Mike lived a simple, ordinary life—nothing remarkable, nothing worth a second glance. He was just another face in the crowd, going through the motions, day in and day out. His parents were kind and quiet, giving him all he needed for a peaceful existence. No dark secrets lurked in his past, no shadows loomed over his present. It was the kind of life most would envy: uneventful, safe, predictable.
Until it wasn’t.
At first, the changes were small, easy to dismiss. A classmate vanished, their absence waved off as a move or a dropout. Then another disappeared. And another. It wasn’t until the pattern became too frequent, too glaring to ignore, that Mike’s sense of security began to crack.
The news broke like a storm—reports of disappearances, some suspected murders. Bodies were never found, and there was no evidence to follow. The police were at a loss. As Mike sat in front of the television, the faces of the missing flashing across the screen, a cold realization gripped him. He recognized them. They weren’t strangers—they were his friends, his classmates, people he had laughed with and shared his life with. And now, they were gone.
Then the unthinkable happened. Mike lost thirteen of his friends, one after another. Each disappearance was more chilling than the last, each story a dead end. The growing list of names came with no explanations, no motives, and no solace. The city that had once felt like a haven now suffocated him, its streets filled with fear and suspicion.
Questions plagued him. Who was behind this? Why were his friends targeted? And why was he still here? The normalcy of Mike’s life dissolved as the darkness closed in around him.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
But the truth was far more insidious than he could have imagined.
In the shadows, the High Rise Devil watched him. To the Devil, Mike was not just a boy but a pawn—an unwitting player in a game of manipulation and chaos. The Devil thrived on control, pulling strings from behind the curtain, turning lives into tragedies for his own amusement. And now, Mike was his focus.
It started subtly. A friend vanished, and Mike shrugged it off, chalking it up to coincidence. But as the disappearances multiplied, so did Mike’s unease. He began searching for answers, but every lead dissolved into nothing. The deeper he dug, the more helpless he felt, as if he were clawing at walls that only closed in tighter.
All the while, the High Rise Devil observed from his lofty perch, a smile curling at the edges of his lips. He delighted in Mike’s growing despair, knowing every step forward only brought him deeper into the Devil’s web.
The disappearances were no accident. Each one was meticulously planned, designed not to serve a grand purpose but to break Mike piece by piece. The Devil didn’t just want him to suffer; he wanted to watch him unravel, to see the boy’s hope extinguished like a flickering flame.
One night, Mike stared into the bathroom mirror. His hollow eyes reflected the weight of sleepless nights and unanswered questions. His friends were dead, his loved ones vanishing, and every attempt to make sense of it all left him more lost. It felt as though he were trapped in a nightmare, one that wouldn’t end.
And then it hit him. This wasn’t random. It was orchestrated. Someone was behind it all, a shadow manipulating his reality for sport.
Somewhere, unseen, the High Rise Devil smiled.
“Everything you’ve known, Mike. Everything you’ve loved. I’ll take it all,” the Devil whispered, his voice an echo of cold malice. “Your suffering will be my masterpiece. Your torment, my entertainment.”
Mike clenched his fists, his body trembling. The Devil might have thought him a pawn, a toy to be discarded once broken. But Mike wasn’t just a piece on the board. He was something far more dangerous.
The High Rise Devil had made one mistake: he underestimated Mike.
And soon, Mike would show him just how wrong he was.