Semua Bab Bloodscript: Survival Game of the Reborn: Bab 31 - Bab 40

The elevator groaned as it climbed, the metal cage rattling with every jerk of the unseen cables. The timer on the panel bled seconds.**04:37.** **04:36.**“Anyone else hate vertical movement now?” Jax muttered.“Shh,” the older woman said. “Listen.”To what, I wasn’t sure.Then the elevator **shuddered** and slammed to a halt hard enough to knock us into each other.The light flickered.The doors ground open a few inches, then all the way with a reluctant, screeching slide.We stared out at the first floor the Game had queued up for us.A hallway of mirrors.Mirrors from floor to ceiling on either side, framing a long, narrow corridor. The glass was warped, funhouse-style—stretching, compressing, and twisting reflections into grotesque shapes. Our faces elongated, our bodies ballooned, shrank, fractured into shards.Behind our warped images, something else moved.Shapes.Shadows.Figures that *almost* looked like us and also… didn’t. Eyes in the wrong places. Mouths a little too w

The white flash burned everything away—the rooftop, the broken beacon, the smoking heap of chimera metal—like someone had taken an eraser to the scene. My stomach lurched into free fall.Then vinyl caught my back.I slammed into my bus seat hard enough that spots burst behind my eyes. An instant later, bodies thudded into cushions all around me, curses and ragged gasps overlapping in a chorus.The hum of the engine seeped in next, low and steady. The stale mix of old coffee, sweat, and metal filled my lungs.We were back.My hands clenched automatically on the edge of the seat in front of me. It took a second for my brain to accept the sudden lack of screaming metal and imminent death.Jax was half‑slumped across the aisle, one arm braced against the window, chest heaving. Someone a few rows back was sobbing quietly, shock finally catching up.Corvin sat where he always seemed to end up—one seat over, angled toward me. There was a streak of soot across his cheek. A thin line of blood

His thumb was still on my cheek, warm and solid, when I realized I was waiting for him to decide.Old habit.Old script.Let him move first. Let him set the terms. Let him be sure.No.I’d done enough of that.I drew a slow breath, feeling it all the way down. Fear. Want. The fragile, raw thing that had cracked open between us.“This is… my choice,” I said quietly. I wasn’t sure if I was telling him or myself. “Not the Game’s. Not Ethan’s. Mine.”Something in his expression shifted. The tension in his jaw eased by a fraction; the lines at the corners of his eyes deepened.“Willa,” he said, low. Warning and questioning both.“I know,” I said. “It’s dangerous. It’s stupid. We could die in twelve hours, and all of this will look like… bad disaster‑porn timing.”A weak huff of almost‑laughter escaped him.“But I’m tired,” I went on, my voice roughening. “Of acting like I don’t want things. Of pretending I’m only here to survive, not to… exist. I don’t want to be grateful for scraps of att

Light woke me before Sound did. Soft, golden—not the harsh neon of the city, not the dim bus fluorescents. It filtered through the Safe Room like a simulated morning, catching in the dustless air, turning everything gentle around the edges. I lay very still, cataloging sensations. Warmth against my back. A heavy weight over my waist. The slow, steady drag of breath at the nape of my neck, stirring my hair. It's not a nightmare. Not the bus. Corvin. Memory swept back in a slow, dizzying wave. His mouth, his hands, the way he’d said I wasn’t a placeholder. The Game’s whisper threading through the dark. I swallowed, suddenly aware of every inch of bare skin under the sheet. His arm tightened slightly as I shifted, palm flattening over my stomach. His fingers flexed once, like his body was checking. I was still there before his mind fully woke up. “Mm,” he muttered into my hair. His voice was rough with sleep. “You’re thinking too loud.” “I didn’t say anything,” I whispered. “

The first step off the bus felt like stepping onto the tongue of something waiting to swallow us.The warped wooden planks of the boardwalk groaned under my weight. Damp sank instantly through the soles of my shoes, a cold seeping up from the black water just beneath.Fog clung low, coiling around our ankles. It smelled of salt and mildew and something sweetly rotten, like cotton candy left too long in a gutter.Behind us, the bus doors hissed shut with a soft, final sigh.Ahead, the carnival loomed.To our left, a Ferris wheel rose out of the water, half its circle submerged. The topmost car turned lazily, squealing on rusted metal, while the lower ones vanished beneath the surface and reappeared dripping, as if some invisible hand kept turning the wheel whether or not anyone rode.To the right, a carousel platform jutted from the slick boards, its outer ring swallowed by the tide. The painted horses bobbed up and down in a slow, hypnotic rhythm, poles vanishing into the black beneat