Author’s Note:
This entire chapter shifts between the past and the present. Everything written in italics represents the past, while the text in regular font depicts the present. Each flashback draws from already published chapters. If you’re unsure which event belongs to which chapter, feel free to ask me.

Read this chapter like a film—where the characters in the present recall moments from the past, unseen by the readers.

For five long years, the board had been alive, though none realized they were standing upon it. Every decision, betrayal and whispered confession that rippled through the chapters was nothing but a carefully measured move. What they called coincidence was calculation. What they named destiny was design. Vikramaditya, the architect behind it all had mapped the lines of human will like squares of ivory and ash. Pawns disguised as lovers, knights as saviors, bishops as believers moved toward an end only he could see.

But This time, the queen was not the fire that consumed the board. He had folded her flame into the stillness of his design. The king played instead, relentlessly shielding his queen from the storms he himself summoned. She was not a piece to command but a destiny to reach; his undoing, his inevitability. For her, he flicked away his own pieces, sacrificed his defenses, and rewrote the very rhythm of the board. He controlled the lives of hundreds, wagering even his own to secure the final square.