Just the moment after.

The silence.

And then this place.

IIII IIII

It’s not hell. It’s not a dream.

It’s the space that stories fall into when no one tells them anymore.

A hallway with no doors.

A flickering hum that never becomes a sound.

Dust that tastes like old paper and forgotten names.

Sometimes I think I see my flat at the end of the corridor.
Sometimes I think I see Sistercut waiting inside it.
Sometimes I follow.
Sometimes I don’t.

IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII II

I don’t know how long I’ve been here.

I scratched tallies into the wall.

The last number I remember is 87.

Then I ran out of space.

The Entity left me a gift.

It doesn’t talk.
It doesn’t blink.
It wears a porcelain mask and has hands stitched from fabric.

It keeps me company.

It draws on the walls.

It holds my hand when I sleep.

I think it’s been drawing you.

I have nothing left but this Record.

If you’re holding it—
if you’ve turned to this page—

I’m so sorry.

Because now…

it’s your turn to play.

IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII I

DON'T PLAY THIS GAME is a Solo TTRPG

I’m already bleeding when I wake. Arms slack, head spinning, wrists sore from whatever they used to drag me here.

The chanting starts before my eyes fully open.

There are figures all around me. Dozens, maybe more.

Robes pieced together from old funeral clothes, charity shop leftovers, coats that once hung in someone’s hallway.

Not ceremonial. Not sacred. Secondhand devotion.

Some of them wear masks — jagged things, bone, plastic, old toys painted black.

But most don’t bother.

They want me to see their faces.

At the centre of it all is a circle. Burned into the concrete. Ash, soot, and something darker.

The symbol in the middle is familiar:

The origami bird.

Split down the middle like it’s been cut open and can’t fly anymore.

They pull me forward. Someone whispers in my ear:

“You brought this. Now you pay for it.”

Then comes the blade.

It’s not clean.

The cuts aren’t precise.

They want it to hurt.

They want me to bleed.

The chanting builds.

Fire bends sideways, drawn into the circle like gravity flipped.

Tar bubbles up. The stench of burning hair and cold copper fills the room.

And then—

Something emerges.

Sistercut

It drags itself from the tar like it was always waiting.

No feet. Just limbs wrapped in wet gauze that never touches the ground.

Its face is a cracked mirror.

Inside the cracks, I see myself. Again and again.

Afraid. Bleeding. Alone.

Its mouth splits down the mirror’s centre—vertical. Not a mouth. A wound.

Inside: static. Like security footage of my final moments.

The cultists welcome it.

They kneel.

And it punishes them for their faith.

The gauze whips out like wire. The screaming doesn’t stop.

It doesn’t kill.

It shreds.

In the chaos, I crawl.

The door’s there.

Just a few feet.

Hands slip on blood. Knees fail.

I reach.

Fingers grip the handle.

But then—

The pain lances through my side. One of them still breathing. Still reaching.

Their hand grips my ankle. I fall.

My chin hits the floor. Teeth split open.

Everything spins.

My vision narrows.

Sistercut turns toward me.

In its mirror-face, I see the flat.

I see Layla.

I see the bedroom door opening.

And then—

Darkness.

Cold.

Nothing.

DON'T PLAY THIS GAME is a Solo TTRPG

Too fast.

With everything that’s been happening—creaking doors, shadow figures, bloodied dreams—I’ve been living like a cornered animal.

Jumping at every noise. Every flicker in the corner of my eye.

And still, it wasn’t enough.

I didn’t even hear them.

One moment, walking through the empty side street by the shop—head down, jacket collar up, keys laced between my fingers like a shield.

The next?

A sharp blow to the back of the head.

Everything tilted sideways.

The world slid into blackness like ink poured over paper.

My last thought, just before it all faded, was maybe it’s finally over.

Maybe the Entity sent someone—or something—to finish what it started.

Maybe this was mercy.

When I woke up, everything was wrong.

Blindfold tight across my eyes.

Wrists bound behind my back with something rough—rope, maybe duct tape.

Cold concrete under my knees.

Muffled footsteps. Murmured voices.

I couldn’t catch words—just the low hum of conversation, the occasional sharp bark of a command.

The air smelled damp. Moldy. Underground maybe? Or an old building no one bothered to keep up anymore.

I struggled.

Fought against the bonds with everything I had left.

I twisted, pulled, thrashed—

But they were waiting.

Rough hands slammed me back down.

Boots ground against my side, pinning me in place.

I had no chance.

None.

I don’t know who they are yet.

I don’t know where I am.

But I know one thing for sure:

They serve the Entity.

And I’m exactly where it wants me.

I’m not afraid of dying.

I’m afraid of what comes after.

DON'T PLAY THIS GAME is a Solo TTRPG

When it does, it comes wrong.

Last night, I dreamed I was drowning.

But not in water.

In blood.

The ocean was endless—thick, dark, suffocating. The air smelled of iron and rot. Every breath tasted like pennies and old wounds.

There was no land. No sky. Just a red-black world that dragged at my limbs and pulled me under, no matter how hard I kicked.

Sometimes I thought I saw things beneath the surface—shapes moving against the tides, brushing past my legs, slipping around me like sharks.

Every time I gasped for air, I swallowed more of it.

Every time I tried to scream, the blood filled my throat until I couldn’t even hear myself.

The worst part wasn’t the drowning.

It was the feeling that someone—something—was watching me struggle.

Smiling.

Patient.

Waiting for me to sink.

I woke up in a cold sweat, heart pounding so hard I thought it might tear through my ribs.

The guitar is still under the bed.

Still humming softly.

Still staining the air around it.

I can’t look at blood the same way anymore.

A paper cut feels like an open wound.
A nosebleed would feel like a death sentence.

Even ketchup on a plate looks wrong now.

The Entity didn’t have to leave scars on my body.

It carved them into my mind instead.

DON'T PLAY THIS GAME is a Solo TTRPG

One second I was sat at my desk, half-heartedly working through a mockup, and the next I was there.

In the ring.

Bright lights. Roaring crowd. Canvas under my boots.

I wasn’t alone.

Across from me stood legends. The legends—faces from AEW, impossibilities staring me down like I belonged there.

For a heartbeat, it felt good. Right.

Then the dream twisted.

The crowd shifted, faces melting into black smudges. The lights flared cold. The ring ropes stretched and writhed like veins.

Something was calling me.

A hum, low and electric, pulling me toward the far corner.

There, half-buried under the turnbuckle, I found it:

A guitar.

Old. Splintered. Strings loose and hanging like veins themselves. Blood already crusted on the frets.

The moment I touched it, the ring began to disintegrate around me, like it had been made of ash and false memory all along.

I woke up standing outside.

Barefoot.

Cold.

Sticky.

The guitar still clutched in my hands.

And blood—on my palms, on my arms, splattered across my shirt.

Not just mine. I could feel it. I knew it wasn’t just mine.

I stood outside a house two streets over.

A place I recognized.

The house belonging to the guy who, a year ago, had thrown a beer bottle into our garden, cutting my cat.

I didn’t think. I didn’t check.

I bolted.

At home, I shoved the bloodied guitar under the bed like that could undo what had been done.

I still haven’t looked at the local news.

I don’t want to know if someone’s missing.

Or worse.

I’m scared.

Not of what’s out there.

Of what I’m capable of, when the Entity decides it needs something done.

DON'T PLAY THIS GAME is a Solo TTRPG

The kind where the printer jams halfway through a 500-page booklet order and customers treat you like you personally decided to ruin their lives.

When I finally checked my phone, there were seven missed calls.

All from Scott.

The sight of it made my stomach knot.

Scott doesn’t call for no reason.

We text. We meme. We send voice notes complaining about work.

Seven calls meant something.

Something bad.

I called him back immediately.

It rang. And rang.

And went to voicemail.

I tried again.

Same.

Trying not to let panic creep in, I rang Kathrine—his fiancée.

Just casual, pretending it wasn’t urgent:

“Hey, just checking in, Scott called a few times, everything okay?“

She answered, sounding a little frazzled. Said she hadn’t seen him all day either. Figured he was busy. Promised to pass on the message if she heard from him.

Scott lives two hours away.

Not close enough to pop round casually.

Not far enough that he wouldn’t reach out if something was wrong.

I told myself he was just busy.

That he’d call me soon.

It’s been a week.

I’m still telling myself that.

There’s a cold weight in my chest that won’t go away.

It feels like I’m waiting for a phone call that’s already been missed.

DON'T PLAY THIS GAME is a Solo TTRPG

And then the paper dropped through the door.

Not the digital newsfeeds I usually scroll. A real, ink-smudged, folded-in-half, local paper.

Front page, bottom corner, near the obituaries:

“Mysterious Wreck at Village Entrance Remains Unsolved“

The article explained it away like they always do.

Driver unknown. Vehicle abandoned. No ID. No witnesses. No CCTV footage of how it got there.

The crash was minor. No fire. No blood. The car looked almost placed there—like a warning left at the edge of the road.

The same blue hatchback I saw every single day during the loop.

It wasn’t a coincidence.

I could feel it down to my teeth.

I found the journalist’s name at the bottom of the article: Alec Morrisen.

After a little digging (and one mildly desperate email), we agreed to meet. His only condition?

“If you find out something bigger than what’s in the paper—you tell me first. No games.”

Deal.

We met at a grimy café tucked behind the library, the kind of place that always smells faintly of burnt coffee and old carpet.

Alec was everything you expect from a small-town journalist trying to pretend he hadn’t lost the fire:

• Crumpled jacket.
• Shaky hands from too much caffeine.
• Eyes that didn’t miss a damn thing.

I told him a filtered version of the truth.

Mentioned strange coincidences. Dreams that bled into real life. Patterns that didn’t make sense.

Not the Entity. Not the cursed book. Just enough to keep him interested without getting a mental health welfare check called in.

In return, he told me what the police wouldn’t:

• The car had no VIN number. Scrubbed clean.
• The driver’s seat was soaked in condensation when they opened it—as if someone had just breathed out a soul and left.
• Witnesses saw the car appear overnight. No noise. No headlights. No disturbance. Just there.

He slipped me a scrap of paper before he left, casual as passing the sugar: a name and address.

Someone who lived just across the road from the crash site. Someone who had “seen something.”

Later that night, I went.

Small, sagging cottage overlooking the village entrance. The woman who answered the door looked exhausted, hollow-eyed. She didn’t want to talk at first, but something in my face—desperation? shared trauma?—got her to open up.

She said she saw it.

A figure standing by the wreck the night before the story broke.

Not a driver.

Not a rescuer.

Just standing there, staring into the windshield, long after midnight.

And then… melting away.

She described it in the same way I would have:

“Blacker than night. Wrong.“

Just like the thing in my photos.
Just like the figure in the open doorways.
Just like the thing that’s been following me since all of this began.

It’s not just me.

It’s never been just me.

It’s been here for a long, long time.

Waiting for someone to notice.

DON'T PLAY THIS GAME is a Solo TTRPG

Layla worked from home three days in a row. Then four.

Odd, but maybe she had a big project. Maybe they needed her on standby.

I didn’t think too much of it.

Until I passed the entrance to the village—and the same blue hatchback was crashed into the ditch.

Same angle. Same dent. Same police tape fluttering in the same wind.

Every day.

Untouched.

And Graham—the weird guy from the assisted living flats across the street—kept shuffling in. Every day. Asking me if I’d seen the match last night.

Same smile. Same half-mumbled words.

I don’t even like football. He knows that. He’s asked before.

The first few times, I was polite.

By the end, I was ready to scream.

Day 1:
Told myself it was stress. Overwork. Blamed the Entity for making me paranoid.

I kept my head down and got on with it.

Day 2:
The wreck was still there. Graham asked again. Layla logged onto another conference call.

My Turkish restaurant redesign still stuck on page one.

I tried switching up my schedule. Drove to town a different way. Got coffee from a place I never use.

Didn’t matter.

Day 3:
Started to realise that even small things repeated.

Same cloud formation when I walked past the park. Same dog barking at the corner house. Same stranger laughing too loudly at nothing.

I tried shouting into the wind. Nothing answered.

Day 4:

Headache hit me like a hammer the moment I woke up.

Graham was outside again. Waiting. Waving before I even opened the door.

The blue car sagged further into the ditch, but otherwise hadn’t been touched.

My mind started to fray at the edges. I kicked the side of the bin so hard I think I cracked a toe.

Didn’t change a damn thing.

Day 5:

Tried staying in bed.

Didn’t leave the flat until late afternoon.

Didn’t matter.

Same call from work. Same argument in the stairwell next door. Same blue car.

Same Graham.

The smell of burnt toast that Layla never cooks wafted through the flat exactly at 8:13 PM.

Again.

Day 6:

Started writing things down. Dates. Times. Everything.

Post-it notes littered the flat like breadcrumbs through madness.

They didn’t help.

I even tried burning one. Thought maybe disrupting the pattern would shatter it.

Day 7:

It Didn’t

Went full ritual mode.

Circles of salt at the windows. Chalk sigils at the doors. The “Ritual” I learned from the Stranger felt like the only thing left I could trust.

It gave me just enough strength to hold on.

Day 8:

Collapsed at the kitchen table sometime after midnight.

I didn’t even remember sitting down.

The world had blurred into endless static, a broken tape chewing the same five seconds over and over.

I genuinely thought I was going to die in that kitchen, halfway through a Turkish menu I could barely read anymore.

Layla shook me awake.

“Come on, get up, babe. I need a lift to the office.”

She was in her work clothes. Laptop bag packed. No Teams meeting link on her phone.

I scrambled out of bed.

The blue car was gone when we left the village.

Graham wasn’t waiting outside.

And when I sat down at work, I finally—finally—turned the page on that restaurant menu and started designing page two.

The scariest part isn’t that it happened.

It’s how easy it was to accept it.

How close I came to staying stuck there forever.

DON'T PLAY THIS GAME is a Solo TTRPG

Shower. Brush teeth. Wipe the mirror clear.

And there it was.

Scrawled in uneven, hateful strokes through the mist, words that hadn’t been there before:

YOU STARTED THIS.

No signature. No explanation.

Just accusation.

It stared back at me from the fog like it had been waiting.

For a long moment, I just stood there, toothbrush dangling in my hand, heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my ears.

But then my survival instincts kicked in.

I scrubbed it away. Hard. Furious. Desperate.

Not because I was afraid of the message.

Because I couldn’t let Layla see it.

I’ve kept all of this hidden from her. Shielded her from every crack and ripple. From the stranger at the door, from the black car, from the whispers through the walls.

But it’s getting harder.

The Entity is getting bolder.

And the walls are getting thinner.

I needed air. I needed noise. People. Reality.

I wandered the town again. Let the chill in the air bite at me, let the normalcy of passing strangers wash over the fraying edges.

It helped. A little.

Until I caught my reflection in a darkened shop window.

And there, just over my shoulder, a smear of shadow stood where no person should have been.

I turned.

Nothing.

Of course.

When I got home, it had escalated.

Lipstick across the bathroom mirror.
Mud on the hallway mirror.
Something that looked disturbingly like blood smeared across the microwave door.

And the message?

Louder. Angrier. Everywhere.

YOU STARTED THIS.
YOU STARTED THIS.
YOU STARTED THIS.

I cleaned it all before Layla could come home.

Scrubbed so hard my knuckles split.

But I can still see it—burned into the surfaces. Into the house. Into me.

The Entity doesn’t just want me scared.

It wants me guilty.

And maybe… maybe it’s working.

DON'T PLAY THIS GAME is a Solo TTRPG

A black Vauxhall Astra.

I used to drive one, years ago. That’s probably why I noticed it—but it’s not just recognition. It’s the pattern.

It parks in my assigned space sometimes. Just long enough to be a problem. Leaves shortly after I arrive. I’ve lived here six years—I know the cars on this street. This one doesn’t belong.

A few days later, I see it again. Different plate. Outside the print shop.

That’s when I knew.

I didn’t want to make a scene. Didn’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist unraveling on Facebook. So I did it quietly.

I asked Alan and Evon—just in passing, casually:

“Do you know whose car that is?”

Two days later, the street’s Facebook group exploded. Posts full of blurry photos of the Astra, tags demanding answers, people posting in full caps that this wouldn’t have happened if the WOKE didn’t stop them having parking permits.

No one claimed it.

Even the usual know-it-alls were silent.

Then last night, I saw him.

From the spare room window—through the slats of the blinds.

Under the streetlight, the drizzle catching silver in the glow.

A man. Hoodie up, face obscured.

Standing beside the Astra.

And he beckoned.

Not urgently. Just… expectantly.

Like this was always going to happen.

I slipped on my jacket, shoved my brass knuckles into my pocket—gift from Scott on a birthday a few years back. Illegal? Maybe. Comforting? Absolutely.

I stepped out into the cold.

The man didn’t move.

He held out a book. A photo album.

I took it.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t explain. Just turned, got into the Astra, and drove away.

Inside, I opened it.

Photo after photo.

All of me.

Walking to the shops. At the café. Working at the printers. Pulling weeds in the garden behind the flats.

Moments I don’t even remember existing in, but there I am.

And in every one…

Something is behind me.

Not a person. Not a shadow. Something.

Black where there should be colour, blurred where there should be light. Sometimes it’s hunched, sometimes tall. Sometimes it leans in, like it’s whispering.

It’s always there.

I thought I was being followed.

I was.

But not by the man.

He was watching the thing that’s already with me.

I don’t feel alone anymore.

But I really, really wish I did.

DON'T PLAY THIS GAME is a Solo TTRPG