Mark of the Hunt
Am I going insane?
The thought slithers into my mind the moment I wake up, cold and disoriented, in a place that feels more like a nightmare than reality. My head is empty, my memories wiped clean, leaving behind only a suffocating void where my identity should be. The walls around me are smeared with something dark—blood, maybe. Symbols, jagged and unfamiliar, carve into the surfaces as if someone tried to leave a message… or a warning. But none of it makes sense. Nothing here makes sense.
I try to grasp at something—anything—but the harder I reach, the faster it slips through my fingers, like smoke dissolving in the air. My pulse pounds as I force myself to move, each step foreign, like I’m controlling a body that doesn’t belong to me. A name. A purpose. Something to tell me who I am. But there’s nothing. Only fragments, pieces that refuse to fit together.
Then the games begin.
Survival. That’s all it’s supposed to be. Do what you’re told, follow the rules, and maybe—just maybe—you’ll make it out alive. But I learn quickly that this isn’t just about survival. It’s about control. It’s about twisting reality until I don’t know what’s real and what’s a lie. The other players are just as lost, just as desperate, but I can see it— But they aren’t like me. Some of them know more than they’re letting on. Some of them… aren’t afraid.
The more I search for answers, the more the world unravels. Reality bends. Faces blur. Voices whisper from places they shouldn’t. Every time I think I’m close to the truth, it twists away from me, leaving me drowning in questions I can’t answer. The line between what’s real and what’s in my head has thinned to nothing, and I don’t know if I can trust my own mind anymore.
Who am I?
Maybe it’s better that I don’t know. Maybe knowing would break me beyond repair. Or maybe… maybe I was never meant to leave this place at all.
I used to think I was just confused, just lost in the chaos.
But now?
I was definitely insane.
