''How do you feel?'' the stranger asked me, sounding troubled.

It turned out that I had lost consciousness. I shook my head, and the pain gradually went away. For a moment, it felt like everything I had experienced before was just a bad dream. The darkness, the barely visible, ghostly figures... And then my eyes settled on a bonfire with a bunch of people around it.

''What's your name?'' the man asked. This time, I recognized his voice; he was the one who'd spoken to me while I was in the shadow world.

"Vasily," I mumbled. For some reason, I was sure that it would've been a bad idea to give him a false name. Deception was still a valuable resource, of course. But since I was somewhere new, without any information, the chances of me telling a useful lie and getting good results, weren't that high.

I was lying on some sort of a rock that was tied to me. At first, I had thought that this stone was just a hallucination. But apparently, the shock of moving to another world was something natural.

"Hello, nice to meet you, Vasily. My name is Andrei." At this point, I finally made out who was talking to me. He was an unremarkable guy in his thirties, short-haired, with a barely noticeable scar on his forehead. It seemed like he was the leader of these people.

I touched my head, wincing in pain.

"You'll feel better soon enough," Andrei said amiably. ''Everyone suffers from the same thing at first. Take your time getting up.''

Nodding, I tried to get to my feet but failed. Feeling sick, I fell on my back and hit the damned stone once again. Some guy couldn't restrain himself and burst out laughing, but was immediately silenced. Andrei extended his hand and one of the guys rushed over to help me. Thanks to them, I finally managed to get up. I took the chance to have a good look around. A group of about ten people, consisting mostly out of young men and women, had settled down near the bonfire. Only one old man stood out due to his age.

Some of them looked lost, huddling around the fire. Apparently, they had also appeared in this world a little while ago, just like me. Looking closer, I noted that all of them had the same gray stone. Some were holding it in their hands; some had prudently put it on the ground under their feet.

Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice used to say...

''Well,'' Andrei said quietly. It was clear that he was a bit nervous. He cleared his throat and continued, ''I could congratulate you on getting here, but there is no point in doing that. Each of us found themselves in this world just like you did. Where are we? I don't know. Why are we here? I can't answer that question, either.''

He said all of this in such a calm voice that, if I hadn't taken part in the deadly trial earlier and then appeared in some shadow world, it would have been such a pleasure to just sit there and listen to him. It was hard to believe that no one had gone into hysterics yet. It seemed that the deadly trial had prepared us well for the unexpected quirks of fate.

''What does it all mean?'' a girl asked, her voice trembling. Her eyes were big, and her braids a little bit dirty. Perhaps you'll turn out to be a crybaby, I thought. Although, admittedly—since she'd survived, gotten to this place and was now trying to make people pity her, the nickname ''Fox'' was much more appropriate for her.

''Stop fooling around! Do you really think we don't know what you did to get here?'' a young, bald guy snapped at her. His voice had come from the shade and he was standing at a bit of a distance from the rest of them.

For a split second, the pitiful expression on the girl's face was replaced with a malicious grimace, but a glance from the bald man made her quiet down.

''We don't have any information about what's really going on," the guy who had helped Andrei get me back up said tersely. "But it's common knowledge that we're trapped here and don't know how to get out..."

''So, we don't have any information?'' I decided to join the conversation.

"Well, that's not really true, we know that there is a way out of this world," Andrei added. "We know where it is, and we know how to get there. Unfortunately, it's kind of impossible to reach that place.''

''Yeah, sure.'' Suddenly, the man who was standing out by virtue of his advanced age spoke up. "The bastard who sent me here had promised that it'd solve all of my problems…''

"Valentin Petrovich," Andrei politely interrupted him. "Let me give them a briefing."

The man didn't mind, and Andrei continued. The conversation turned out to be a little bit confusing as the newcomers often asked him to repeat some things, but in the end, the picture became more or less clear. Our group consisted of ten people, and five of us, including me, had just arrived. Everybody had appeared in this world after talking with a stranger who had appeared in the form of a God, a mentor, or someone like that. I immediately remembered my new friend who had called himself the ''Great Chaos''. I wondered if I was the only one who had such a joker as a teacher. Also, all of us had gotten into trouble before meeting our mysterious ''benefactors''. Andrei made all of the newbies tell their story of how they had arrived to this world. For example, ''Fox'' thought that she had died in a plane crash and then found herself in the afterlife. But, frankly speaking, I didn't believe her story. Mikhail, a tall, thin kid dressed in expensive clothes, had gotten drunk in a club. At first, he thought that he had gone crazy. He told us how, suddenly, the dance floor turned into a bloody massacre, and how people started killing each other. The guy said that he didn't understand what caused all of it. Personally, I had some suspicions: most likely, the clubgoers had also been offered a kind of test, and the guy couldn't remember anything because he had been on drugs and had survived by accident.

My suspicions were confirmed after all the others told their stories. It turned out that everyone else had passed a test similar to mine. Unfortunately, the locals of this world didn't tell us about themselves. Andrei had only asked the newcomers to tell their story, but even this information was enough to let us draw some conclusions. Besides ''Fox'' and Mikhail, whom I'd decided to call ''Major'' behind his back since I sucked at remembering names, a young guy who had worked as a cop, and a businesswoman that was slightly over thirty were also among the newcomers. The former cop had managed to get out of a restaurant where he had been with his girlfriend. According to his story, the room began to fill with water. This, naturally, caused a panic, and people began to drown and desperately fight to get air. According to him, by some miracle, he managed to find the exit, but all of the other visitors died. He tried to justify himself by saying that he tried to save those who had been left inside. But Andrei made him stop talking as the others were shooting sidelong glances at him. It would seem that our law enforcement officer sacrificed everyone else to save his own life… The businesswoman, called Olga, honestly told us that an uninvited guest, who had appeared in her office, offered her a simple choice — either she or all of her staff members would die. After telling us this, she hissed angrily through her teeth: ''Just don't tell me that you wouldn't have done the same!'' No one answered her. Then it was my turn. Feeling uneasy, I told them the truth about my own test. With one exception: I didn't say a word about the magic.

I suddenly thought how, if Olga had been a little bit younger, I'd have been glad to talk to her a bit more intimately… I needed to stop thinking about such foolish things.

Andrei nodded at everyone — just like the business coach from my old job — and began a detailed survival briefing. At this point, it all became even more interesting, and I was eagerly absorbing bits of information about this new world we all found ourselves in. Unfortunately, our instructor was not really good at this sort of thing.