The sterile, yellow expanse of the waiting room was a familiar purgatory. A woman's voice, smooth as velvet over steel, echoed through the chamber, outlining the grim reality to come. Her words were a dirge, a prelude to the cacophony of battle that would soon engulf this serene space. You had been here before, a specter haunting the margins of a life irrevocably lost. The weight of that past bore down on me, a cold, unrelenting pressure. A flicker of determination ignited within. This time would be different. You would not be a pawn, you would save everything. The familiar faces around you were a stark reminder of lives extinguished, hopes shattered. Their panicked cries for "Status Window!" fell on deaf ears. You already knew the futility of such pleas. Soon, the glass walls would shatter, and a horde of monstrous trolls would pour in, their bloodlust a crimson tide. My gaze drifted over the crowd, recognizing the familiar contours of survival, the desperate flicker of hope in countless eyes. Yet, amidst this sea of known faces, there was one anomaly, a young man whose presence was a jarring dissonance. He was a ghost in this haunting tableau, a variable in an equation you never expected but you couldn't think about that now as you grabbed a sword and got ready to fight