Last-Minute Chance to Escape the Apocalypse—But Only If You Can Solve This 3-Part Riddle Before Midnight

chance

**The Clock Strikes Eleven**

The air in the bunker was thick with the scent of damp concrete and something sharper—ozone, maybe, or the metallic tang of fear. Elias wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, his pulse hammering in his throat like a trapped animal. The walls of the underground shelter buzzed with the hum of failing machinery, the last remnants of humanity’s desperate attempt to hold back the storm above. Outside, the world had unraveled in a symphony of screams and crumbling steel. The apocalypse wasn’t coming. It was already here.

He glanced at the flickering screen of the console in front of him. The countdown read **37 minutes**. Thirty-seven minutes until midnight. Thirty-seven minutes until the doors sealed shut for good. And thirty-seven minutes until the last transmission from the surface—one final plea for help—was buried beneath the weight of whatever was left of the sky.

The door hissed open, and in walked Dr. Lira Voss, her lab coat dusted with something dark that wasn’t blood. Not yet, anyway. She carried a file folder, its edges singed, and the air around her seemed to ripple like heat off pavement. 'You’ve got twenty minutes,' she said, her voice low, urgent. 'If you solve this, you walk out of here. If not, you stay. Simple.'

Elias exhaled through his nose, a sound somewhere between a laugh and a snarl. 'You’re not the first to offer me a deal.'

Lira didn’t flinch. 'You’re not the first to refuse it, either.' She slid the folder onto the table. Inside were three sheets of paper, each covered in looping script, the ink smudged as if written in haste. The first riddle was simple—almost childish.

*'I am taken from a mine, and shut up in a wooden case, from which I am never released, and yet I am used by almost every person. What am I?'*

Elias frowned. 'A pencil lead?' He tapped his fingers against the desk. 'No, that’s not it. Graphite. But graphite isn’t *taken* from a mine—it’s mined.' He scratched his jaw. 'Wait. A pencil. The lead is graphite, but the whole thing is the pencil. But the pencil isn’t *shut up in a wooden case*—it *is* the wooden case.' He groaned. 'This is frustrating.'

Lira’s lips twitched. 'Think differently.'

The second riddle was worse.

*'I speak without a mouth and hear without ears. I have no body, but I come alive with wind. What am I?'*

Elias’s fingers flew over the keys of the old typewriter sitting idle in the corner. *Echo.* But that didn’t fit. *Shadow?* No. *A whisper?* Too vague. His mind raced. Then, suddenly, it clicked. 'An echo,' he said, relief flooding him. 'But no—that’s not quite right. It’s—' His breath caught. 'A whisper doesn’t come alive with wind. But *sound* does. Sound carries through the wind. But sound isn’t alive.' He rubbed his temples. 'This is impossible.'

Lira’s eyes gleamed. 'Almost. One more.'

The third riddle was scrawled in frantic, nearly illegible handwriting.

*'I am not alive, yet I can grow; I don’t have lungs, but I need air; I don’t have a mouth, but water kills me. What am I?'*

Elias stared at it, then at Lira. 'Fire.'

She nodded once, sharply. 'Now solve them in order before the doors lock.'

He had twelve minutes.

The first one was easy—*a pencil*. The graphite core, mined, encased in wood. The wooden case was the pencil itself. He wrote it down.

The second one… he thought of the wind howling through the ruins above, bending metal like reeds. Of his own voice, carried on the gusts, lost forever. *An echo.* But no—that was just repeating sound. What came alive with wind? *A sail.* But sails weren’t alive. *A kite.* Still not quite. Then it hit him—*a whisper in the wind.* No, no, that wasn’t it. He closed his eyes. *A shadow.* No. *A thought.* Too abstract.

Wait.

*'I speak without a mouth and hear without ears.'*

The wind itself. The wind *is* sound. It carries voices, but it’s not a voice. It’s the medium. *Wind.* But the riddle said it came alive with wind. That didn’t make sense.

Unless…

*'I am not a thing, but I am a carrier. I am the voice of the void.'*

He wrote: **Wind.**

The third one was simpler. Fire. It grows, needs air, dies in water. Easy.

But Lira wasn’t looking at his answers. She was watching the clock.

Twenty minutes left.

Elias’s hands shook as he re-read the second riddle. *I speak without a mouth and hear without ears. I have no body, but I come alive with wind.*

What if it wasn’t about sound? What if it was about *time*?

*'Time speaks without a mouth—it ticks. It hears without ears—it measures silence. It has no body, but it flows with the wind of history. It comes alive with the passage of events.'*

He scribbled: **Time.**

Lira’s breath hitched. She didn’t look at him. 'Last chance.'

Eleven minutes.

Elias’s mind raced. The first answer—pencil—was correct. Fire was correct. But time? That didn’t fit the second one.

Unless.

*'I am the unseen force that carries all things. I am the breath of the universe, the wind that shapes the future. I am the echo of what was, the shadow of what will be.'*

He erased *time* and wrote: **Destiny.**

No. Too vague.

*'I am the current that carries the unseen. The wind that moves without a body.'*

He thought of the old radio in the corner, its dials cracked, its voice long dead. Of signals lost in static. Of messages that never reached their destination.

*'I am the signal. The transmission. The thing that carries sound but is not sound.'*

He wrote: **A transmission.**

Lira’s fingers tightened around the edge of the table. 'You’re close.'

Elias’s pulse roared in his ears. *A transmission.* But the riddle said it came alive with wind. A transmission didn’t need wind.

Unless—

*'I am the wind itself.'*

No. That was too literal.

*'I am the carrier wave.'*

He looked up. Lira’s eyes were wide, unblinking. 'The carrier wave,' he whispered. 'It’s the invisible current that carries the signal. It’s the wind of the electromagnetic spectrum.'

She exhaled sharply. 'Correct.'

The clock read **5 minutes**.

Elias’s hands trembled as he double-checked his answers:

1. **A pencil** (graphite in a wooden case).
2. **A carrier wave** (invisible, carries sound, 'comes alive' with the right conditions—like wind for a radio signal).
3. **Fire** (grows, needs air, dies in water).

Lira picked up the folder and slid it into a slot in the console. A series of lights flickered to life above them. The doors groaned, seals hissing as they began to retract.

Elias didn’t move. 'What happens if I’m wrong?'

Lira didn’t look at him. 'The doors seal. The air recycles. You live. But you stay.'

He swallowed hard. 'And if I’m right?'

She finally met his eyes. 'You walk out. But not alone.'

The doors slid open.

Beyond them, the world was a wasteland of twisted metal and blackened ruins. But in the distance, a flicker of movement—figures in tattered suits, their faces hidden behind masks. They raised their hands in unison, and one of them spoke into a device at their wrists.

*'Clear path. Proceed.'*

Elias hesitated. Then he stepped forward.

The last thing he saw before the doors sealed behind him was Lira’s voice, faint over the comms:

*'Next time, don’t assume the riddles are about things. Sometimes, they’re about the spaces between.'*

Last-Minute Chance to Escape the Apocalypse—But Only If You Can Solve This 3-Part Riddle Before Midnight

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