Thirty-two pieces.
Sixteen per side.
Each one is a living, breathing human being.
There were no extras. No backups. No resets.
One board. Two sides. And only one way to win: kill the enemy King… or be killed yourself.
The screen flashed those words like a lullaby. Over and over. Bright white letters against a black void. Cael didn't know how long he'd been staring at them. Maybe minutes. Maybe hours. Time stretched oddly in this place—slick and slow, like oil down steel.
His breath had grown shallow. His hands hung loose by his sides, fingers twitching every so often. But he couldn't feel them anymore.
Only the burn on his neck.
The mark pulsed under his skin—an ember where warmth should be. Branded just below the spine, like a leash woven from light. Red-black in color, it glowed faintly, alive and watching. They said it was linked to a monitoring network, that the mark could track aggression, hesitation, even treasonous thoughts.
And if you tried to run?
Detonation.
That part they didn't whisper.
He wasn't alone in the chamber. They were all there, lined up like dominoes waiting for gravity to finish the job. Nobody spoke. What was there to say?
They were pieces now. Tracked. Watched. Played.
Their suits were matte black, tailored like armor but light as skin. Woven veins of metallic fiber threaded across the fabric, crawling like roots beneath the surface. Sensors embedded in the lining pulsed faintly—monitoring vitals, motion, emotion. Cael could feel the thrum of it under his ribs, like something alien had been stitched into his chest.
The chamber was circular, windowless. White light spilled from hidden slats above, casting shadows that felt too deliberate. Every movement echoed. Every breath felt surveilled.
He shifted his stance, just enough to glance at the others. Some stood too straight, their backs locked, trying to suppress the tremble in their limbs. Others hunched slightly forward, as if they'd already begun bracing for impact. He counted at least seven of them breathing through clenched teeth.
No one made eye contact.
No one dared.
The mark at Cael's neck flared briefly, as if reacting to the silence. A warning. A test.
He reached up on instinct—then stopped. You weren't supposed to touch it. They said it could overload. Or explode. Or worse.
He didn't know if it was true.
He didn't plan to find out.
TRIAL 417-B: BLACK TEAM. DEPLOYMENT IN T-MINUS 90 SECONDS. PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: EXECUTE ENEMY KING. ALTERNATE OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE.
The voice came from nowhere and everywhere, sterile and synthetic. It echoed like prophecy. A soft chime followed.
The floor beneath them hissed.
A square of light peeled open, revealing the first descent chamber. Heat surged upward, thick and wet. The scent of scorched stone filled the air, biting into their lungs. The Ember Wastes.
One of four quadrants in the arena. Each a biome twisted for pain.
They called them "Elements," as if that made it poetic.
Fire. Earth. Water. Air.
The Ember Wastes—a volcanic deadland riddled with lava pits and heatstorms, where every step burned and the very air could melt your bones.
The Root Labyrinth—dense, sunless jungle full of twisting roots and sinkholes, where even the flora was rumored to kill.
The Glass Mire—a half-flooded ruin steeped in silence, where pale things flickered just beneath the surface.
Crown's Hollow—riddled with skybridges and fractured gravity, illusions turning stone into sky and vice versa.
You never knew which quadrant you'd be dropped into first.
The board chose for you.
Cael's heart thudded once. Then again. Harder.
And then again—sharper this time, like his body had just realized where it was and what came next.
One of the older players—two spots down—shifted his weight and exhaled through his nose. Cael looked away.
He didn't want to know them.
Didn't want to memorize faces that might be gone by tomorrow.
The silence pressed in, thick and sterile. The humming of the suits, the hiss of the floor vents, even the soft chime of countdowns somewhere deep within the walls—it all spun together into a cold symphony of inevitability.
Cael closed his eyes.
Not to shut the world out.
But to hold something in.
"Promise me you won't disappear."
Lia's voice. Small. Brave. Braver than he ever was.
Three nights before the Harvest, they had crouched beneath the shattered roof of the old rail station, curled in a nest of shredded blankets and rusting signs. The sky had coughed black flakes through holes in the ceiling. Outside, the city speakers blared "Youth Initiative Announcements," their static slogans bouncing off bone-dry concrete.
Inside, they were still just kids.
She had taken his hand without asking, wrapping her smaller fingers tight around his. Her nails were chipped. Her palm was cold.
"Not even if they take you," she whispered. "Not even then."
He hadn't answered.
He couldn't.
Even then, the fear of vanishing had already carved its initials into his skin.
But now, standing on the edge of the arena, Cael felt the promise surge inside him like a second heartbeat. Not a memory. A command.
Not to win.
Not to fight.
But to survive long enough to break the board.
A chime rang.
The platform lit beneath his boots. The glass surface scanned him in vertical bands of light. His file blinked briefly on the projection:
SUBJECT: CAEL VIREN
DESIGNATION: ♙ PAWN | BLACK TEAM
STATUS: UNPROMOTED
BIO-RESPONSE: STABLE
LIVE VIEWERS: 41,378
CURRENT ODDS: 19:1
He flinched at the last line.
Odds?
Viewers?
How many people were watching them?
How many had bet on his death?
He could almost hear it now: the click of remotes, the buzz of elite lounges, the sip of wine as someone somewhere whispered, "That one won't last long."
He heard footsteps ahead. One by one, the players were stepping into the descent tubes—suspended platforms designed to lower them into the quadrant below. There would be no briefing. No rules re-explained. Just the drop, the test, and the killing.
Cael's feet moved without permission. He stepped onto the pad. His knees locked. His fists clenched at his sides. His fingers twitched once, then stilled.
The air around him vibrated.
Heat from the Ember Wastes rose in a slow breath—coiling around his ankles, curling into the weave of his suit, slithering into his thoughts. It smelled like ash and iron and endings.
And yet—
Somewhere, beneath all of that, a memory burned hotter.
Lia's laughter.
The way she scowled when she concentrated. The way she swore louder than anyone in the slums. The way she always kept a portion of her rations for him—"just in case," she'd say.
He would not disappear.
Not while she was still out there, watching. Hoping.
The countdown began.
Five.
The mark at his neck pulsed once. Not painfully. Just a reminder.
Four.
He remembered the day the Harvest vans came. Their white exteriors gleamed like bone under a cold sun. No one ran. There was nowhere to run.
Three.
He remembered the injections. The convulsions. The screaming. And then the calm. Cold and thick as oil.
Two.
He remembered silence. A silence so deep, it echoed. That was the moment he realized: he had already been buried. Just not in dirt.
One.
He opened his eyes.
The board awaited.
And so did he.