The rain arrived without warning.
On the day the show announced its "final mission," the city was wrapped in a thin layer of fog, the kind that clung to skin and made the world feel hushed, expectant.
Aria stood at the entrance of an abandoned construction site, backpack barely filled, expression unreadable—as if she already knew where this would end.
A young assistant approached from a distance with the kind of fear usually reserved for wild animals.
"Miss Lane," he said, hands trembling as he offered a sealed envelope, "these are the instructions."
Aria glanced at it, then at him.
"Do I look like someone who needs to read them?"
"H–honestly? Yes? I mean—no. I mean… the rules are a little complicated."
"Then read them for me."
He swallowed. "Y-yes."
He unfolded the paper and read aloud:
"The final mission lasts forty-eight hours. No on-site camera crew. No fixed surveillance. Contestants must film their own footage and survive alone."
Aria raised an eyebrow. "So you're finally admitting filming me is a workplace hazard?"
"…That's not what the producers meant."
She didn't argue.
The final mission wasn't designed for excitement.
It was designed for something else.
For her.
This wasn't the show's trap.
It belonged to an older world—one she had already died in once.
The site was a skeletal maze of rusted scaffolding and concrete.
Broken windows gaped like bitten bones.
Wind threaded through the metal beams with a thin, keening whistle.
A perfect ambush site.
She stepped past the entrance as if strolling into a familiar room.
"Nice day," she murmured. "Ideal for a fight."
Nobody nearby understood that comment.
Nobody dared ask.
The moment filming began, she clipped a recording pen to her collar.
The camera swayed gently with her steps, giving viewers the uncanny sense of walking beside her.
Different from every previous round, tonight's livestream had no comment section.
No floating hearts.
No screaming fans.
Just silence.
But behind every screen, millions of viewers leaned forward, watching every move with breathless intensity—so many eyes that the quiet felt crowded.
Her shadow stretched long behind her.
The air was wrong.
Too still.
She reached up—one small motion—and pulled her hair tie free.
Her movements sharpened immediately, posture dropping into an older, colder rhythm.
She heard it.
A breath that didn't belong.
A shift of weight on metal.
Someone trying too hard not to be heard.
Not a contestant.
Not crew.
Not anyone harmless.
This was trained danger.
The kind she used to wake up to.
Her lips curved faintly.
"Finally decided to show yourselves?"
Her voice slid through the empty building like the edge of a blade.
A light snapped overhead with a sharp pop.
Then another.
Then all of them.
Darkness swallowed the room.
The only illumination came from her collar cam—the tiny cone of light trembling slightly as she moved her head.
And then… something flickered.
One by one, the old security monitors along the wall sparked to life.
Their cracked glass screens glowed with static, casting eerie snow-white reflections across the room.
On the biggest monitor, a line of text appeared—typed slowly, deliberately, by invisible hands:
A-01. Welcome home.
The streaming platform nearly crashed.
The engineering team thought they were under cyberattack.
No one understood the message.
The industry didn't.
The viewers didn't.
But Aria did.
A-01 wasn't a greeting.
It was a call sign.
A leash.
A ghost she'd buried years ago.
She lifted the camera pen and angled it toward herself.
Her face was half-lit, half-shadowed, unreadable except for the slightest shape of a smile.
"Home?" she echoed softly.
One quiet step forward.
Her boot scraped against broken concrete—a sound so sharp it felt like it hit every viewer's eardrum.
"I burned that place down a long time ago."
Somewhere deeper in the warehouse, beyond the reach of her small circle of light, someone exhaled—low, controlled, practiced.
Someone who knew her.
Someone she used to know.
And someone who wasn't leaving without a fight.