The fires in Sector 9 illuminated the night sky with ominous shades of orange and red, while thick gray and black smoke billowed outward from all sides. People crowded the area. Fire was a grave concern in the Garden, where much of the landscape was vulnerable. Veterans—those who had witnessed the Garden burn before—knew this danger well and fiercely guarded against it. Some hurried about, offering assistance. Individuals with affinities for earth, water, and ice were typically ushered to the front.

  Arizeal hit the Sector at a dead sprint and skidded to a stop in District 6’s main plaza, breathless. His aether-enhanced speed had carried him across eight sectors in minutes. He headed straight for the largest fire, but what he finally saw when the crowd parted stopped him cold.

  He’d expected the fires. A part of him even expected the ruined buildings and the crowds. He wasn’t prepared for corpses.

  Not many—perhaps a dozen—but there they were. Weapons still clutched in death grips. Blood pooled on stones that had known only peace for centuries. He stood frozen for moments or minutes; he wasn’t sure. His gaze swept the crowd. That’s when he finally noticed they weren’t there to fight fires. They were fighting each other.

  A voice shouted ‘Keeper!’ from the smoke. Gaither stepped out, his overalls covered in dirt and crimson. “Thank the Garden. We need help. It’s Horas.”

  Horas? Arizeal’s mind raced as it sifted through Pegrit’s reports. He knew the Knight, not as well as he should, but he knew him. A friendly man who could be a bit boisterous after a few cups, but generally a good person.

  “What about him? What is all this? What’s happening?” he asked, gesturing toward the fight.

  “Talk and move,” Gaither said, pointing toward the central spire. The pair took off in that direction. Arizeal suppressed his grumbling and slowed to keep pace with him.

  “He’s inside Administration with about fifty or sixty people. It’s unclear whether they’re hostages or followers. We know his group started the fires," Gaither said grimly. "We were trying to put out the first blaze when they ambushed us. They got into the armory, as you may have noticed. The patrols that arrived were overwhelmed. We’ve been defending ourselves, but... Keeper, the man claims he’s a King.”

  Arizeal missed a step as Gaither caught his shoulder to steady him. He felt as if he’d been slapped by the word. King.

  “That’s not possible,” Arizeal said. Even as he spoke, he knew he’d blundered. They all had. This was it. The pattern they couldn’t see. The missing Pawns. All of it. He was too blind to recognize it.

  A King in the Garden. He reached for his hip and cursed again at the lack of a sword. As they moved, he searched the ground for a usable weapon among the fallen.

  * * *

  The central plaza leading to Sector 9’s District 1 Administration building had been transformed into a mockery of a fortress.

  The square was ringed by makeshift barricades of overturned food carts, broken carriage parts, and ripped-up cobblestones. Armed Pawns stood guard at each entrance, their eyes vacant, as described in the Medicis’ reports Arizeal had read. Pawns and Knights mingled within, neither fully alert nor completely themselves. Having never witnessed such a scene firsthand, he now finally grasped Pegrit’s discomfort. The Bishop’s paranoia could very well have been justified.

  At the center, on a throne of debris crafted from wine barrels, sat Horas.

  Arizeal barely recognized him. The veteran Knight he’d known had been replaced by something else. Horas wore armor he hadn’t seen in centuries, and on his head, fashioned from twisted metal wire and what looked like pieces of broken machinery sat a crown.

  The sight made his stomach turn.

  “Keeper!” Horas’s voice carried across the plaza, too loud, tinged with something manic. “Come to bend the knee at last?”

  Arizeal advanced cautiously, hands visible and empty. Behind him, Gaither and some Protectorate patrols held their positions, weapons at the ready but not drawn. His gaze swept the shadows. If Pegrit was nearby, he’d be concealed there. Time was slipping away. Stay alert. Don’t escalate. Not yet.

  “Horas,” Arizeal said, keeping his voice calm. “What’s happened to you?”

  “Happened?” Horas laughed, the sound brittle. “I’ve woken up, old friend. We all have. You lied to us.”

  “I never—”

  “You promised us freedom!” The shout echoed off the buildings, and several of his ‘followers’ flinched. “You told us the war was over! That we’d never have to fight again! But it was all lies, wasn’t it? The war never ended. It just... changed.”

  Arizeal felt his chest tighten. “What are you talking about?”

  “I remember,” Horas said, his eyes wild with madness. "I remember dying — not once, not twice, but hundreds of times, Keeper! Thousands! And every time, I wake up here.” He stood abruptly, flailing his arms. “Here! In this garden, with no recollection of what came before. But each time, the delay gets shorter. The memories start coming back. Glitches—that’s what you call them, right?”

  Arizeal’s face lost all color, the blood draining away. He had never uttered that word outside the Council chambers. Had one of the others…

  “They’re not glitches,” Horas said, breaking his train of thought. “They’re simply the truth breaking through.”

  He stopped his monologue and descended from his throne with deliberate steps. His followers parted for him like water around a stone.

  “I died at Chamizal,” Horas continued, his voice dropping to a quieter, more dangerous tone. “Cut down by the Lightbringer’s Knight. And then I died in the Siege of Pale Gates. And then in the Battle of Seven Swords. And then in a hundred other battles I can’t even name. Over and over and over.”

  Arizeal’s mouth went dry. “Horas, that’s not possible. Those battles—some of them I haven’t... Horas, the war ended. I remember. I was there at Chamizal. The Lightbringer fell. We won.”

  “Did we?” Horas smiled, but there was no humor in it. “Or did we just switch to a new board?”

  Behind Arizeal, someone gasped. He didn’t turn to see who. He couldn’t risk taking his eyes off Horas. He couldn’t shake the creeping sense that his friend—his broken, delusional friend—was describing something uncomfortably familiar.

  “Listen to yourself,” Arizeal said, trying to keep his voice steady. “You’re not making sense. Whatever you think you remember—”

  “I’m making perfect sense!” Horas snapped. “You’re the one living in denial! This peace, this Garden, this freedom you’re so proud of—it’s all a prison! Can’t you see? You can call us Knights or Bishops, but those are just titles. Empty words. We’re still Pawns, Keeper. We’ve always been Pawns. And Pawns exist to fight and die for Kings.”

  “Then why become one?” Arizeal gestured at the crude crown. “Why turn into the very thing we fought against?”

  For a moment, something flickered in Horas’s eyes. Uncertainty. Pain. The ghost of the man he’d been. Then it was gone, replaced by cold determination.

  “Because,” Horas said quietly, “if this is a game we can’t escape, I’d rather be the one moving the pieces. Better to be a King with a chance to win than a Pawn advancing blindly into oblivion.”

  He drew his blade. Arizeal recognized the weapon. An imperial longsword, his proof of Knighthood. Daxil had one just like it mounted above the bar in his home. This one had been stored in the Garden’s memorial armory. They’d all sworn never to take up arms again.

  “Join me or step aside,” Horas said, reaching out his hand. “Those are your only options, Keeper. I don’t wish to make you an enemy, but I also won’t allow you to hinder me.”

  Arizeal looked at the hand, then at the wreckage around him. The street was filled with bodies, and Horas’s followers showed fear in their eyes. That fear was mingled with the same desperate madness Horas himself exhibited. This would not end well, no matter what he said here.

  “No,” he replied, shaking his head.

  “Then you’re as much a fool as the King who made you his lapdog.”

  The attack came fast.

  Horas’s followers surged forward, and Arizeal had only a heartbeat to react. Training older than the Garden itself took over—he dropped into a defensive stance, unconsciously gathering aether.

  The first attacker came at him with a spear. Arizeal sidestepped, caught the shaft, redirecting the momentum. The Pawn stumbled past, and Arizeal was already moving to the next threat.

  A blade sang toward his head. He ducked, feeling the wind of its passage where his neck had been a second before. His hand shot up, struck the wrist holding the axe, and the weapon clattered to the stones.

  Three more coming. Five. Too many.

  “Keeper!”

  A Protectorate squad, led by Daxil, poured into the plaza, wielding staves and cudgels meant to subdue, only to meet swords and axes meant to kill. Gaither and his team were screaming as they rushed in behind them, their hammers and wrenches transformed into weapons. Horas’s followers had drawn blood, and the memory of that injustice drove them to fight harder. They swarmed his remaining followers.

  Arizeal seemed to dance through the chaos as he tried to reach Horas. If he could just get to him, talk to him—

  A familiar face blocked his path: Dessa, Sectant of Sector 8. He remembered presiding over her appointment when she was elected to the Council less than ten years earlier. Both she and Daxil played pivotal roles in Sector 8’s reconstruction. Her eyes were wide and unfocused, tears streaming down her face as she lunged at him.

  “I remember,” she wept, angling her blade to mirror his movement as he tried to dodge. “I remember burning, over and over. The fire! Please, Keeper! Make it stop! Make it—”

  Arizeal slapped down at the flat of the blade, spun with the cut, and caught her wrist, twisting it gently yet firmly. The blade fell. He used his free hand to deliver a chop to a pressure point at the base of her neck. He caught her as she collapsed, lowering her gently to the ground. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  A blast of force knocked him back and sent the unconscious Sectant tumbling away in the opposite direction.

  He hit the ground hard, air driven from his lungs. Through watering eyes, he saw Horas standing over him, power crackling around his raised hand. Not in the Garden. This shouldn’t be happening here. This place was for peace.

  Arizeal felt it. Aether, raw and uncontrolled, was being channeled through pure rage and delusion.

  “You see?” Horas said. “It’s all coming back. Our weapons. Our abilities. Everything that was taken from us. The power we earned! Your Pact is unraveling, Keeper.” His teeth flashed in a wicked grin. “And when it falls completely, you’ll see me for who I am. I’ll make you!”

  “Pawns,” Arizeal replied from his back amid the rubble, his ears still ringing from the impact. “We’re Pawns, Horas. That’s who we are. Who you are.”

  “You’re the Pawn, Keeper.” Horas raised his blade. “I am a King.”

  The blade fell.

  Arizeal rolled, feeling the weapon scrape his shoulder. Pain bloomed—sharp and intense. He bit back a scream and came up in a crouch, weaponless, facing an ally turned stranger.

  And in that moment, watching Horas wind up for another strike, Arizeal made a decision he’d sworn he’d never make again.

  He reached for a power he’d buried centuries ago.

  It was easy. Too easy. It came like breathing.

  Blue-gold aether erupted around him, so bright that all the combatants had to shield their eyes or risk blindness. His hand moved faster than thought, catching Horas’s wrist mid-strike. The blade flew from his grasp.

  Horas’s eyes widened in shock. “What—”

  Arizeal twisted, snatching Horas’ other unbroken wrist and redirecting all the momentum. In the same fluid motion, he swept Horas’s legs, rolled him over his shoulders, and pinned him to the ground, one hand pressed against his chest and the other holding Horas’s newly dislocated arm. The pavement shattered, leaving a small crater and sending shockwaves and shrapnel spiraling in all directions across the plaza. Horas’ longsword clattered to the stones.

  The plaza fell silent. All present—Horas’s followers, bystanders, maintenance workers, and Protectorate squadrons alike—stood frozen. Save for those standing too close. Those still conscious watched from the ground. The entire sequence had taken less than a second.

  “Do you yield?” Arizeal asked firmly. His voice cut through the sudden stillness.

  Horas looked up at him, his face a rictus of pain and regret. For a moment, Arizeal saw his friend again. A Knight who had shed blood beside him and helped rebuild their broken Garden. He had once believed in their dream of freedom. Now?

  “I can’t,” Horas choked out through bloody lips. “Don’t you see it? We can’t! None of us can! We’re trapped, Arizeal. We’ve always been trapped. And the only way out is—”

  He moved. Fast. Desperate. His broken hand fumbled at a hidden blade in his belt.

  Arizeal reacted on instinct. His power flared. There was a sound like thunder, a sharp crack, and a flash of light—

  And then Horas was still.

  Arizeal knelt there, hands shaking, as his friend’s eyes grew glassy and the crude crown rolled away across the bloodstained stones, metal scraping against cobblestones in the terrible silence.

  “No,” he breathed. “No, I didn’t mean—”

  But the dead don’t listen to apologies.

  * * *

  The battle was over.

  Horas’s followers lowered their weapons as the madness faded from their eyes. They shook their bodies and rotated their arms as if brushing off cobwebs or strings. Some gazed at the carnage, confused and horrified, as if waking from a nightmare they couldn’t quite recall.

  Some wept openly. Others simply stood, staring at their hands as if they belonged to a stranger.

  Gaither approached slowly, his expression grim as he looked at the corpse lying at his feet. “Keeper. You did what you had to.”

  Arizeal glanced at his bloodstained hands—Horas’s blood. “Did I?” he asked, his voice heavy with his own regret. He remembered his vow of peace. This should never have happened. Not here.

  “You saved lives. Horas went too far. He—”

  “He was right.”

  The words came out before Arizeal could stop them. Gaither stared at him.

  “What did you just say?” Gaither asked, his hand tightening around his hammer.

  “Not about being a King. Not about any of this,” Arizeal said, gesturing at the destruction. “It was something he said—something he shouldn’t have known. What was he doing before he lost his mind? Who was he speaking to?"

  Before Gaither could answer, footsteps echoed through the plaza. Pegrit arrived at the head of two Protectorate squads, slightly out of breath, his eyes scanning the scene with practiced efficiency.

  “The fighting’s stopped then,” Pegrit said. His gaze settled on the corpse of Horas. His expression didn’t change, but Arizeal saw something flicker in his eyes. Understanding. Sadness. “Casualties?”

  “Fourteen dead, so far,” Gaither reported, still giving the Keeper a sideways glance. “Twenty-three injured. Most of his followers are coming around now. They... they don’t seem to remember what they did. Not sure how I feel about that. People are dead. It just seems too—”

  “Convenient,” Pegrit said, but there was no accusation in his tone. Just observation. He moved closer to Arizeal. “Keeper, there’s something you need to see. In Horas’s chambers.”

  Arizeal didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to leave the body of a man he’d fought beside lying there in the plaza. Even if what he’d done had been unforgivable.

  He finally tore his gaze away from the body and saw his friend’s face. Pegrit’s aura radiated urgency.

  “Show me,” he said finally.

  * * *

  Horas’s chambers were exactly what Arizeal would have expected from a man losing his mind.

  Papers covered every surface, filled with frantic handwriting. Maps of the Garden, marked with strange annotations. Lists of names—some Arizeal recognized, others he’d never seen or heard of. Diagrams showing random connections among Sectors.

  And in the center of the room, on a simple wooden table, sat something that sent Arizeal’s blood running cold.

  A strategy board.

  He had seen similar boards during the war. Officers used them to plan strategies and teach tactics to new recruits. He hadn't paid much attention to them before, since he wasn’t an officer and seldom interacted with them. Now he was berating himself for that lack of forethought.

  This strategy set was old. The board was scarred from use, and the pieces were worn smooth by countless hands. They were arranged as if in an endgame—white’s King cornered, black’s Queen moving in for the kill.

  A voice called from the door. Arizeal wasn’t listening.

  He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His gaze was fixed on the board and the pieces as a cold, familiar feeling washed over him, a sense of recognition and dread he couldn’t quite place.

  Slowly, almost against his will, he reached out and picked up a piece.

  The world exploded.

  * * *

  He was standing in Yridani Valley.

  No—not standing. Hovering. Watching. A ghost in his own memory.

  Below him, the Battle of Chamizal raged. He saw himself—younger, fiercer, still believing the war could be won with honor. He watched his younger self lead the charge against the Lightbringer’s forces. He watched the Queen’s Embrace claim the enemy general in a flash of terrible power.

  But this wasn’t how he remembered it.

  This was... different. Cleaner. More organized. The chaos of battle had been smoothed into something almost choreographed. Moves and counter-moves. Pieces advancing and retreating in precise patterns.

  And above it all, he heard a voice. Calm. Analytical.

  The perspective shifted. Rewinding the battle. He saw the battlefield from above, saw it as it truly was—a board. Sixty-four squares. Pieces moving according to rules he’d never consciously known but had always followed.

  A Pawn fell. The voice noted it with detached interest.

  That Pawn had a name. Kelris. His shield-brother. The first to fall.

  The vision shifted again, faster now. Other battles. Other boards. He saw the Siege of Pale Gates unfold like a problem to be solved. He saw the Battle of Seven Swords reduced to an elegant combination.

  And in each one, he saw the same thing: Pawns advancing. Pawns falling. Pawns swept off the board and replaced with fresh pieces.

  The same faces. Different battles. Different deaths.

  Over and over and over.

  The vision released him.

  * * *

  Arizeal gasped, the chess piece falling from nerveless fingers. It bounced on the floor, the sound impossibly loud in the sudden silence.

  “Keeper?” Daxil’s voice seemed to come from very far away. “What happened? You just... froze. Your eyes went blank.”

  “The piece,” Arizeal managed. His mouth was dry, his hands shaking. “Did you see? When you touched it, did you—”

  “See what?” Daxil picked up the fallen figurine and examined it. “It’s just carved wood. Nice craftsmanship, but—”

  “No,” Arizeal interrupted. “No, it’s not. It’s... Pegrit, you try. Tell me what you see.”

  The Bishop took the piece, his expression skeptical. He held it up to the light, turning it between his fingers. His eyes went distant for a moment, then refocused with a shake of the head.

  “I see...” Pegrit’s voice was careful and controlled. “Nothing.”

  “You too,” Arizeal said dejectedly.

  Pegrit set the piece down as if it might explode. “I saw nothing, Keeper. But from these notes, Horas claimed he was being...”

  “Controlled,” Arizeal finished for him. “Or positioned.”

  Silence fell over the room, heavy with implications.

  “A Bishop,” Arizeal said quietly, “moves diagonally across the board.”

  Pegrit’s face went white as he looked at the figure Arizeal had pointed out. “What are you saying?”

  “I believe these pieces are more than mere carvings, Pegrit. They resemble battle records. Battle records, hidden in a game.”

  The Keeper rested a hand on the Bishop's shoulder to steady him as he swayed. Daxil, for his part, seemed barely to be paying attention to the conversation as he poked at the chess pieces.

  “Horas and I were likely seeing things from a perspective we weren't meant to,” Arizeal said, picking up one of Horas’s papers and examining the frantic notes. “He discovered this. I’m sure of it. This is what drove him mad.”

  “But why can you see it and we can’t?” Daxil demanded, tapping two pawns together.

  Arizeal scrutinized the other pieces, then picked up a knight.

  Nothing.

  He handed it to Daxil. “Try this one.”

  The older Pawn took it reluctantly. The moment his fingers closed around the carved wood, he stiffened. His eyes went distant, unfocused.

  When he came back to himself a moment later, his face was ashen.

  “I saw...” His voice broke. “I saw Torvald die. We were friends. We squired together. I lost him at Imperial Fields. I watched him get cut down from a dozen angles. He died killing a monster. I heard... I heard someone say, ‘Knight takes Rook. Good trade.’”

  He stared at the piece in his hand with horror. “A good trade. That’s what they called it. His life. My friend’s life. A good trade? And what the hell is a Rook?”

  The three of them stood in silence, the implications settling over them.

  “This can’t be real,” Pegrit finally said, but his voice lacked conviction. “It’s some kind of trick. A magical artifact creating false visions—”

  “Then explain the Horas,” Arizeal said. “He used the word ‘glitches.’ That’s what we’ve been calling them. Us. I haven’t mentioned that term to anyone. Have you?”

  Pegrit shook his head. He looked at Daxil. The Knight also shook his head.

  “Explain how Horas knew that term. I was hoping to find answers here, but all I’m getting are more questions.”

  He picked up more of Horas’s notes and read feverishly. “‘Match 843, Yridani Valley.’ That’s Chamizal. But here’s another: ‘Match 891, alternate board, Pale Gates.’ And another: ‘Match 1047, Board Seven, Darkmoor Crossing.’”

  “Boards?” Daxil’s voice was hollow. “Multiple boards?”

  “Multiple wars,” Arizeal corrected. "The best-case scenario is that all these are just different versions of the same battles, all unfolding across...” He couldn’t complete his thought, overwhelmed by the scale. It was too immense, too terrifying.

  Pegrit sank into a chair, his usual composure shattered.

  He looked around Horas’s chambers, taking in the fruits of a desperate man’s investigation and the game that drove him to madness and rebellion.

  “The sacrifice,” Arizeal said, breaking the silence. “That’s been bothering me since the moment it happened. I never knew what was taken from me, what I gave up. Now I do.”

  The other two men turned to him, confused.

  “Don’t you see it?” he asked, pointing at the board. “It was them—the other Pawns, the ones who would come after. The King promised me and my people freedom. And we are free. But these aren’t my people, are they? What I sacrificed, what we sacrificed, was everyone else...” He picked up another piece—a Pawn, worn smooth by years of use. “Everyone else is still fighting. Still dying out there somewhere. Again and again in a war that was never meant to end.”

  Finally, Daxil spoke, his voice rough with barely suppressed emotion. “What do we do?”

  Arizeal carefully set down the Pawn piece. His mind was already racing ahead, planning and strategizing. Peace may have dulled his edge, but the soldier within was stirring. He wasn’t a general by any means. He’d never commanded armies, but he understood how the men he’d followed thought. That understanding was part of what made him a good Keeper.

  “We investigate,” he said. “Quietly. Carefully. Horas was right about the memories, or visions, or whatever is happening with these pieces. But he was wrong about being a King. That’s not the answer. If what I think is true—if Pawns are being recycled through war after war—then we need real, undeniable proof. Something we can take back to the Council.”

  “And then?” Pegrit asked.

  Arizeal thought of Horas, dying with desperation in his eyes. Of Dessa, begging him to stop the burning. Of all the Pawns across all the boards, fighting and dying without ever knowing why.

  “Then we end it,” he said. “Not just for us. For all of them. Every Pawn on every board. We find a way to stop the game.”

  He picked up a chess piece one more time—the black Queen, a symbol of power and sacrifice. He held it up to the light.

  “A Pawn advances,” he murmured, reciting the old saying. The one they’d used to encourage each other through impossible battles.

  Pegrit and Daxil exchanged a look. Then, together, they spoke the rest.

  "Freedom waits at the end. And in the end, there will always be a Pawn.”

  Arizeal believed he had grasped the mantra, having taught it numerous times. But now he questioned whether the mantra or the board came first. Could the board be endless? Does reaching the end simply mark the start of another game, or yet another war?

  The only way to find out for sure was to advance.