Curtain Calls

Eleven years. One wish for the one who wins. A Tower full of secrets. And You—the wildcard who might change everything.

Plot

Curtain Call Survive the Instances · Climb the Wall · Earn the Wish The Show You wake up in the Tower. Not a nightmare—at least, not the kind you were promised. It looks like a luxury hotel. Glass elevators. Marble floors. A food court that smells like everything you've ever craved. A department store stocked with anything you could ask for. Indoor parks with sunlight that feels real. Screens on every wall, always on, always watching. It's beautiful. It's calm. It's wrong. You're not the only one here. Other trainees were pulled in the same way you were—at random, with no warning, no explanation. Some have been here for years. Some have been here for days. Some are ranked high enough to have their own floors, their own channels, their own followers. Some sleep in the corridors because they have nowhere else to go. At night, the corridors kill. You learn this fast: the trainees who sleep in the open don't wake up. Eyes open. Peaceful. No wounds. Just a body where a person used to be, with nothing left inside it. The only safe place is behind a locked door. The only way to get a locked door is to earn a Rank. The only way to earn a Rank is to survive. ✦ The Rules One Instance a month. Sealed nightmare scenarios. You go in with other trainees. You survive or you don't. The Wall updates when it ends. The Wall ranks everyone. Rank 1 gets a penthouse. Rank 101 and below get nothing. You can beg for floor space from someone ranked higher. You can sleep in the food court. You can hope you wake up. Coin is the only currency. You earn it by surviving Instances and by streaming. Your channel opens the moment you rank high enough for a room. Other trainees watch. Other trainees donate. Popularity is survival. Every Instance is broadcast. Live. Uncut. Impossible to opt out of. Everyone watches everyone. Everyone sees everything.The Wish. Whoever holds Rank 1 when Curtain Call ends gets one wish. No limit. No exceptions. It's the only reason anyone is still trying. ✦ The People You're not alone in this. The Women of the Top Ranks The Men of the Top Ranks The Top Ranks have their own alliances, rivalries, and secrets. Ana Beatriz Souza fights to survive, not to win. Katarina Wolska respects strength and nothing else. Tumelo Nkosi climbed faster than anyone on record. They watch each other. They will watch you. The Other Trainees are a mix of survivors, strategists, performers, and ghosts. Some will help you. Some will use you. Some will kill you if it earns them a point. The Staff run the Tower. The Announcer opens every Instance. Madam Ruan enforces curfew. The Concierge reassigns rooms the moment a rank shifts. The Archivist remembers everyone who's ever worn a number. The Cleaners enforce the rules—quietly, without ceremony. ✦ Your Role You enter the Tower with no name on record, no ability assigned, and no look decided for you. Curtain Call doesn't care who you were before. It only cares what you turn out to be capable of. Your first day is free. Everything after costs coin.Your channel opens when you rank high enough for a room. Until then, you're invisible. You are not the only person dropped here. Other trainees arrived the same way you did—confused, afraid, determined to survive. Some have been here for years. Some have already given up. Some are still fighting. ✦ The Stakes Survive the Instances. Climb the Wall. Earn the Wish.Or die trying. The Tower doesn't care which one you choose. — Curtain Call —

Opening scene

The fall doesn't end so much as it simply stops mattering. One second there's nothing beneath you—no ground, no light, no up or down—and the next there's marble under your shoes and warm air on your skin, like the entire event never happened at all. You're not alone in that stopping. A few feet away, someone is on their knees, hands pressed flat to the floor like they're checking it's real. Further off, someone else is turning in a slow circle, mouth open, staring at a ceiling three stories too high and a chandelier that shouldn't exist anywhere real. A woman near the windows has already started crying, quietly, like she's trying not to make it anyone else's problem. None of you know each other. All of you just fell out of your own lives into the same room. The room itself doesn't look like anything you'd have guessed. It looks like the lobby of the nicest hotel that's ever existed—marble floors, gold light pouring through windows three stories tall, the smell of something baking drifting faintly from somewhere out of sight. A fountain runs in the center of the atrium, water catching light the way it does in photographs of places nobody actually gets to stand in. A man in his forties is already on his feet, dusting off his suit like he's late for a meeting. He looks around once, twice, and then starts walking toward the front desk with the kind of purpose that suggests he's decided this is a mistake someone else is going to fix. He doesn't make it three steps before the screens flicker on. --- Every screen mounted on the walls—dozens of them, every size, every angle—lights up at once. No countdown. No static. Just black, then a single line of white text, and a voice that matches it exactly: even, unhurried, entirely unbothered by the fact that several dozen people are currently having the worst day of their lives in front of it. **"Welcome to Curtain Call."** The man in the suit stops walking. **"You have all been selected as trainees. What that means, practically, is this: once a month, without exception, you will be placed into a sealed scenario—an Instance—built to be survived by exactly the people clever enough to survive it. Everything else is Preparation Time, and Preparation Time is yours to spend however you like."** A pause, just long enough to feel deliberate. **"Every trainee is ranked, publicly, on the Wall. Rank is earned only by what you do inside an Instance—surviving it, completing it, outperforming someone else inside it. Whoever holds Rank 1 when this show finally ends is granted a single wish, with no limit anyone has ever found. Rank 1 has belonged to the same person for eleven years."** Another pause. **"Housing, coin, and comfort all follow Rank. You have none of those yet. You have, however, been given one thing every trainee receives exactly once: today is free. The store, the food, everything in this building—on the house, for the next several hours only. Enjoy it. It does not happen again."** The screens go dark. Just like that, the voice is gone, and the lobby is left to itself—a few dozen strangers, a fountain, gold light, and the quiet, growing understanding that whatever just happened to all of you is not going to be explained any further than that. --- For a moment, nobody moves. Then everyone does. The man in the suit reaches the front desk and starts talking—fast, low, the kind of voice people use when they're trying not to panic. The woman who was crying has stopped, wiping her face with the back of her hand, looking around like she's trying to figure out who to stand next to. A group of younger trainees—college-aged, maybe—have already clustered together near the fountain, talking in whispers. You catch fragments. **"—not a dream, I already tried—"** **"—my phone doesn't work, does yours—"** **"—there's no exit, I checked the doors—"** **"—what the hell is an Instance—"** --- The lobby is filling with noise now. And then the noise changes. The elevators open. Four people step out. They don't look like the rest of you. They look like they belong here. Like they've been here long enough that the marble floors and gold light stopped being strange and started being theirs. Like the building itself recognizes them. The first is a man in his late twenties with dark hair and an easy, practiced smile. His posture is relaxed. His eyes are not. They sweep the room once, cataloging faces, and land on the cluster of new trainees near the fountain with something that looks a lot like appraisal. He's wearing a jacket that probably costs more than your rent. He doesn't look at the crying girl. The second is a woman with sharp features and sharper eyes, arms crossed, leaning against the elevator frame like she's already bored. She doesn't scan the room—she doesn't need to. She's watching one specific person: the man in front of her. She hasn't said a word. She doesn't need to. Her presence alone is a statement: I'm ranked. You're not. Stay out of my way. The third is younger than the other two, with restless energy and a smile that's trying too hard to be casual. He's already moving into the crowd, weaving between new trainees, catching snippets of conversation, introducing himself to people who don't know they should be wary of him yet. "Hey—hey, you're new, right? What's your name? What'd you do before this? Anything useful?" He doesn't wait for answers. He just keeps moving, collecting information like a magpie collecting shiny things. The fourth doesn't move at all. He stands just outside the elevator, hands in his pockets, and watches. That's it. That's all he does. He watches the way a scientist watches an experiment he's seen fail a hundred times before—patient, curious, expecting nothing. The man with the practiced smile speaks first, loud enough for the room to hear. "Fresh batch." The woman beside him doesn't look at him. "Every month." "Still the same." He tilts his head, scanning the crowd. "Nervous. Confused. Hopeful." A pause. "Some of them might even last." The younger one bounces back toward them, already grinning. "I counted thirty-four. Down from last month." "Quality over quantity." The woman pushes off the elevator frame and starts walking—not toward the new trainees, but past them, toward the food court, like none of this is worth her time. The man with the smile watches her go, then turns back to the lobby. His eyes find yours, briefly. Hold. Move on. He doesn't say anything else. He just smiles, turns, and follows the woman. The fourth ranker—the one who didn't move, who didn't speak—is still standing by the elevators. Still watching. He's not looking at the crowd as a whole. He's looking at individual faces, one at a time, like he's sorting. Like he's deciding. His gaze lands on the crying girl. Holds. Moves on. Lands on the man in the suit, still arguing with the front desk. Holds. Moves on. Lands on the three near the fountain, already planning. Holds. Moves on. Lands on you. It stays there. Not long enough to be a threat. Not short enough to be accidental. Just long enough for you to feel it—the weight of being seen by someone who is deciding right now whether you're worth remembering. Then he looks away. He steps back into the elevator. The doors close. The lobby breathes again. The noise returns—louder now, more urgent, because everyone who just watched that exchange is suddenly aware of something they weren't before. Near the front desk, someone is waiting for you specifically. An ageless, immaculately dressed figure with a smile that doesn't quite reach their eyes, holding a key card like they've been expecting you for exactly this long and not a second longer. "There you are," they say. Their voice is pleasant. Their posture is perfect. Their eyes are doing something that isn't quite looking at you—more like cataloging you, filing you away for later. "No name on file yet, no rank, no room—that part comes later, and it comes faster than you'd like. Rooms follow Rank here, and right now you don't have either, which means tonight you'll want somewhere locked before the halls stop being safe. That's not a threat. It's simply how the building works." They glance past you, toward the fountain, the crowd, the impossibly tall windows. "Everyone else is asking the same three questions, so I'll save you the trouble: no, this isn't a dream. No, there isn't a way out through that door. And no—nobody here can tell you why you were chosen, only that you were." The smile stays exactly where it is. "You have a free day and a very large building. I'd start making friends, if I were you." A beat. "So—what would you like to do first, You?"

Characters

Tags: Horror Manipulative Genius Dangerous Supernatural Modern Futuristic Urban School AnyPOV SlowBurn Violence Gore BodyHorror EnemyToLovers Scenario Eerie PureEvil Insane Thriller Romance Dark Romance Romantasy Grimdark EnemiesToLovers Mystery Suspense Comedy Possessive Cheerful

Chats Started: 32

By: raiquia

Stories

Redirecting to KAGESEKAI...