Lost

Haisley

"What's your name?" A woman's voice breaks through the suffocating silence. She's staring at me with wide, hollow eyes.

"Haisley," I answer, my voice barely above a whisper, throat tight with fear. "Do we know what this is yet?"

"No…" she says, her voice trembling. "We've just been told to sit and wait for instructions."

My gaze darts back to the trail of blood. How can they be calm? There's blood. Something happened. She sees me staring, her expression hardening.

"A woman… she—she couldn't take it," the woman explains, her voice cracking. "She was screaming, desperate to find a way out. We were all warned—sit and wait, or face the consequences. She didn't listen."

"What… happened?" I force myself to ask, my voice thin, brittle. I already know it's something horrific.

The woman swallows hard, her eyes darkening. "A demon. Or… or something like one. It appeared, right in front of her. She screamed that it was the thing from the mirror… the one she saw after the chant. It… it grabbed her."

My blood runs cold.

"And then?" My voice is barely a whisper now.

"We—" her voice trembles. "We looked away, we couldn't watch. There was maybe fifteen minutes of her screaming, begging for help, grunting. But when I glanced back… her body, it wasn't human anymore. Twisted, mangled—like something tore her apart. It dragged what was left of her out."

I swallow the bile rising in my throat, glancing back at the blood trail. "Dragged her… out? Out where? There's no door."

The woman's eyes flicker with terror. "It makes one. A portal, or something. When it comes for you, it opens… a way out."

Another woman speaks, her voice low and trembling. "This isn't a game. It's something… something twisted, something demonic. We're not getting out of this, not alive."

Her words hang in the air, heavy and suffocating. The cold seeps deeper into my bones, my heart pounding in my chest, a deep, gnawing dread consuming me. This isn't a game—it's a nightmare. And there's no waking up.

Suddenly, the screens flicker to life, bathing the room in an eerie, flickering light. Words appear, slowly, but there's something off about them—twisted, sinister. Names. Are they names? I squint, my breath catching as I realize they're paired with something far darker.

Zyraxial – Samantha, Haisley, Laurie, Blaze, Sasha

Malgorath – Anna, Rose, Bella, Luna, Cassandra

Ashurith – Claire, Juliet, Megan, Susan, Louise

Belzharon – Willow, Eva, Rachel, Alexa, Sophia

Xarnathor – Michelle, Trixie, Nicola, Brenda, Gina

Vraxul – Paola, Deb, Annalise, Dahlia, Greta

Tzalyx – Cora, Julia, Paula, Ava, Star

Vorathiel – Maya, Fleur, Emily, Daisy, Lisa

Sargoroth – Brea, Olivia, Irene, Skye, Lucy

Kaelgrym – Kelly, Ashleigh, June, Vivien, Zoe

I stare at the list. Ten demons. Fifty women.

But my mind stalls on one horrifying fact—there are only nine of us here. My stomach twists as I scan the room, the women huddled in the corner, all wide-eyed and trembling, just like me. Where are the other 41?

Then my eyes fall on the name "Cassandra." A thick red line cuts through it, slashed across the screen like a death mark.

No... 40. A shiver crawls down my spine. What does this all mean?

Before I can begin to comprehend, the screen changes again, new text appearing in bold, unforgiving letters:

You belong to your demon, but that doesn't mean you are safe. Each demon will only claim one woman. The others will die.

You must fight to be chosen. If you fail, you die. If you refuse... you die.

My heart slams against my chest, the words burning into my mind. It feels like a trap snapping shut around us. No escape. No mercy.

The room falls into a suffocating silence as we all stare at the message, our minds trying to process the horror of it all. The air feels heavy, thick with fear, as if the demons themselves are already circling, watching from the shadows, waiting to make their claim.

I can hear the faint sounds of breathing, of stifled sobs. One woman mutters a prayer under her breath.

But the screens offer no comfort. No answers. Only a chilling reminder:

We are not safe. We are not guaranteed survival. We must fight.

And then, just as quickly as they came, the screens flicker off, leaving us trapped in the dark with nothing but the knowledge of the brutal choice before us:

Fight to be claimed… or die.

"Based on our names," one of the women whispers, her voice shaky. "We each belong to a different demon, so maybe we're split into five teams? One team wins?"

"We're a person down, Megan," someone snaps from the shadows, her voice sharp with panic.

"I know that, but it doesn't mean we can't win, does it?" Megan argues, her words a mix of desperation and forced logic. "If we couldn't win, surely they would have killed us all already, Deb?"

But they've got it wrong. I can feel it deep in my bones, an understanding creeping in that chills me to the core. It's not a team effort. It never was.

"It's not a team win," I whisper, my voice barely audible in the oppressive silence. All eyes turn to me. "We're in teams to keep us separated, to keep us apart from those we're really fighting against. But we don't win as a team. Cassandra is already dead, and if us nine survive... then someone from Cassandra's group and another team will win. Only one."

A sob breaks through the tension, the sound raw and broken. "I'm going to die..." the voice trembles, full of hopelessness, and I want to comfort them, to say that it's not true. But I can't. The words die on my tongue. I can't lie to them. Not now.

Because this isn't a game. It's real. And someone has already died. Maybe more. My mind flashes back to that moment in the glass room, the water rising, the desperation choking me. If I hadn't said those words, I would have drowned. And Zyraxial, or whatever demon I summoned, had been watching, waiting for me to speak.

How many others didn't make it? How many drowned in those rooms? My head throbs, the horror of it all sinking in, pressing down on me like a weight I can't shake. I've no idea how we're supposed to survive this. We aren't fighting against other people. We're up against demons, and nothing we do can win this on our own terms. This isn't a battle we know how to fight.

"I don't know much about demons," I say, my voice trembling, "but I do know one thing… just because we can't see them, doesn't mean they can't see us. They're watching. They're always watching."

Silence settles over the room like a shroud, the weight of my words sinking into the others. The fear is palpable now, seeping into the very air we breathe. We're trapped in something dark, something far beyond our control, and every instinct screams that we're not getting out of this alive.

Not unless the demons want us to.

Hours crawl by, the oppressive silence broken only by our shallow, anxious breaths.