears. My head felt strangely light, like I was floating, but not in a pleasant way. There was a heaviness creeping in too, pressing on me from the inside.

Soon, a dull headache started pounding at the base of my skull, spreading forward, as if my thoughts were wrapped in cotton. It became harder to concentrate. Every action felt slower, just moving my hand to my chest to steady myself felt like moving through water.

As panic began to creep in, a cold wave rose in my chest. My body was screaming for more air, and I started breathing faster without meaning to, but it didn’t help. Each breath felt weaker than the last, as if I was inhaling nothing.

My vision started to blur around the edges, dark shadows creeping inward, like ink spreading on paper. I couldn’t focus my eyes on anything; everything was spinning, tilting. My body felt disconnected, my legs unsteady, like they were about to break under me.

The dizziness became overwhelming, and my thoughts grew sluggish, disjointed. I wanted to move, to get out, to do something, but my limbs felt like lead. My body felt heavy, yet weightless at the same time.

Then came the strange calm, almost peaceful, but eerie. The panic dulled into a haze, and the pounding in my chest softened, fading into the background. My thoughts were slipping away like sand through my fingers.

I remember the ground rising toward me, or maybe I was falling. My knees gave out, and everything dimmed. There was no more fear, no more struggle, just quiet, black silence.

Second Challenge Initiated.

I woke up again after hearing that voice… It felt like a crazy sense of deja vu. When I opened my eyes, the same thing that happened in my dream happened again. The dazzling light, the cold floor, the weird surroundings. Everything was the same…

‘... Wasn’t that a dream? What happened? How and why am I here?’

Before I could find the answers to these questions, I heard something coming from the ceiling. I saw in the corners of the rooms that seemed a bit further away now some holes appearing. When I got up to check on them, they began to push down water from it.

“What the fuck… you have gotta to be kidding me.”

The amount of water coming wasn’t insane, but the four holes were too far away from each other. I couldn’t block all of them. I approached the holes and then tried to see through them, but I could only see darkness.

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“Hey, this isn’t funny! Stop this!”

I didn’t receive a response… Before long, the entire room began to be filled with water. When it reached my knees, I realized that I was doomed and the weird dream from before was just a part of this nightmare.

“What kind of sick joke is this?”

The water reached my waist and then I tried to punch the walls. Perhaps the water softened them and I could free myself from this crap. However, I only felt a dull thud with each impact… my strength was useless and the water didn’t soften the walls at all.

“Shit! Shit!”

When the water reached my neck, I instinctively stretched upward, trying to keep my head above the surface. My heart felt like it was going to explode, hammering out of control as the ceiling came closer and closer. My throat tightened, and I bit down on the urge to scream again. What good would it do now?

The water rose past my lips, leaving only my nose to cling to the last threads of air. When it finally reached my face, I took one desperate, shaking breath before the water swallowed me whole.

Underwater, my panic surged into a new kind of terror. I thrashed at the walls, punching, clawing, kicking, anything to fight back, to do something. My lungs screamed for air, my chest tightening like a vice, but all I could do was hold on.

Seconds felt like hours. My arms and legs grew heavy, my movements slower, weaker. The fight drained out of me as if the water was pulling it away. The pressure in my chest was unbearable now, a fiery ache spreading through my ribs. My body begged me to breathe, but I knew what would happen if I did.

Black spots danced at the edges of my vision, and my thoughts become slippery, incoherent. I felt lightheaded, almost detached, as if my body wasn’t mine anymore. My limbs stopped moving altogether, floating uselessly in the water.

The ache in my chest dulled to a strange numbness. The panic faded too, replaced by an eerie, unnatural calm. My vision narrowed until there was only darkness. For a moment, I thought I felt warmth, not from the water, but from somewhere deep inside. It wasn’t comforting, though. It felt like everything was slipping away, like I was letting go. And then there was nothing.

Third Challenge Initiated.

I woke up sweating and gasping for air. I got up and checked my surroundings. Everything was the same, but the room was no longer filled with water.

‘What the fuck is this? What kind of sick joke is this?’

I hit the walls with more force than before until I could feel my broken bones pulsing in my hands. The pain made me calm down a bit and then I realized that the room was a lot larger than before. Despite some time having passed, the place didn’t begin to be filled with water either.

‘I am not drenched, I don’t have water inside me… so that didn’t happen?’

That didn’t feel right. The memories were too intense for that not to be the case… I tried to check the room more thoroughly and then I confirmed that it was larger. Like one hundred meters long and wide. It didn’t seem like I would suffocate in a matter of minutes. Still, that didn’t make me feel better, since I knew that something fucked up was about to happen.

I confirmed my guess when a bit of sweat fell on my eyes… after cleaning them. I saw my arms, and they were covered in sweat as well. For the past few minutes, the temperature in the room was increasing.

“You sick bastards! I will get you from this!”

I had no idea how I could get anyone in these conditions… All that I knew was that I screwed once again. Ten minutes later, I was on the ground while my skin was red and steam was leaving every pore of my body. Burn wounds began to expand on the areas touching on the ground and my consciousness was facing once again… I didn’t even have the energy to try to fight against the pain.

Little by little, my vision began to get blurry as I felt that feeling taking over me again… It felt like I was part of a terrible experiment, but I had no idea how this was even possible. Maybe this was some sort of virtual reality… it was the only thing that could explain my current situation of dying and then soon waking up like nothing had happened.

Fourth Challenge Initiated.

At this point in time, I didn’t know if I was getting used to this or if I just accepted that it was the worst nightmare that a person could have…

‘This nightmare will end… this is just a notch above all others.’

I didn’t know what was going on, or why this was happening to me. What did I do to deserve this? My chest tightened with frustration, not just at the situation, but at my own helplessness. It felt cruel, unjust, like some kind of punishment, but for what? My mind raced as I tried to recall every decision, every mistake, every possibility. But no matter how hard I tried to piece it together, there was nothing. No answer, no reason. This was simply insanity.

The fact that it was happening, and that I woke up afterward like nothing had happened, was proof of something I couldn’t ignore. This was bound to happen. It had happened, and it would happen again. Was there a reason? There had to be. Nothing this insane could happen without meaning, could it? Maybe I was supposed to figure it out, to endure it, to learn something, though what, I didn’t know. Maybe it was punishment, or maybe it was a test.

‘It is called a challenge… but they were different from each other… What are their connections? I can’t think of anything, aside from the end, that is always the same.’

I had to think fast and understand the situation… Why would I have to endure this? What would anyone benefit from making me endure this? How could I escape all this? What needed to be done in order for this to end?

The answers didn’t come to me and soon enough, the room began to be filled with a weird mist that had a sweet smell…

‘Fuck… poison now?’

I had to calm down and think… I couldn’t let the despair take over me. I looked above me, and then I saw that game-screen. It was the only clue that I had. Using this as a starting point, I had to find an explanation.

Fifth Challenge Initiated.

I sat down and then cleared my mind… I tried to control my breath as much as possible… I didn’t know for how long this would last, but I had to use every single moment to look for answers.