The blue light of the System notification lingered in the air, casting a ghostly pallor over the faces of the nine players.
[SYSTEM WARNING!]
[ONE AMONG YOU IS NO LONGER A PRIMARY ENTITY.]
The silence that followed was not the peaceful kind. It was a vacuum, sucking the oxygen out of the café, leaving behind a suffocating pressure that made every breath feel like a struggle. For a long minute, no one spoke. No one moved. They simply stared at the text, and then, as if choreographed by a collective instinct of survival, their gazes shifted.
They began to look at one another.
The atmosphere shifted from cautious cooperation to predatory scrutiny. The café, which had felt like a sanctuary minutes ago, now felt like a cage.
Tang Xin's jaw set. Mu Cheng's eyes swept the room. Yu Qing went very still. Fang Jie looked down at his own hands.
And then, because fear in a group of nine people with nowhere to go requires an outlet, everyone looked at everyone else.
