A Pawn.

  Encased in a shell of translucent crystal, the chess piece floated silently above the unsuspecting gardener's head. Clear. Sharp.

  Finlay’s pupils contracted, his focus narrowing until the chess piece became the only real thing.

  What the—

  "Brother? Are you sure you are well?"

  Remy’s voice cut through it. Her palm remained a stain of salt.

  At some point, his stride had failed him. The command to walk had simply vanished, leaving him anchored to the gravel—a blemish in the Estate’s perfect rhythm.

  "Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine."

  He made himself move, but his eyes no longer saw the scenery. They darted from face to face, tracking what floated above each one.

  Above the maids—Pawns. Translucent and fragile, bobbing like glass buoys.

  Above the knights—Pawns, but denser. Edges sharper, crystalline forms carrying a polished, lethal intent.

  Above the older servants—still Pawns, but ravaged. Cracked. Dulled. Their surfaces webbed with the fractures of ten thousand repetitions.

  Every soul was crowned with one.

  Some dark as obsidian. Some flaring with a sickening brightness. Some clear as mountain water, others distorted and uneven, pulsing with a quiet foreboding.

  But Silent. Inescapable. Absolute.

  His head swam.

  Even above Remy's head. A Chess Piece.

  I've... never seen this before.

  And he doubted anyone else in this world ever had.

  [Be still.]

  The Sun's voice was calm. Almost too calm.

  [You are not hallucinating, little spark. You are finally seeing them through the eyes of the Cradle.]

  [Precisely. To the Cradle, every soul is but a shape upon the board. From the hollow Pawns. To the Kings.]

  Without pause, the Sun continued, his voice as rhythmic as the ticking of a cosmic clock.

  [Each has value. Each has weight. Each has a role.]

  Finlay rubbed his temple, his boots crunching against the gravel as he moved forward.

  [Think of the Cradle as a massive Orbit. Every soul drifts within its pull, but not every soul shares the same trajectory. Some are dust. Some are barren rocks. Some are Moons—reflecting a light they do not own.]

  [And a singular few?]

  A pause.

  [They are the Suns. Those whose magnitude is so absolute that all of existence—beautiful and foul alike—falls toward them.]

  Finlay watched silently as the inhabitants of the Estate passed by, each crowned with a crystalline brand.

  Pawn. Pawn. Another Pawn. Pawn again. It was a repetitive, rhythmic nightmare.

  He didn't finish the word. sat in his throat like ash.

  [There are no useless souls in the Cradle, little spark. Only negative space.]

  [Depth. Contrast. Shadows. They exist as the necessary murk—without the dark, even the Suns would be blindingly flat.]

  Finlay's stomach churned.

  To hell with this shitty world.

  He didn’t know which realization was more sickening. Being worthless? Or existing solely to provide a backdrop for someone else’s brilliance?

  Each one... each and every one has a chess piece?

  [The Stars have none.]

  Stars.

  [Stars have no roles. No rules. They stand above them. They are the players on an eternal canvas of the universe.]

  He knew the thought was a naive rot. A child’s logic. But still.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  [There is no justice, Only the Stars.]

  For a long, long moment, he just walked. Dragging his body through this infinite tapestry of creation.

  All around them, the retainers scurried, consumed by the trivial noise of their duties. Manservants, maids, knights—they were all so vibrantly alive, obsessed with their small dramas of the day and their pressing worries.

  Melancholy washed over him.

  [Get used to it.]

  [Get used to how the Stars see the world.]

  Finlay looked at Remy.

  The piece above her head was not a Pawn.

  It was a Queen.

  White. Pristine. Perfect. It hung in the air like a frozen decree, carved by the sharpest of blades and tempered through countless lethal trials.

  [She was born a Queen.]

  [And she became One.]

  So she's one of the Suns?

  [More than that.]

  He watched her move. Tried to see what the Cradle saw. And the evidence was everywhere, once he looked—the way the world folded around her.

  Was it her aura?

  People unconsciously yielded, carving out a path before she even reached them. Servants twice her age bowed their heads with a quiet, instinctive reverence. Knights three times her height stepped aside as if a single stray shadow from their armor might soil her light.

  She didn't notice.

  [Such existences are rare beyond measure.]

  To what extent?

  [Verily. A thousand generations of men may walk the earth in blindness and never feel the cold of such a fire. To encounter one is to witness a master-stroke that occurs once in an age of grey.]

  A strange, crooked pride swelled in his chest—a warm ember in the middle of all that frost.

  It was easy to get lost just watching her, to let her perfection swallow his focus, but he forced himself to look away. In the end, she was still just Remy.

  "Brother."

  Perhaps his gaze had been too obvious, too piercing, because at that moment Remy turned.

  "Is there something on my face?"

  Her hand moved to her cheek, searching with a delicate, automatic precision for whatever flaw might have caught his eye.

  "Oh, it’s nothing," Finlay replied with a casual shrug. "I just thought... you look really something else today. Almost too cool."

  She froze.

  The divine, measured grace of her stride vanished. She stumbled. For a heartbeat, the air around her didn't feel cold—it felt still.

  "You..."

  She didn't finish. For a long, breathless moment, neither of them spoke.

  Then she turned away and quickened her pace.

  "Don't talk nonsense."

  My, my... so our Queen knows how to be embarrassed? How sweet.

  A genuine smile tugged at Finlay’s lips.

  He was about to catch up, to mess with her further, when unsettling tremor shot through his spine.

  A primal, instinctive recoil.

  He didn't know how, but he felt the source of the rot before he saw it. He stopped. Looked at the stone path ahead.

  There, a two hundred meters away, a group of battered knights marched toward them, the banners of Esterra fluttering in their hands. Above their heads, the Pawns drifted in their usual, silent orbit.

  His eyes snagged on one of them.

  From the outside, the man was unremarkable—same worn armor, same bearing, same grime of a recent engagement on his skin. But his Pawn—

  It was wrong.

  Among the translucent glass of the others, this one screamed with a silent, agony. It was viscous and malformed, a twitching knot of eldritch filth. It looked festering, pulsing with an unstable, visceral cancer that felt less like matter and more like rotting meat. It was too warped. Too distorted. Too to belong to this world.

  Cold sweat broke across the back of Finlay's neck.

  His stomach lurched, bile rising in a bitter wave. He couldn't look away from it. Couldn't stop seeing it.

  "—sure you're well? That cultist, the way he struck you... a foul wound, Mavis. You should be in the infirmary, not on your feet—"

  "I'm fine." The voice that answered was flat, with something vibrating just beneath the surface. "Better than fine. I feel Stronger. Stop your fretting."

  The group marched past and the voices bled into distance.

  Finlay's hands were trembling.

  He forced his legs to move, quickening his pace until he was at his sister’s side again.

  "Hey, Remy. That man... who was he?"

  "Who what?" she asked, her voice tinged with a slight, icy irritation.

  "Center of the unit. The one who just passed."

  She cast a brief, clinical glance over her shoulder at the receding knights before her eyes returned to their usual indifference.

  "Mavis. He and his squad just returned from a purge—clearing out a cell of the Eternal Night Cult."

  Eternal Night Cult?

  He’d heard of those fanatics. They weren't zealots; they were completely insane.

  She looked forward again. "But why the sudden curiosity?"

  "Didn't you think he was... off? ?"

  Her stride slowed by half a step. She looked at him with genuine confusion.

  "Wrong? What are you talking about?"

  "His shape," Finlay muttered, his mind still reeling from the rot he’d seen. "The way it... felt. It was warped."

  Remy’s expression shifted, her nose wrinkling in a look of profound revulsion.

  "His felt off?" she repeated, her voice dripping with judgment. "Are you suddenly taking a keen interest in the curves of the infantry? That’s... actually gross, Brother. Truly."

  "That’s not it—!"

  His voice went granite-hard, snapping through the air with a desperate, absolute firmness. He couldn't let her run with that. If he let this misunderstanding take root, his reputation as a big brother would be a smoldering ruin before they even reached the dining hall.

  "Ugh, spare me the details. I don't care about your new... leanings."

  She spun away, her military boots clacking with aggressive annoyance against the stone path. The ends of the scarf trailed behind her like a soft, woolen banner. Each step sounded like a gavel delivering a guilty verdict.

  When he remained rooted to the spot—his mind still caught in the teeth of that malignant Pawn—she threw a final command over her shoulder without looking back.

  "Stop standing there lingering on men's physiques. Catch up."

  "I told you, that’s not what I meant—!"

  He bolted after her, his boots hammering the gravel as he fought to kill the lie before it became a permanent brand. He had to scrub that look of disgust from her mind before his sister officially categorized him as a deviant.

  Behind him, in the Estate's warm afternoon, Mavis and his squad marched on.

  The corrupted Pawn bobbed steadily above his head, keeping pace.