Panic spread like fire finding the right fuel.
It didn't take long — maybe two minutes after the doors sealed, maybe less. The students who had still been trying to hold themselves together began losing that edge one by one. Some ran without any clear destination, moving simply because staying still felt unbearable. Others pressed themselves against the walls, sitting with their knees drawn to their chests, their magic flickering on and off involuntarily — their bodies' response to pressure that had nowhere else to go. Groups that had seemed solid began fracturing, their members trading blame in voices that climbed higher with every exchange.
In the middle of all of it, Sophie's group stood — or more precisely, didn't move anywhere, which in conditions like these was already an achievement of its own.
But stillness was not the same as calm.
Marie stood with both arms crossed over her chest, her eyes moving from one corner to the next like the mind behind them was running calculations and failing to arrive at any satisfying figure. Lira wasn't much different — she had drawn back slightly from the others, her spine nearly touching the wall, one hand gripping the strap of her bag in a way that had long since passed the threshold of reasonable. Dren stood the straightest among them, but his jaw was locked in a way that made clear his composure was not the comfortable kind.
And Sophie — Sophie was staring at the floor.
Not out of defeat. But because it was the only direction she could look without seeing something that made thinking harder. The body at the edge of the second floor was still there, and every time her eyes drifted toward it without meaning to, something inside her chest drew itself tighter by several degrees.
*"We're just supposed to stay trapped like this?"*
It was Marie who asked. Her voice wasn't panicked — closer to frustration still within its leash, but full enough that it needed somewhere to go.
No one answered right away.
Alen stood on the left side of their loose formation, set slightly apart from the others, his eyes on the corridor that led to the second floor. He had been quiet for several minutes now — not quiet because he had no answers, but quiet because the answers he had were not easy ones to give.
He exhaled once, short.
*"Yes."*
One word first. He let it hang for a moment before continuing.
*"If we're being honest, there are two options available to us right now."* His gaze moved from the corridor to the four people in front of him. *"First — we hold here. Stay on the first floor, don't go up, don't go looking for trouble, and wait for help from outside. Second — we go up to the second floor, find the infiltrator, and try to end this from the inside."*
*"Sounds like an easy choice,"* said Dren.
*"It isn't."* Alen held his gaze for a moment. *"The elixir distributed on the second floor doesn't just make the monsters stronger. It increases their aggression — which means their attack patterns have changed. Unpredictable. You can't assume they'll behave anything like the ones we faced down here."* He paused. *"We don't know how far the effect has spread. We don't know how many of them are up there. And we don't know the condition of any students who might have already gone in before the doors sealed."*
A brief silence.
*"So we just wait?"* Sophie asked, her voice quieter than Marie's question had been. Not weak — more like someone weighing something very carefully before deciding how they felt about it.
Alen didn't answer immediately.
The answer itself was simple. From the coldest, most calculated vantage point, staying put was the most rational choice available. He had no complete picture of what was happening on the second floor. He didn't know the true capabilities of the people around him — he had only met them hours ago, and what he'd seen on the first floor wasn't enough to build any real assessment for conditions far more dangerous than these. Moving forward with that many unknowns wasn't courage.
It was recklessness.
And the one thing he knew with certainty was that if someone died because of his decision, there was no way to undo it.
In his previous life, he had never needed to factor that in. He moved alone, took risks alone, absorbed the consequences alone. The only life factored into any of his calculations had been his own, and that had always felt like a manageable number.
Now there were four others.
*"For now, yes,"* he said finally. *"We wait."*
Marie turned toward him with an expression that wasn't quite disagreement but wasn't quite acceptance either. *"Reason?"*
*"Because the elixir's effect isn't something we can afford to underestimate."* Alen crossed his arms, his eyes moving briefly toward the dark corridor of the second floor before dropping back to the floor in front of him. *"The monsters up there are not the same monsters that were there before the test began. Their capabilities have changed, and we don't know by how much. Going in now without sufficient information — knowing there's an infiltrator but not where, not what they're doing, not whether they're still inside or already out — that isn't strategy."* He paused. *"That's a gamble."*
*"And if help from outside doesn't come fast enough?"* Dren asked.
The right question. Alen had been thinking about it too.
*"If the situation changes — if a threat comes to the first floor, if new information shifts the calculation — we reassess."* His eyes moved across each of them in turn. *"But moving without a clear foundation right now will only increase the number of people who need to be saved. And we can't save anyone if we can't get ourselves out."*
No one argued.
Not because they fully agreed — from their expressions, it was clear that not one of them was comfortable with the answer. Sophie was still looking at the floor. Marie was biting the inside of her cheek, slowly. Lira had shifted her gaze toward the end of the corridor leading upstairs and hadn't moved it back. Dren gave a single nod, short, in the way of someone accepting something not because they liked it but because the logic couldn't be refuted.
And Alen himself — he stood with an unchanged posture, a face that gave little away, but somewhere inside him was a part that could never be fully at peace with the decision to stay still.
His instinct wanted to move. Wanted to go up. Wanted to find the infiltrator and end this.
But instinct never bore the consequences of a wrong decision. The people around him would be the ones to bear those.
And that — for the first time in a very long time — was a consideration that genuinely changed what he was going to do.
---
From somewhere in the distance, beneath the overlapping sounds of panic still echoing through every corner of the first floor, came something different.
Not a human sound.
Something from the direction of the second floor — not loud, but distinct enough to separate it from everything else. Like the sound of something heavy shifting across stone. Or the footsteps of something larger than should have existed behind that door.
Alen didn't react immediately. But his eyes moved toward it, and there they stopped.
The door to the second floor was still closed.
But beneath its gap — between the stone floor and the base of the door — something dark was seeping slowly into the first floor.
A dense black liquid.
*The elixir.*