One billion people from one hundred thousand universes have been dropped onto a singular planet five times larger than Earth. In the corner of their eye were three numbers:

1,000,000,000.

15.

10.

Nobody could figure out what it meant until fifteen years after the initial transportation, as out of the blue, a message repeated itself in their minds for twenty-four hours.

“Only ten can return. The rest will die. There is no time limit,”

Following the global message, genocides ran rampant, with established friendships broken, families ripped apart, blood alliances betrayed, and leaders felled in seconds. How? [The Evgnomon] The Beholden; hidden throughout the realm were artefacts: weapons, information, tools from beings and societies of a higher plane. It was up to the humans to scour the land and take them by hook or by crook if they ever wished to go back.

Whisked into this world as a mere babe, I suppose it was lucky I didn’t die in the chaos. But as I stare into the rotten, tattered pages of the accursed book laid upon the pedestal in front of me; and the unnerving gaze of our professor trained onto the back of my head silently pressuring me to become the avatar of grotesques unspeakable and undecipherable to the human mind.

O, how I wish I did...