"Safety is just the pause between screams."
The ceiling split open like a bleeding eye. A dull glyph pulsed inside it — a white circle spinning slowly like the iris of something waking for the first time in centuries.
Light poured out. But not light. Something that wore light like a mask, colorless and hungry, humming like teeth grinding against bone.
Jié Dè didn't remember standing. He just was. Upright. Awake. Heart pounding.
The mattress beneath him dissolved. The rot-stained floor vanished. Gravity stopped mattering. And then the world bent inward — a cruel fold of reality.
He didn't walk here. Not really. One blink, and he was in a hallway that had never existed. The walls pulsed like living skin. They weren't just holding the elevator. They were feeding it.
At the end of the corridor stood a gate—fifteen feet tall, framed in oily black metal that drank the light. Symbols crawled across its face, mutating with every blink: Mandarin, Latin, Hangul, Arabic… and some letters shaped like screams.
There were no buttons. Only a glowing white circle floating inches from the door. It flickered like a dying star. Or a warning.
"You don't ride the elevator," whispered something inside Jié's skull. "You enter its mouth and pray it doesn't swallow you whole."
He touched the circle. And the doors peeled back. Not like machinery. Like skin—groaning wetly as something ancient opened its ribs.
The stench of rust and silence hit him like a wall. He stepped in.
Inside the Elevator was not a box. It was a room floating in black void. Larger than it should've been. Silent. Breathing.
The floor was frosted glass, and beneath it: eyes. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Blind and milky, staring up at Jié like fish waiting for the hook.
Chains hung from the ceiling — some rusted, some still wet. The walls were metallic, but his reflection didn't move with him.
Near the front: a single glowing glyph. No numbers. No floor indicators. Only this:
PRESS TO ASCEND
(There is no escape. Only forward.)
Scratched beneath it in something like rust or dried blood:
(THE NEXT FLOOR REMEMBERS YOU.)
Jié took a breath. The air tasted like coins and old spit. He stepped forward—And the doors shut behind him like a coffin sealing.
The world twisted again. Suddenly he was standing in what looked like a hotel lobby. Wooden floors. Clean air. Soft lighting. A velvet couch still warm as if someone just left. A table sat in the center with bread, fruit, and bottled water—none of it spoiled.
It looked like safety. Smelled like peace. But felt wrong. Too perfect.
The room watched him.
He crept in slowly, body coiled, teeth clenched.
And then he saw her.
A girl. Seventeen, maybe. Bandages over one eye, stained with blood. The other eye? Unblinking. Too calm.
She didn't look up.
"Don't eat the bread," she said.
Jié froze.
She continued, voice flat:
"I watched someone eat it. He turned into a scream."
"…A scream?"
She looked at him then. And Jié understood. She didn't mean it metaphorically.
"He bit into it. And the room tore him out of himself. He didn't die. He just became... pain."
Jié stared at the bread. It looked perfect. Still warm. But the crust was too clean. The fruit had no seeds. The water didn't ripple. Not even when he stepped close.
"It's not food," the girl said. "It's bait. The elevator gives it to see who's too weak to climb. If you eat, you're marked. The next door doesn't open."
"What happens then?"
She didn't blink.
"You open instead."