Chapter 3: Your time is up
Everything was turned upside down. Smoke clouded the skies and blood soaked the soil.
Screams of warriors echoed as they slashed and tore each other appeared in a frenzy.
And yet, despite the madness—despite blades flashing and limbs flying—none of them came close to the man who stood amidst it all.
He stood just a few feet away from the carnage, an average-height man with black hair matted by sweat, and eyes wide with disbelief. Riley.
Even as men and women flung their blades with reckless abandon, not one of them glanced in his direction. Not one of them acknowledged his presence.
"Stop...!" Riley called out, stepping toward a pair locked in a desperate struggle. "Please! Just stop all of... this!"
He reached for one of them—a young warrior whose name he never learned—but the man simply ignored like like he was smoke.
None of the people he tried reaching out responded, he doubted they could even see him.
One cleaved into the other with a sharp SCHLICK, and the other retaliated before collapsing in a bloody heap.
Riley staggered back, his feet slipping on the blood-soaked earth.
"What the hell is going on...?" he whispered. "Why... why is everyone...?"