The Ring of Hours

Carving seals into rings, measuring sundials to mark calamities. Beings from higher planes want to study humanity, but they cannot interfere directly. So they create numerous “instances” and send humans inside to face trials and survival challenges, obtaining the “experimental data” they want. But they cannot choose too many people. They can only select a portion of humanity as test subjects, wait for them to complete the trials once, and then expand the experiment worldwide. As a result, no one knows what the main cast must face, or what they are trying to save.