Everyone hopped out of a large clear tube in a world that I had been to before. I recognized the room that we were in- a room with a couple of couches and a large desk.

“This is definitely Dimension F.” I said, suddenly feeling a bit sad.

“What is it?” asked Iris.

“This place sort of holds some painful memories for me.” I said, “I know you were here, but you didn’t witness what I saw.”

“Come on,” said Isaac, “I’ll make a bucket of fun stuff for you.”

“I find your bucket fetish to be slightly disturbing.” I commented.

“So,” said Matthias, “Jon stayed in Mihr'hai, Lilith stayed in Dovacath, and we lost Charles and Lucas.”

“Not counting them, I think everyone’s here.” I responded, “Now we should look for Jean and Jeff.”

“What do we know about this key?” asked James.

“Jeff has informed us that he found it between dimensions ages ago.” answered Matthias, “He took it and later it ended up in the world he created.”

“Why would it have been between dimensions?” asked Catherine.

“Matilda likely thought that it was a good hiding spot at the time.” answered Matthias, “Anyways, the third key is the star key.”

“Okay, I guess.” I said, “Anyways, let’s go look for them.”

“But why would you want to do that!? responded an ominously familiar voice.

“You!?” I exclaimed, recognizing the demon butler in front of me.

“It’s certainly been a while.” he said.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“Have you forgotten about the twenty four hour rule?” the demon butler responded.

“No, Sebastian.” I said, “I mean why are YOU here?”

“To cause misfortune.” he said, “What else would I be here for?”

“What exactly are you?” asked Catherine.

“A prince.” answered Sebastian.

“No… just no.” I said.

“What are you planning THIS time?” asked Iris.

“This.” he said, grinning.

Before I knew it, I was feeling a sharp pain in my chest and soon after, I fell over.

“Why can’t this… be a real… legitimate… death…?” I complained quietly.

I heard my friends calling my name, but I couldn’t respond because I ended up losing consciousness.

 

-Iris’ POV-

“What the hell is wrong with you!?” I exclaimed.

“Wasn’t he the protagonist or something!?” exclaimed Stuart.

“You sick twisted piece of shit!” yelled James.

“Whoa!” exclaimed Sebastian, “There’s no need for that kind of language!”

“You find happiness in misery, don’t you?” asked Zack.

“Shouldn’t that have been obvious?” Sebastian laughed.

“He’ll be fine, right?” said Isaac, “I mean I came back.”

“Yes, unfortunately.” responded Stuart.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean!?” exclaimed Isaac.

“Guys,” said Matthias, “we need to press on.”

“Oh, but you can’t.” responded Sebastian, “Not when our little game has just started.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Catherine.

“THIS.” responding Sebastian, holding up a silver key with a star on the end.

“You son of a bitch!” exclaimed Matthias, “You stole it!”

“No, I just borrowed… without asking.” replied Sebastian.

“What do you want?” asked Mikaela.

“For you all to play my game.” he said, “The winner can have the key.”

“I have a bad feeling about this.” commented Simon.

“What the hell is this game of yours!?” I asked.

“Kill.” answered Sebastian.

“H-WHAT!?” exclaimed Zack.

“Kill someone else without getting caught,” he said, “but if everyone else catches the culprit, THEY win.”

“You’re freaking insane if you think we’re gonna do this.” I said, “We’re not gonna start killing each other! We’re not gonna kill our friends!”

“That’s why I’m gonna give you a little motivation.” Sebastian told us.

“W-what are you trying to pull!?” exclaimed Matthias.

“Before the game starts, I’d like to make one thing clear.” said Matthias, “Killers are only allowed to kill two people. Goodnight.”

After that, he snapped his fingers and everything went dark.

 

***

“Wake up.” I heard a familiar voice say as I felt someone gently shaking me.

I opened my eyes.

“J-Jean?” I said.

“Yes.” the girl in front of me responded, “I was helping Jeff look for the key and suddenly, I woke up here.”

“It was that butler guy.” I said.

“I thought as much.” responded Jean.

“We’re stuck in here.” I heard another voice say, “There aren’t any doors or anything.”

“Catherine, have you checked the entire room?” I asked.

“Yes, we both checked everything.” Jean said, “We’re stuck in one of the empty hotel rooms here.”

“Any ideas?” asked Catherine.

“I don’t know.” said Jean, “Honestly, I don’t know how we’re gonna get out of this.”

“Have you tried breaking the walls?” I asked.

“Yes,” answered Catherine, “we’ve been up longer than you have and we can’t get it to break.”

“I would love to have Jon’s power right now.” I said.

“Is Jon busy in Mihr'hai?” asked Jean.

“Yes.” I answered.

“What do you think he’s trying to accomplish buy trapping us in this room?” asked Catherine.

“Perhaps he’s done with all of us…?” suggested Jean, “…Or maybe he won’t release any of us until a murder is committed…?”

“Why is it just us three in this room?” I asked.

“It might’ve just been random.” Catherine suggested.

“Are we still going to try to get out of this room?” I asked.

“Why wouldn’t we?” responded Jean.

I stood up and looked around the room. It really was empty. Nothing was on the floor and nothing was on the ceiling. Not even the walls gave me any ideas.

“So we can’t break the wall or teleport,” I said, “we really need to turn our thinking around.”

“What are you suggesting?” asked Jean.

“Rather than thinking about what would work under normal circumstances,” I said, “we should try what normally wouldn’t work.”

“Like what?” asked Catherine.

“Like this?” I said with uncertainty as I walked toward a wall, put my feet on it and started walking on it like it was actually floor.

“How-?” started Jean.

“I guessed.” I interrupted.

Not too much later, I was walking on the ceiling and I myself closer to it and knocked on it three times before an opening revealed itself.

“Let’s go.” I directed, as I went in and they soon followed.

Seconds later, we found ourselves in a dark hallway and something unfortunate caught the attention of all of us. Two dead bodies next to each other: Mikaela’s and Isaac’s.

“It happened, didn’t it?” I said.

“Yep.” a scary familiar voice said.

Sebastian appeared in front of us and said, “The game isn’t over. Catch the killer… or the killer will get away. Now, you’ll be investigating and then we’ll have a trial! Goodbye, I must inform everyone else.”

Before I could say anything, he was gone and we were soon joined by Simon, Stuart, James, Matthias, and even Jeff.

“Well, let’s get started.” said Jeff.

“Looks like Mikaela was hit in the head with a blunt object and Isaac was stabbed in the chest with a pair of scissors.” I said.

“James and Zack,” said Catherine, “Could you get us some stuff we can use?”

“We can make some luminol and a fingerprinting set.” said Zack.

The two of them immediately got to work.

“Notice anything else?” asked Jean.

“Looks like there’s some bloody writing that’s been tampered with.” I said, while looking at the floor.

There was a letter ‘a’ and an ‘e’ that looked mostly erased. Something really bothered me about the ‘e’, but I wasn’t yet sure why.

“We’re done.” said James.

They sprayed luminol all over and checked the scissors for prints.

“The prints on the scissors belong to Matthias.” said Zack, “We found some more blood near the letters revealing more letters were written earlier, but we can’t tell what they were.”

“There’s also a piece of tape on Isaac’s left thumb.” said Simon.

“I think that’s all we’ll find here,” I said, “let’s go look for the blunt object that took Mikaela’s life.”

“It could be just anywhere, though.” responded Simon.

“That just means that we should split up.” I suggested.

After that, we all went off in groups. In the first room I looked in, I found the blunt object that hit Mikaela. It was some kind of hard red box. Matthias used his power to get us some luminol, since we weren’t with James or Zack. It was just him, myself, and Simon.

“I can confirm that this blood I found is the same type of Mikaela’s.” said Matthias.

“So this really is it?” asked Simon.

“Looks like it.” I said.

“Investigations are boring, don’t you think?” a voice said, to which I angrily responded, “Where’d you come from!?”

“You’re mad at me,” he said, “after I set up this wonderful game for all of you? You should truly be thankful, since I’m not usually so meticulous with my plans.”

“Were you really?” responded Matthias.

“Enough about that.” said Sebastian, “the owner of that voice, “Your investigation is over.”

“You want us to have a trial, right?” asked Simon.

“I’ll make sure none of you forget it.” replied Sebastian.

“Where is it gonna be?” asked Matthias.

“What do you mean by what you’re saying, Sebastian!?” I said.

“It’s time.” Sebastian said, snapping his fingers.

After that, the lights went out.