Level “α”: The Eternal Party

  A sweet, almost sickly scent hung in the air, blending with the sound of children’s music that seemed to come from everywhere at once. The notes, screeching and uneven, sounded as though an old record player were dying between distorted laughter and warped applause.

  May and Peter advanced cautiously, brushing aside the small balloons that covered the floor up to their ankles.

  The plastic crackled beneath their steps, blending with the melody and the disturbing atmosphere that surrounded them.

  In front of them, the room opened into an endless birthday hall.

  Infinite tables, overflowing with cakes, pastries, and sweets in every imaginable colour, stretched beneath a yellowish light that did not flicker… yet didn’t seem natural either.

  The air vibrated with oppressive warmth.

  Paper decorations shimmered in pastel tones; balloons floated above them like watchful creatures; and in the distance, soft play areas and bright slides seemed to offer a tempting invitation.

  An invitation too perfect to trust.

  Bealuna pressed her lips together, watching in silence.

  It wasn’t her first time witnessing horrors disguised as innocence… but this place was on another level.

  She could feel it.

  Something was deeply wrong with the way the air moved — with how the shadows flickered under the warm light.

  It was as if the level itself were holding its breath, waiting.

  Dante walked slowly ahead, pushing balloons aside with his foot.

  The walls — absurdly cheerful — were painted with oversized smiles and wide, unblinking eyes that seemed to follow them despite remaining still.

  And as he moved forward, a sharp memory crept through his thoughts:

  He had been here before.

  He remembered the Bunnies, the Nightmares of this level.

  Human figures disguised as giant white rabbits, their smiles frozen, with colourful balloons tied to their wrists.

  At first, they were friendly. They waved. They invited you to play.

  But a single laugh, a bite of cake, a sip of some drink...

  And the “party” truly began.

  He remembered the metallic taste of fear, the pain, and the exact instant when his body ceased to exist — only to become a lemon cake.

  He remembered the horror of watching another survivor — unaware, smiling — eat him, piece by piece.

  The rule was simple, but cruel:

  Avoid being seen.

  The Bunnies could only look straight ahead.

  Hiding beneath a table was enough to confuse them, or bursting a balloon in another direction could distract them.

  Absurd rules — yet in Nullaria, even the laws of horror followed their own logic.

  Dante stopped and turned slowly towards the group.

  — Don’t touch anything, he said in a low voice — more a plea than an order.

  Don’t eat.

  Don’t drink.

  And don’t try to fight them… if they appear.

  May and Peter exchanged confused looks, not quite understanding the weight of his warning.

  Bealuna, however, froze. She had seen something.

  For a fleeting instant, the illusion tore like a thin veil.

  The tables no longer held cakes — they were covered with human heads, eyes still open, mouths stuffed with hardened cream.

  The glasses overflowed with a red liquid that dripped slowly to the floor, tracing small rivers of blood beneath the tablecloths.

  And the balloons on the ceiling… inflated and deflated with faint breaths, like human bodies trapped within elastic skins.

  Bealuna blinked.

  The vision vanished as quickly as it came.

  Was it real? Were the sweets edible? Or merely another trap of the level?

  Peter leaned closer to a small cake, fascinated. The pink meringue bubbled as if something alive moved beneath it.

  — It looks so real… — he murmured while stretching his finger to touch it.

  — Peter! — Dante barked, spinning around sharply —. I told you not to touch it!

  The boy stepped back, visibly shaken.

  Bealuna lowered her gaze. On the floor, between the balloons, a broken puppet stared back at her with a crooked smile.

  She blinked.

  The puppet was gone.

  That silent disappearance made every muscle in her body tense.

  They continued walking among endless tables draped with streamers that seemed to move of their own accord.

  The balloons pulsed like weak hearts; the paper flags hung from ceilings that vanished into the distance; forgotten party hats and broken maracas lay scattered across the floor — the remains of a celebration that had never ended.

  Then, a sharp, distorted laugh split the silence.

  A child’s giggle — mechanical, looping endlessly, warping a little more each time it repeated.

  The childish melody that filled the air never stopped; it simply circled again and again, like a broken record begging to die.

  Pressed against a wall, Dante peered into the next room.

  A Bunny stood there, motionless, facing the other way. It clutched a pair of bright balloons, and its once-white costume was stained with dark, dried blood.

  The Bunnies

  A sudden pop broke the air — Peter had stepped on a rattle.

  Dante didn’t think — he moved.

  — Hide. Now! — he hissed.

  They quickly rolled beneath the nearest tables.

  Bealuna and Dante shared one; May and Peter slipped under another.

  Two Bunnies entered, drawn by the noise, their oversized feet thudding heavily against the floor, stirring the sea of balloons with each step.

  Their heads jerked erratically; the balloons tied to their wrists trembled as they moved.

  After a long, suffocating silence, they wandered away, vanishing into the next room.

  Only the distant music remained.

  That’s when they saw him.

  Under a third table, curled in the shadows, a young man around twenty-three years old watched them with terrified eyes.

  Dark-haired, pale-skinned, his face hollow and exhausted, dressed in filthy rags once meant to be colourful.

  On his shoulder glowed a faint tattoo — the Greek symbol Ω.

  And on his arm, the tattoo of the Compass rune shimmered faintly.

  When he realised he had been spotted, he stared back at them, wide-eyed with fear. Once the Bunnies were gone, the stranger gestured urgently: they had to follow him.

  Virellian — that was his name — joined them with careful, silent steps, whispering as though the walls themselves might be listening.

  — We need to reach the Water Slide Hall… before the Level changes and swallows us all…

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Dante felt a spark of relief.

  He was one of the key people he had to find.

  And though Dante already knew — from past regressions — that Virellian would one day betray him, he also knew he couldn’t survive without him.

  The Compass rune was too valuable: it pointed unerringly towards whatever its bearer desired, ignoring distance, distortion, or time.

  Dante had to earn his trust.

  Not out of friendship. Not loyalty.

  Out of necessity.

  Only with the Compass rune’s guidance could he locate the Terrors of Nullaria.

  He also remembered that the Water Slide Hall was rumoured to be this level’s exit — he had heard it before.

  But deep down, he knew with bitter certainty: they wouldn’t make it this time.

  Something worse was waiting before they could escape the Eternal Party.

  Frustration twisted in his gut as they moved.

  They crawled close to the walls, slow and deliberate, dodging the Bunnies who stood frozen in the centre of each room — holding their balloons, staring in opposite directions.

  Their movements were sluggish, puppet-like, yet their blind vigilance made every metre of progress a silent torment.

  Then a commotion stopped them in their tracks.

  From a wide hall ahead came laughter — loud, careless, human.

  Horacio and his group were there, blissfully unaware of the danger.

  They were playing inside a massive ball pit that seemed to grow straight out of the ground, hurling foam balls, laughing, devouring chocolate cakes with hands smeared in caramel.

  Three Bunnies surrounded them, silently watching.

  Their clumsy movements almost looked playful, their rabbit heads twitching in jerky mimicry of joy.

  Though they imitated laughter and friendly gestures, their mouths never moved — just those fixed, empty smiles.

  One stood still, clutching balloons.

  Another piled more cakes beside the pit.

  The third offered drinks in bright cups, tilting its head as if trying to understand the game.

  Dante gritted his teeth, holding back a growl.

  Horacio was sealing his own fate — and possibly theirs as well.

  Bealuna shuddered, whispering:

  — Those cakes… they’re not real food, are they?

  Before Dante could answer, Virellian turned sharply towards her, eyes wide with horror.

  — Can’t you see it? — he hissed, voice trembling between disbelief and disgust — They’re not cakes… they’re feasting on human bodies! Throwing pieces of people at each other like toys without realizing it! Is their perception so low they can’t even see it?

  Horror drifted through the air like thick fog.

  May, Peter, and Dante turned their eyes toward the ball pit, trying to focus — trying not to see.

  But all they could see was a flickering distortion, like a stuttering glitch in reality, which for brief moments revealed the truth.

  The bright, colourful balls were not toys.

  They were human remains — torn apart, compressed into spheres, tossed into the air between laughter and shrieks of delight.

  Virellian lowered his head, whispering:

  — My perception range is much higher than yours… I can see through the disguise.

  A glacial silence fell over the group.

  No one spoke.

  Only the childish tune went on, looping endlessly from somewhere far away.

  Then Horacio noticed them.

  He froze mid-laugh, standing inside the pit.

  — What the hell are you doing here?! You followed us?! This Level was ours to investigate! You weren’t supposed to be here!

  With no cover, no tables, no shadows to hide behind, Dante’s group stood completely exposed.

  The Bunnies saw them instantly.

  Virellian reacted first, his whisper cutting through the tension:

  — Raise your hands. Do what they say. Don’t fight them… no matter what happens.

  They obeyed.

  The nearest three Bunnies stepped forward in slow, swaying motions, gently pushing them towards the ball pit — inviting them to join the fun and play with Horacio’s group.

  That false politeness was worse than any open threat.

  But Peter couldn’t handle it.

  Trembling, his breath quickened; the rune of Tremors flared across his right arm.

  A pulse of panic coursed through him.

  A second later, the entire room began to shake.

  The ground rumbled; the coloured lights flickered wildly.

  Balloons shot upward as if the air itself were recoiling.

  The deafening roar spread through the halls — and Dante barely had time to curse before the world itself began to convulse.

  The quake was an alarm.

  And the Bunnies answered.

  They started splitting grotesquely — their plush bodies tearing open, duplicating into distorted reflections of themselves.

  Within seconds, dozens filled the hall, crawling from the floors, the walls… even the air.

  — You idiot! — Virellian screamed, his voice sharp with rage and fear — That’s why we weren’t supposed to fight them!

  Two Bunnies lunged at Peter, pinning him with inhuman strength.

  He struggled, kicking and twisting, but it was useless.

  Bealuna stepped forward — Dante grabbed her arm.

  — No! — he shouted, eyes wide — You can’t save him!

  One Bunny pried Peter’s mouth open with brutal force, dislocating his jaw.

  Another shoved a bright pink gelatinous sweet down his throat, pushing it deep with its thick, plush fingers.

  Peter screamed — or tried to — but the sound broke into a strangled gurgle.

  His body began to convulse, his skin draining of colour.

  May could only whisper a trembling no, frozen in horror.

  Bealuna wept silently beside her, trembling, powerless to do anything but watch as reality devoured him.

  Peter stopped moving.

  His skin melted like wax, his bones cracked and twisted.

  His arms elongated, his face compressed until it became nothing but a stiff, empty smile.

  The texture of his flesh turned pastel — sickly and soft.

  Then, with a final spasm, Peter’s body stretched beyond human shape.

  The sound of breaking bone and tearing skin filled the air as he transformed into a grotesque figure — smooth, flat, and painted.

  The Bunnies, laughing silently with mock cheer, lifted what was left of him and pressed it against the wall, clapping as if admiring their handiwork.

  Peter — or whatever he had become — now resembled a cartoon princess, frozen mid-smile, like a sticker glued to the wall.

  From her painted eyes, thin streams of blood trickled down and vanished into the surface, absorbed by the level itself.

  Dante’s breath caught in his throat.

  There was no doubt left — those stickers covering the walls…

  had once been people.

  A scream tore through the air.

  May collapsed, sobbing uncontrollably, her voice breaking under the weight of despair.

  Bealuna held her, crying silently, fury trembling in every breath.

  The Bunnies, indifferent, circled the pit again — still covered in Peter’s blood — resuming their cheerful, mechanical play as if nothing had happened.

  Their laughter, silent yet deafening, filled the room with a horror that no scream could match.

  Horacio stepped forward, his face tight with anger barely contained.

  — What the hell did you do?! — he shouted. — Everything was fine until you showed up!

  Dante met his gaze, restraining his own anger and didn’t answer.

  The accusations hung in the air like poison gas.

  Every breath was an insult.

  Every look, an open wound.

  Both groups stepped back one from the other, into the ball pit sides, surrounded by the flickering, multicoloured lights that pulsed across the walls around them.

  The Bunnies watched them with motionless smiles — silent witnesses to a human drama they could neither understand nor care to.

  From one corner, Virellian observed in silence with a bitter mix of horror and reluctant comprehension in his eyes.

  He understood immediately — there was tension between these two factions, and he wanted no part in it.

  Horacio, breathing heavily, clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white.

  Finally, he spoke, his voice low and sharp:

  — I’ll deal with the Bunnies.

  He reached into his pocket, accessing his Dimensional Storage.

  From his palm, a small object began to take form — a translucent green balloon, faintly pulsating as if it were alive.

  A notification flickered across Dante’s retina:

  [Green Balloon of the Eternal Party Level — Blessed Relic]

  Grants its bearer the ability to distract enemies for a short duration. Single use.

  Usage: Pop the balloon and direct your focus towards the chosen point of distraction.

  Horacio smirked, glancing at Dante with thinly veiled arrogance.

  — Watch and learn how to handle a problem.

  He activated his rune of Intimidation.

  The tattoo on his arm glowed with a shifting spectrum of colours, and the effect was immediate — every Bunny turned its head towards him.

  Their plush bodies stiffened, their empty eyes locking on his figure like dolls awaiting command.

  Without hesitation, Horacio crushed the balloon between his hands.

  A dull, deep sound rolled through the air, its echo travelling to where his gaze was fixed — the far end of the playroom.

  In an instant, the entire Bunny horde turned in unison towards the sound, as if some unseen force had disconnected them from their collective will.

  Virellian wasted no time. He slipped out of the playroom like a shadow, moving swiftly, guided by his Compass rune.

  In the distance, he spotted a small chamber flooded by a thin layer of water that barely covered the ankles. On the opposite wall, three identical slide holes gaped open like black mouths, eerily similar to the exit from Level 1.

  Above the third one, someone had roughly carved an arrow into the wall — a mark of hope: the exit.

  Dante and Bealuna ran after him, carrying May, who could barely stand, broken by Peter’s death.

  Behind them, Horacio and his team also took advantage of the Bunnies’ distraction. Jonathan activated his rune of Speed, and his movements became nearly imperceptible — flickering from one spot to the next — helping his team escape through the opposite side of the ball pit.

  Seeing Dante’s group retreating, Bebe turned sharply and, in a burst of pure cruelty, slashed at May’s back with his rune of Claw.

  The strike made her convulse in agony, ripping a scream from her throat that sent all three of them crashing to the ground.

  The sound drew the Bunnies’ attention back to Dante’s group.

  Hundreds of rabbit heads turned at once.

  The thudding of their plush feet filled the level, a stampede that made the ground tremble with every step.

  Consumed by rage, Bealuna raised her bow and fired.

  The arrow whistled through the air and lodged in Bebe’s leg as he tried to flee.

  — You damn bitch! — he roared, collapsing to the floor, while Horacio and the others moved away laughing, though it didn’t sound like victory but hysteria.

  Then, everything changed.

  The air thickened — impossible to breathe.

  The balloons on the ceiling began to burst one by one, exploding into sticky bubbles of blood that rained down like crimson drizzle.

  The colourful lights flickered frantically before dying out.

  The cheerful tune that had played endlessly distorted into a metallic shriek that clawed at the ears, blending with the frantic steps of the now-disoriented Bunnies.

  The walls of the room began to melt like black wax.

  Then the rest followed — twisting and collapsing in waves of molten matter.

  From the cracks, dark miasmas slithered into the air like starving tendrils, reaching for anything they could touch.

  The party decorations dissolved into shapeless masses, and the cakes turned into piles of grey, pulsing flesh.

  The floor trembled.

  Everyone froze.

  A deep vibration surged from beneath the level.

  Reality itself began to fold inwards, as if crushed from every direction by an invisible force.

  The bright colours of the level of the Eternal Party were devoured by an all-consuming blackness.

  The balloons, the tables, the Bunnies — everything was swallowed by a vortex of shadows.

  Space shattered like glass, its fragments floating around the survivors, reflecting their faces in impossible distortions.

  A sharp, unbearable sound drilled into their skulls.

  It wasn’t noise — it was a sensation that scraped at their gums and pierced the soul.

  Something ancient, something monstrous, was breaking through.

  The Sixth Terror of Nullaria was crossing the veil.

  Its presence was so vast, so overwhelming, that the laws of the Level “ α ” disintegrated.

  Structures vanished and reformed, replaced one after another.

  Where colourful walls had once stood, floating crimson stone blocks now fell from a non-existent sky, locking together in impossible patterns — a hellish Tetris, building and collapsing all at once.

  A dimensional rift opened above them.

  From it poured a suffocating red light that consumed the last remnants of the level of the Eternal Party, peeling away reality as if it were a rotting cocoon.

  The entire level was dragged down into an even deeper, more negative axis of existence.

  When the distortion finally ended, a new world unfolded.

  There was no floor, no ceiling, no horizon.

  Only a vast void, suspended between whirlpools of darkness and drifting shards of red stone moving in opposing directions.

  The silence was total — broken only by the trembling echoes of their breath.

  Dante, Bealuna, Virellian, May froze — Horacio’s group too, paralysed and unable to move.

  At the centre, a hooded figure walked forward slowly.

  Its crimson robe was immaculate, as though nothing in that chaos could touch it.

  Beneath the hood there was no face — only a black abyss that devoured light and hope alike.

  More reddish blocks fell from nowhere, momentarily forming platforms.

  With them appeared more than thirty people — confused, terrified souls staring wide-eyed at the void, searching for an explanation that didn’t exist.

  Within seconds, the blocks disintegrated, swallowed by the darkness, leaving Dante, Horacio, Virellian and the others suspended on different fragments of stone, at varying heights around the Terror.

  The figure spoke.

  — Welcome, little ones… — it whispered.

  A cold breeze rippled through the void, carrying a sweet scent.

  — My name is Love. The Sixth Terror of Nullaria.

  Dante, paralysed, stared at the figure before him.

  His vision flickered, and a line of text appeared, glowing invisibly in the air:

  [Level “?”: Axis -Y. Class 5 — Survival Difficulty: Inferno]

  Records of this level are scarce or non-existent.

  The documentation found so far is unreliable and contradictory.

  Access is restricted to certain souls, and rumours suggest only those with special abilities can reach it.

  So far, the only known method of entry is through “invitation”.

  Death is virtually guaranteed. Whether an exit exists is unknown.

  Dante understood, with a mixture of horror and resignation, that he stood before one of the Seven Terrors of Nullaria.

  And that the true nightmare…

  was only just beginning.

  End of Chapter Nine.

  The Eternal Party was never about happiness. It was about perception — about how easily we let false light convince us that we are safe, even when something inside us knows we are not.

  But that’s how Nullaria works — it shows you what your mind can handle, not what’s really there.

  And isn’t that what life does, too?

  And sometimes, it takes losing everything — or seeing horror wearing the face of innocence — to finally open our eyes.

  Are you sure the reality your eyes see is what you’re truly perceiving?

  — Alberto Báez