IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT
Hey everyone,
I've got some exciting news to share with you all!
After a lot of thought and some serious reworking, I've decided to enter "Pawns" into an official writing contest. But here's the thing—I'm not just submitting it as-is. I'm completely reimagining it to fit the contest's theme: Inhumane Main Character.
The new version is called "PAWNS: RISE AGAINST THE STRINGS", and I'm going all-in on exploring a protagonist who exists in those morally grey (okay, let's be honest—morally dark) areas. Think less hero, more... complicated.
What This Means:
This version of "Pawns" won't be updated anymore. I know, I know—but trust me, it's for a good reason.
All future chapters will be posted exclusively on the contest entry. That's where the real story continues.
I need your support more than ever! If you've enjoyed the journey so far, please head over to the new book. Your power stones, collections, and reviews would mean the world to me and really help in the contest.
You can find the new version here: "Pawns: Rise Against the Strings"
I'm really excited about where this story is heading, and I hope you'll come along for the ride. Thanks for sticking with me through this journey—you readers are the best!
Let's do this
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Air became a luxury Elijah couldn't afford.
The woman's arm constricted around his throat like a python made of iron and silk, cutting off his windpipe with surgical precision. He clawed at her forearm—desperately, pathetically—his fingernails scraping against skin that felt impossibly smooth yet unyielding as marble. Each second stretched into an eternity of suffocation, his lungs screaming for oxygen that wouldn't come.
Through the encroaching darkness at the edges of his vision, Elijah found himself staring into her eyes.
They were terrifying in their beauty.
Almond-shaped and sharp as obsidian blades, those eyes held no mercy, no warmth, no humanity at all. They were the eyes of something ancient, something that had witnessed the rise and fall of empires and remained utterly unmoved. Her eyebrows arched perfectly above them, sculpted as if by divine hands, giving her the appearance of a goddess rendered in flesh—not the benevolent kind that answered prayers, but the impartial kind that executed cosmic decrees without a shred of remorse.
Elijah's vision spotted. Black flowers bloomed across his sight, spreading like ink in water.
Then came the light.
It emerged from a point directly between her eyebrows—the third eye position of ancient mysticism—beginning as a pinprick of sapphire radiance that expanded with breathtaking speed. The blue was unlike any color Elijah had ever seen: deep as the ocean's abyss yet bright as a newborn star, pulsing with rhythmic waves that seemed synchronized with his own faltering heartbeat.
The light didn't just illuminate. It *penetrated*.
Elijah felt it wash over him like a tsunami of pure, unfiltered truth. Every wall he'd ever constructed in his mind—every carefully maintained facade, every protective lie, every shadow he'd hidden behind—began to crumble. The sensation was visceral and invasive, as if invisible fingers were peeling back the layers of his psyche one by one, exposing everything underneath to merciless scrutiny.
The urge to confess rose in his chest like vomit.
He wanted to tell her *everything*. The crypto wallet he'd emptied from Otis Freeman's account—eighteen thousand dollars stolen with the click of a button. His growing doubts about Caltheron's true nature, the nagging suspicion that he'd traded one prison for another. His bone-deep terror of Wonko, that ancient, unknowable entity who moved him around like a chess piece while speaking in riddles.
His lips parted against his will.
The words were forming, clawing their way up his throat alongside his desperate need for air. He was going to confess. He was going to spill every secret, every sin, every shameful thought to this beautiful, terrible stranger who was choking the life out of him.
The compulsion was absolute. Irresistible.
Then her head tilted.
It was a minute movement, barely perceptible, like a predator catching an unexpected scent on the wind. Her eyes—those merciless, divine eyes—shifted focus, looking past him toward something else entirely.
Elijah heard it then: the faint, almost imaginary crunch of gravel beneath a careful footstep. Or perhaps it was just the subtle displacement of air, the atmospheric shift that announced a presence where none had been before.
The sapphire light vanished.
One moment it had been flooding the courtyard with ethereal radiance, and the next it simply ceased to exist, as if someone had flipped a cosmic switch. The woman's arm released its death grip just as abruptly, pulling away from his throat with fluid grace.
Elijah collapsed forward onto his hands and knees, gasping and choking. His throat felt like it had been crushed beneath a hydraulic press. Each breath scraped against his damaged windpipe, sending sharp lances of pain through his neck. He coughed violently, his body desperately trying to remember how breathing was supposed to work.
When he finally managed to look up, still clutching his bruised throat, the woman stood above him with an expression of mild annoyance. She wasn't even looking at him anymore. Her attention had shifted entirely to something in the shadows.
Elijah followed her gaze.
In a shadowy corner of the courtyard, sitting on a weathered stone bench as if he'd been there all along, was a bald old man.
The old man was making what had to be the worst attempt at looking inconspicuous that Elijah had ever witnessed. He sat with exaggerated casualness, shoulders hunched slightly, his attention apparently fixed on his own fingernails as if they contained the secrets of the universe. He examined them with theatrical intensity, turning his hands this way and that, completely ignoring the fact that he'd obviously been watching the entire near-murder unfold.
It would have been comical if Elijah's throat didn't feel like hamburger meat.
The woman made a soft sound—"Hmph!"—that somehow conveyed volumes of disdain despite being barely audible. She shot one final, unreadable look at Elijah, her expression a mixture of calculation and something that might have been disappointment.
Then she turned and walked away.
Her movement was ethereal, almost floating, her hybrid attire—that strange fusion of Eastern and Western design—flowing behind her like liquid shadow. Within seconds, she had melted into the darkness of the courtyard's far side, leaving no trace of her presence except for the aching memory around Elijah's throat.
Elijah staggered to his feet, still massaging his neck, and made a helpless gesture toward her retreating form. He spread his hands palm-up, shoulders lifting in a bewildered shrug that screamed, *I didn't do anything!* Not that she was around to see it.
His attention returned to the old man on the bench.
Up close, the stranger looked ancient yet spry, his bald head reflecting the faint moonlight like polished wood. He wore simple robes that might have been expensive or might have been rags—it was genuinely difficult to tell. His face was a roadmap of wrinkles, each line suggesting a story, but his eyes sparkled with mischievous intelligence.
"Who are you?" Elijah croaked, his voice barely above a whisper and rough as sandpaper. "And what was the deal with her?"
The old man finally looked up from his intensive fingernail examination, a grin spreading across his weathered face. "Her?" He chuckled, the sound warm and oddly infectious. "Oh, she's always been a wild one around here. Temperamental as a summer storm."
He gave Elijah a thorough, appraising look from head to toe, his grin widening into something distinctly cheeky. "You'd have to work *really* hard in your training, boy—like, decades of grueling cultivation—to even *dream* of attracting a woman like that."
Elijah scoffed before he could stop himself, the sound damaged by his injured throat. "I doubt she'd even be my type."
The words had barely left his mouth when the temperature plummeted.
A breeze materialized out of nowhere—not a natural wind but something targeted and malevolent. It was cold beyond measure, carrying with it an unmistakable sensation of hostility. The supernatural gust rushed directly at Elijah like an invisible predator, and he felt genuine killing intent radiating from it.
The old man flicked his wrist.
The gesture was casual, almost lazy, as if he were shooing away a particularly persistent fly. The malevolent breeze simply *stopped*, dissipating into nothingness as if it had never existed at all. No dramatic clash of powers, no visible technique—just a casual dismissal of what had clearly been a lethal attack.
The old man leaned over and playfully smacked Elijah on the arm, his touch surprisingly strong. "Be careful with your words, boy. They have weight here. More weight than you understand."
His expression shifted then, the playfulness draining away to reveal something more serious beneath. "Now, get some rest. Be ready for tomorrow. There's a major announcement being made at the Aethelgard Citadel. You'll want to be present for that."
Before Elijah could ask any of the thousand questions crowding his mind, the old man stood up from his bench with surprising agility. He gave a lazy, backward wave without turning around and walked off into the darkness, his footsteps fading into silence.
Elijah stood there, confusion and exhaustion warring for dominance in his battered body.
Then the world began to melt.
It started subtly—the stone pavement beneath his feet losing its solidity, becoming fluid and uncertain. Colors bled together like watercolors left in the rain. The night sky above swirled and ran, stars stretching into luminous streaks. The entire courtyard twisted and warped, reality itself becoming negotiable.
Elijah felt himself pulled into a vortex of light and shadow, spinning through a kaleidoscope of impossible geometries. Time lost meaning. Space became suggestion rather than fact.
When the world solidified again, everything had changed.
He stood in a sun-drenched pavilion that definitely hadn't existed moments before. Warm light poured down from an impossible sky, casting everything in shades of gold and amber. The air smelled of jasmine and old paper, peaceful in a way that felt deliberately crafted.
At the center of the pavilion sat an old man before a stone table.
Wonko.
He was deeply engrossed in a game of Xiangqi, the Chinese chess board laid out before him with meticulous care. The pieces were carved from jade and obsidian, elegant in their simplicity—generals standing proud behind their advisors, chariots ready to sweep across the board, cannons positioned for devastating attacks, soldiers marching toward enemy territory.
Elijah found himself seated opposite Wonko, though he had no memory of sitting down.
"Wonko," Elijah said without preamble, his voice still rough but functional, "I still don't understand what's happening. Let me get this right: the land in Caltheron I thought I bought through that blockchain account... the memory of me purchasing it was actually false?"
Wonko looked up from the board, and a cheeky, knowing grin spread across his ancient face. He didn't speak. He didn't need to. That expression confirmed everything.
Elijah felt something heavy settle in his chest. "The Unemployed Assassin Bureau agency... which I formed while scheming as Azaqor... the idea for it was you."
Wonko's response was a simple wink—maddening in its casual acknowledgment of profound manipulation—followed by a bold move on the board. His jade chariot slid forward with a soft click, cutting deep into Elijah's territory, positioning itself to threaten his general in a classic check maneuver.
Aggressive. Direct. Impossible to ignore.
"What was the point of the Bureau if Caltheron already has its own hidden force?" Elijah asked, gesturing around the impossible pavilion. "Why create something redundant?"
"Boy," Wonko replied without looking up from the board, his fingers hovering over his next piece, "a strong tree needs stable roots to remain standing. The Unemployed Assassin Bureau is *your* force, which will be easier for you to command and will assist in your growth. The other force here..." He paused, finally meeting Elijah's eyes. "You're still far from qualifying to even be an external member."
The weight of that statement settled over Elijah like a physical thing.
"Those realms you told me about," Elijah pressed forward, "the Synaptic Realm... they're real? Actually real?"
Wonko nodded slowly, returning his attention to the game. "You already have the basic foundation to reach the Synaptic Realm. But first, the only thing you lack is remembering what you were taught by them."
"By them?" Elijah leaned forward. "The World Architects?"
Wonko finally paused the game entirely, his hand freezing mid-reach for one of his pieces. "My organization, in my time, was not unknown. But as for these 'World Architects'..." His eyes narrowed slightly. "What makes you think they're behind everything?"
Elijah felt his pulse quicken. "The Azaqor Manuscripts. There are nine types. The one I have... I suspect they have an Azaqor one. I've connected it to the mythical tale of beings who descended from the heavens and brought about the rise of the first civilization through their ideologies."
He watched Wonko's face carefully as he continued.
"One of those ideologies was strikingly similar to Azaqor's principles. A group of believers emerged from people who took these ideologies for themselves, who later became the World Architects. They didn't just inherit the philosophy—they weaponized it."
Wonko adopted a deeply thoughtful expression, his fingers steepling beneath his chin. The silence stretched between them, punctuated only by the distant sound of wind chimes somewhere in the impossible distance.
"You're beginning to see the pattern," Wonko said finally, his voice softer than before. "But seeing the pattern and understanding the design are two very different things."
Elijah opened his mouth to respond, but Wonko raised a hand.
"Tomorrow," the old man said. "Tomorrow, at the Aethelgard Citadel, you'll begin to understand just how deep this all goes. For now..." He gestured to the Xiangqi board. "It's your move."
Elijah looked down at the board, at the jade and obsidian pieces arranged in their eternal conflict, and realized with uncomfortable clarity that he was no longer sure which side he was playing.