The higher board stirred.
Tiles rose from the glassy horizon, but these were not the flat squares of before. They shifted with every glance—triangles snapping into hexagons, spirals unfolding into stairs that went nowhere. The very ground seemed to decide what it was only when observed.
Kaelen steadied himself, relic burning faintly at his side. Lyra planted her sword into the ground, but the tile beneath it rippled like liquid, trying to absorb the steel. She yanked it free, scowling. "It doesn't want us standing still."
The candle-bearer shivered, their flame guttering in the strange air. "This place… it feeds on certainty. If you doubt, if you hesitate—it rewrites you."
Kaelen's skin prickled. "Rewrites?"
The candle-bearer gestured to the edge of the board. Kaelen followed their gaze and froze.
There were figures out there—players who had fallen before them. But they were broken, their bodies twisted into impossible shapes: a warrior whose arms looped into infinite circles, a scholar whose face shifted with every blink, a woman whose scream repeated forever without sound.
Lyra's jaw tightened. "So this is what happens when you lose here."
The watchers above laughed—not cruel, but curious, like children watching insects crawl. Their voices overlapped in a thousand languages yet carried the same meaning:
"All games require rules. Here, the rule is simple. To strike is to bleed."
Kaelen's gut went cold.
The ground trembled. From the shifting tiles rose their first opponent: a creature shaped like a knight but made of broken geometry. Its armor was jagged triangles, its face a hollow cube, its weapon a blade that bent in directions no hand should hold.
It charged, its footfalls splintering reality beneath it.
Lyra leapt to meet it, sword raised high. She swung—steel met the creature's blade, and the clash sent a shockwave through the tiles. But as her blade cut into its body, something impossible happened.
Lyra staggered, clutching her own side. Blood seeped through her armor though the creature hadn't touched her. The wound mirrored the strike she had dealt.
Kaelen's stomach dropped. "When you wound it…"
"…you wound yourself," Lyra gasped, teeth gritted.
The watchers above thundered with laughter.
"To strike is to bleed. Do you accept the rule, or do you surrender?"
Kaelen's flame flared wildly. He felt the relic pulsing, straining as though it wanted to burn the very law itself. He glanced at Lyra, who wiped blood from her lips and raised her blade again, defiant.
"I don't care whose blood it costs," she snarled. "This game ends on my terms."
The knight charged again. Kaelen roared, fire erupting in both hands this time, ready to test whether defiance itself could rewrite the board.