Sam walked down the hallway slowly, his eyes jumping left and right. He stopped in front of the first green torch and tried to pry it from the wall. It didn’t budge. Carefully, he moved a finger over the flame and found that it lacked any heat.

“Cold fire,” Sam sucked in his breath. Wherever he was, the laws of his old world didn’t seem to hold any longer.

Sam continued walking down the hallway, watching the torches with interest. He could make out the door on the far side, double-wide and covered with strange murals of warring people.

Suddenly Sam hear a clicking sound from below him. He jumped backwards, watching as one of the floor tiles he stepped on slowly receded into the floor.

“What the…” Sam’s voice was cut off by a tremendous amount of pain in his right shoulder. He screamed, his voice cracking like glass, as he looked at the shaft of a pulsing-green arrow buried in his flesh.

Suddenly, a second burst of pain sobered him. Sam looked down at his thigh to the second arrow that had decided to use him as a pincushion. His blood flowed like a river, and tears welled in his eyes from the sudden stabbing pain.

Sam looked up in time to see the mechanism situated above the far door, a series of glowing green crossbows. He had stepped onto a trap.

Just as the situation became clear to him, the twang of a third bow echoed and the final arrow found its way into Sam’s throat. He collapsed backwards into a pool of his own blood. The pain began to fade as numbness took him over.

Sam was dying.

He could only ponder on the sheer absurdity of it all as a blue screen opened up before him.

-

Sam’s eyes shot open. He was back in the stone room. The dagger was on the table again.

Welcome to the Tutorial!

The same blue screen popped up again.

Sam shot to his feet and began patting down his body. He found no blood, no scars, and no arrows. He wondered if it had just been a dream, but he knew in his heart it had been too real. Sam hadn’t felt that much pain in his entire life.

‘So I come back to life when I die?’ He wondered, almost confused by the whole experience of death. There had been no long tunnel, no voice of God, and no reincarnation. He simply went from dying in a pool of his own blood to waking up in the stone room again.

After coming to terms with what happened, Sam grew angry. He cursed under his breath and wondered just who designed a tutorial with lethal traps in the very first room.

The pain he felt was so vibrant, so powerful that it caused Sam to take a moment of pause on exploring his new ‘home’... And so Sam didn’t move. He stayed in the starting room, terrified of what he might find outside in the long hallway.

For hours Sam stayed still, but soon enough nature came calling. He receded to a far corner and relieved himself, and thankfully the refuse vanished into the stone as if by magic.

This point was when Sam noticed a distinct problem: he had no food nor water in the stone room. He was beginning to grow thirsty, and he feared what a prolonged stay would do to him…

But if he left the room, then he’d face the traps from before. Sam felt the pain from the arrows even now, just by thinking on them. He had never faced such extremes before. He had never truly felt pain, he had never truly felt thirst, and he had never truly felt hunger.

After experiencing real pain, Sam decided then he’d rather face the risk of dehydration and starvation than go through it again.

Minutes turned to hours, and Sam’s thirst only grew. He continued to swallow his saliva, attempting to sooth his throat. His tongue tasted like sand.

As the hours passed, Sam’s head began to hurt. He felt dizzy and nauseous, and his throat felt like char. With no windows, no clocks, and no references, he could no longer track the passage of time. He felt hungover, for some odd reason.

Days passed, and Sam grew increasingly lethargic. Moving became hard, and his skin felt too small. For some reason, he never panicked. He knew he was dying from dehydration.

Sam stumbled to his feet. He needed water. His throat sang out in a chorus of pain, and his vision was blurred. Even breathing hurt. Sam decided that dying to an arrow was less painful than this Hell.

With trembling feet, Sam stumbled forward to the hallway door, and started making his way. His mind and eyes were hazed over. He remembered the arrows and their pain, but those thoughts were now faded compared to the tortures of dehydration. He moved on like a zombie.

Somehow, by sheer luck, Sam managed to avoid the floor tile that activated the crossbow traps. He continued stumbling forward, determined to find something to drink, something to satiate himself.

Sam reached the door at the end of the hall and threw it open, revealing a small stone room with a single green-skinned figure standing in the middle. The creature looked to be the cross between a chimp and a man, with a hunched body and strange tail. It was dressed in leather armor and had a long knife sheathed on its hip.

The creature’s eyes followed Sam as he entered. Then, without warning, it leapt forward. Sam tried to cry out, but his body was too weak. The monster’s knife cut into Sam, severing his life in a torrent of blood and pain.