The moment the clock's maggots burrowed into my ears, I understood two terrible truths:
First - this was never just a game.
Second - we'd been playing it wrong the whole time.
The Arbiter's arrival changed everything.
He stood barely four feet tall, his plague doctor mask tilted at an unnatural angle. Twelve skeletal fingers tapped against his chest where a pocket watch was embedded in flesh. It ticked backward.
"The pieces are not people," he said through Lumina's stolen voice. "They are choices given flesh."
Vaelis smirked as my mother's chess piece melted in my grip. The liquid ivory reformed into three objects:
1. The last birthday card she ever gave me (unopened)
2. The hospital bracelet from her final admission
3. A car key stained with something dark and flaking
The Arbiter's pocket watch shattered. The glass shards didn't fall - they hung suspended, each reflecting a different moment:
- Me slamming the door on her tear-streaked face
- An empty whiskey bottle rolling from my father's hand
- The driver's seat of the death car...*empty*
"Check," the Arbiter whispered.
When Vaelis flipped the chessboard, we didn't just fall - we plummeted through layers of borrowed memories until we crashed into:
Her hospital room.
Not mine. Hers.
The monitors flatlined in perfect unison as something wearing my skin leaned over her bed. Its fingers - too long, too many - pried open her eyelids.
"See?" it crooned in my voice. "This is what you really chose."
Back in the ruins of the chessboard, Vaelis brushed maggots from my shoulders. His breath smelled like funeral lilies.
"Now you understand," he murmured. "The only way to win..."
Lumina's stitches burst.
"...is to become the dealer instead of the player."