The world returned to them in fragments—blinding white light against rusted metal, the smell of rot hanging heavy, the hum of an old camera in the corner. They didn’t remember falling asleep, yet their body felt as though it had been dropped from a great height.

A trembling hand gripped their shoulder. Fingers icy, nails cracked and dirty, shaking not from cold but from something deeper—fear, torment, resignation.

“Wake up,” the voice rasped. It belonged to a girl no older than seventeen. Her name, she forced between shallow breaths, was Maribel. Her eyes were swollen red, her lips split. Rope burns coiled around her wrists like bracelets of misery.

When they blinked the haze away, the setting became clear: a set, but not of fiction. The walls were painted in grime, the floor tacky with old stains. Lights hung above, buzzing faintly, aimed not to illuminate but to expose. And in the corner—an ominous black lens pointed at them, its red recording light blinking steady, merciless.

Maribel shook them harder, desperation breaking through her cracked voice. “Please… don’t let them make me do it alone.”

A monitor on the wall flickered on with a burst of static, and a voice, distorted filled the room.

"Rise and shine, sleepyheads."