He looked around slowly.
The new grotto was much larger than the one where he’d first arrived—and a shade brighter. Two beams of light lanced down from above, angled the same way. When he edged close to both abysses, he confirmed there was no top or bottom to see in either direction. Four heavy chains sank from the darkness overhead and disappeared into the dark below.
Darkness, despite several buckets of glowing water...
“No, not water,” Noah corrected himself, jerking his head. “An entire human being just poured in there. The same liquid I’ve been lugging by the bucket into my abyss… into my abyss.”
The abyss that kept his “charge” alive.
Seriously—what was this place?
Still shaken, he glanced back. The black door he’d used stood ajar in the rock wall. Near it, four thick pipes rose from the floor, arched at about four meters up, and vanished into the stone. Their direction, he noticed, more or less lined up with his original grotto. Subtle it was not. As if the mysterious admins were shoving a hint in his face: Yes, Noah. You’re fed by what you just saw. Bon appétit.
Beyond the twin abysses, the cave faded into twilight. Keeping a hand to the wall, he soon found another set of black doors—and another cluster of four pipes. These pointed the opposite way entirely.
He tried the handle and got a savage blast of cold for his trouble. Another door that would cost points to open. For now, he wasn’t wasting his last point—not when there was so much new ground to comb.
The cold didn’t just scorch his arm up to the shoulder; it shocked him fully awake.
* * *
He waited in the new big-ass grotto for hours. The chains didn’t so much as quiver; the strange cage didn’t descend from above or rise from below.
While he waited, he decided to record a short video about what he’d just seen.
First, he needed to settle his breathing and line up his words—so he didn’t sound like a stammering mess. Then again, after that, who would blame him?
He almost regretted not filming the execution... The thought lasted all of a heartbeat. Filming calmly while something like that unfolded? He knew a few people who would never miss the chance—but he wasn’t one of them.
He shot the new surroundings and laid out the events and discoveries step by step. This entry ran a little longer—ten minutes.
After uploading, he returned to the starting area, set the tablet on the desk, and began a meticulous sweep of every new nook, not missing a millimeter. He didn’t expect reactions from his faithful three for at least a few hours. Work, then.
* * *
Beep-beep!
“Warning! Only 10% charge remaining!”
Noah frowned at the screen. For the past few hours, he’d avoided thinking about the glowing water. He’d stayed away from the pump and the buckets, methodically searching the new territory—and finding nothing else of note. The unlocked area’s main feature was clearly the cage, and it still refused to appear.
On the other hand… maybe that was good news. He suspected the cage had a single function: to liquefy whoever ended up inside. Maybe next time it showed up, it wouldn’t be empty. Maybe that device was meant to deal with those who displeased the admins. Judging by what the man in the cage had screamed, he’d been playing the same kind of “escape room” Noah was in—and had done something unforgivable.
But if so, why stage the execution for Noah? To what end? The only real obstacle in the big grotto was the black doors beyond the abyss, and now Noah knew how to open them—spend a point, which he still had.
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
…Unless there was something he didn’t know. Maybe behind the doors was something he’d need to lure into the cage?
He opened the notebook app and began listing every useful idea.
Beep-beep!
“Warning! Only 5% charge remaining!”
The red pop-up drew a sigh. He set the tablet down and headed for the exit. Before leaving, he glanced up at the four chains. They didn’t twitch.
Whatever the origin of that “water,” Noah wasn’t giving up. He wanted to survive a while longer and beat this damned escape room—if that was even possible. After all, he wasn’t drinking the glowing stuff. He was just pouring it into an abyss. What happened next, he preferred not to think about it. The admins had designed and built all this; they were the ones he planned to blame.
As he moved through the dark corridors, a question gnawed at him: if the melted man had started here under circumstances like Noah’s, what could earn such punishment?
What could anyone do with a tablet, a pole, two buckets, and a couple of lanterns to drive the admins to fury?
Unless… the cage was the method for “terminating” a participant’s existence. In that case, Noah could guess what the stranger had done—lost one of his assigned items. Tossed the tablet into the abyss, maybe.
If that was true, the administrators were monsters.
* * *
After topping up the well with four buckets, Noah returned to the big grotto, hoping for some kind of change. But nothing had changed. The cage didn’t appear.
He hauled the remaining six buckets, thinking how large the unlocked area felt now. While ferrying water, he could easily miss something happening far away.
With all ten buckets poured, he considered the eleventh and twelfth—but dropped the idea. Too time-consuming.
Back in the big-ass grotto, he sat once more beneath the light beam and settled in to wait. Checking his YouTube page, he found a few comments:
@BlissfullyNaked (15 minutes ago)
So now your game has a points system? Does that mean the “escape room” has turned into a basic RPG you can beat by dumping endless buckets and cranking “power” to max? Personally, I don’t love that turn… though the cage idea sounds interesting. Keep going.
@IvanFromBurbash (11 minutes ago)
Hi. You could’ve bothered to film the cage.
A new visitor—someone he hadn’t seen before. Questionable advice or not, Noah smiled. He didn’t need tips right this second, but who knew—maybe he would soon. The more participants, the better.
@FreshPotato (8 minutes ago)
New cave? Starting to look like CGI. But the quality’s high, so nice work!
He had no idea how to answer that.
For now, the three comments didn’t multiply, but he soon noticed the view count ticking up. People were watching without commenting.
Noah smiled to himself. At last, a tiny shift on his channel. At last, a little visibility.
* * *
After sitting in the same spot for who knows how long, Noah concluded the cage must be a rare local event. That first “public” execution had probably been held back on purpose so he wouldn’t miss it—like an in-game event that only triggers when the player arrives. If that was true, he’d likely see the next one only after he did something significant—say, unlocking another set of black doors. He had a spare point for that, but held off.
He’d already combed everything down to the tiniest pebble and made a small discovery: this kind of obsessive searching had yielded nothing—before or now. The admins, it seemed, had left the keys to every riddle right under his nose from the start. Nothing hidden under the mattress, in the mattress, or beneath a stone.
If they were consistent, the future would play out the same way... probably.
So, for now, three paths remained:
First—wait for the cage to reappear… which it probably wouldn’t, unless he triggered it. Or maybe executions were simply rare and unpredictable.
Second—spend the point and open the next black doors. A tangible step forward.
Third—go back to his own abyss and grind more points. Spend some to “increase power” and see what changes.
For now, the third option appealed the most. So he stopped keeping vigil by the chains, returned to the starting grotto, and set to brutally hard work.