First Trial

On an ordinary Monday, every adult on Earth vanishes.

Cars keep rolling. Planes keep flying. Ships keep sailing. Children wake in protected spectator rooms and watch the world run without adult hands.

Sean Rourke wakes alone in a stone chamber, still wearing prison orange, still carrying the weight of a crime he didn't commit. The panel calls it the First Trial, but this isn't a game, and it isn't the real Tower climb. It's character creation by ordeal: survival, judgment, restraint, risk, and social pressure under impossible conditions. The Tower doesn't hide answers unfairly. It hides them from people who rush.