The second day in Ember broke without light.
No sunrise. No change in temperature. Just a deeper hue to the ash outside the dome, like someone had spilled ink into the sky and let it thicken. The clouds hung lower than before—pressed down like an old hand trying to crush them flat.
Cael sat against the north wing's wall in the base, chewing slowly through the last third of a ration bar. It had gone dry overnight, the outer edges crisped into something like cement. He forced it down anyway, jaw aching with each bite. Hunger had a different flavor here. Not just emptiness—it was the creeping suspicion that no meal after this would come without loss.
Across the room, Pax was lying on his bunk with a damp cloth pressed to his face. Lyndra sat cross-legged on the floor, sharpening her blade with rhythmic strokes that felt like a ticking clock. Wren stood near the door, armor half-unbuckled, muttering as she flipped through readings on her wristband.
"We're still one tile out from yesterday's sweep," she said, not looking up. "If we rotate northwest, we can scout B2. Might be another capsule. Sensors picked up residual drop signatures."
Cael nodded. "What about the tile bonuses?"
"That's the problem."
The map table in the war room was flickering again—its surface warped slightly from the internal heat. On the central grid, several tiles blinked with new icons. The bonus markers had shifted.
Tile bonuses had shuffled.
The Amplify zone from C2 had jumped six tiles away, now pulsing faintly in F1. Fortify had vanished altogether. Scan Pulse, which had been close the night before, now pulsed under a black ridge submerged in molten runoff.
"They're not static," Sora said from the far side of the room. Her voice was quiet, clinical. "They're playing us."
"The Officials?" Pax asked, pulling the cloth from his face, his cheeks flushed red.
Sora didn't answer. She didn't need to.
The Board had a pulse now. Not just a function—but a behavior. It moved like something watching them from behind the glass.
Rune stood leaning over the map, arms crossed. "So they move the bonuses every cycle. Keep us chasing. Keep us hungry."
"To split teams," Vera added, standing with arms folded, one boot pressed against the console's edge. "Make us gamble on wrong directions. Divide and cull."
"Or to see who's dumb enough to chase Amplify into a death tile," Thorne said with a low, humorless grin.
Elijah entered quietly from the corridor, wiping sweat from his jawline. The back of his neck was soaked.
"Has anyone noticed the timing?" he asked.
Everyone turned.
Elijah stepped closer to the table, then tapped the screen where the bonus markers had just changed.
"Tile bonuses are shifting roughly every twelve hours. No warnings. No countdown. Just... gone. Every move we make, the Board rearranges the reward."
"Even if it's terrain we've already scouted," Wren said. "Which means any planning we do gets overwritten."
Cael traced one square with his finger. "And we can't afford wild detours. Not with food running out again."
The silence that followed was heavier than before.
The capsule from yesterday had bought them time. Not safety.
And certainly not peace.
The base lights flickered.
Outside the dome, a sound like cracking ice rang out—followed by a low rumble that made the ground shift beneath their boots.
Everyone stood in an instant.
"Report," Vera barked, already halfway to the map.
The display flared. Red lines sliced across the top row.
LAVA SURGE DETECTED — TILE A2. TERRAIN REFORMATION IN PROGRESS.
A sector near their planned scouting path collapsed in real time. Mountains fell. Chasms cracked open like veins. The Fortify tile they'd marked as a fallback zone was swallowed by glowing magma.
A white dot blinked once.
Then faded.
"Guess we're not going there anymore," Lyndra muttered.
"Not unless you've developed a lava-surfing mutation," Ryve added.
Pax stared at the screen. "That could've been us."
"It still could," Elara said. She had appeared beside them, silent and sharp as ever, blades hanging loose at her hips.
Cael looked at the reshaped tile, then back at the map's edge. The quadrant was shrinking. Not in size—but in safety.
Wren spoke, voice tighter than usual. "The Ember base was always temporary. No food sources. No cover. No weather control. Now unstable terrain."
"We can't keep retreating to this bluff," Elara added. "The Board's not going to let us sit here forever."
"We need a real plan," Cael said, straightening. "Not just for the next capsule. For… everything."
Vera stepped forward. For the first time since their arrival, she tapped the exact center of the board.
Four tiles.d4. d5. e4. e5.The middle of the game.
"Eventually," she said, "we'll have to get here."
Pax blinked. "You mean the center? That's suicide. We're three quadrants out. The center's probably crawling with monsters. Maybe both teams."
"We don't go now," Elijah replied. "But we start moving. Ember will break us piece by piece. The longer we stay, the more the Board turns this place into a furnace."
"We've all felt it," Cael added. "Even with the capsule, we're down to two days max. And Ember has nothing left."
"No water. No edible life. No shelter tiles," Wren said. "There's only one place on the board with actual ecosystem readings."
Sora nodded. "The Root Labyrinth."
A long pause followed.
Rune leaned in. "That place is crawling with things we haven't even trained for. The biology's adaptive. Predators. Terrain that moves. Vines that think."
"It also has edible flora," Lyndra added. "And potable water if we purify it."
Cael spoke slowly. "Which means the Board knows we'll go there."
"They're probably funneling White in the same direction," Wren said. "They're likely in Crown's Hollow. Cliff systems. Bare stone. No way to survive long-term. No food. No life."
"So the Labyrinth is a trap," Pax said.
"It's bait," Vera corrected. "They've given us one viable path out—and they're waiting at the end of it."
"They'll want us to meet," Elara said. "It's the only thing that makes sense. Force the convergence. Push all pieces into one quadrant and make it look like a choice."
Cael looked at the Labyrinth tile glowing faintly on the southeast corner of the map. From here, it looked small. Reachable.
But they all knew better.
They were still days out. Five tiles, maybe more—depending on terrain shifts, lava activity, and monster movements.
It might as well have been a lifetime.
"Then we plan for it," Elijah said. "We prep in squads. Rotate watches. Preserve supplies. Tomorrow we start pushing east."
"And if the White team's already there?" Rune asked.
Vera's voice was cool. "Then we remind them whose game this is."
The room fell quiet again.
Outside, another ridge cracked and hissed in the distance. The earth never stopped moving here. Ember didn't sleep.
And neither could they.
Cael stared at the map for a long time.
The center.The Labyrinth.The unavoidable collision ahead.
And behind all of it—the Board.Not playing chess anymore.Just building the fire.
He stepped away from the table as the others drifted into separate corners of the room. Some to their bunks. Some to sharpen blades, or pace, or stare blankly into the flickering lights above the war board.
He found himself in the hallway near the east corridor, where the shield dome hummed loudest. The heat pressed harder here, as if the outside world wanted in.
His reflection hovered faintly in the glass—drawn, thin, older than it had been three days ago. His hair clung to his forehead in damp strands, his eyes red-rimmed and shadowed. He looked like someone who'd lived too long under artificial suns and forgotten what real sky looked like.
Footsteps padded up behind him. Wren. She said nothing at first—just leaned against the opposite wall and folded her arms.
"You thinking about Lia?" she asked softly.
He didn't answer right away. "I don't know if she's even alive."
"She's alive," Wren said. "You'd feel it if she wasn't."
He looked down at his hands. Burnt knuckles, a new cut along the wristband strap. "I don't want to reach the center just to find out none of this mattered."
Wren's gaze didn't waver. "Then make it matter. Survive for her. And if the Labyrinth's a trap, we beat the trap. Together."
Cael gave a small nod, but the weight didn't lift. It only settled deeper—less frantic, more permanent.
The war wasn't coming.
It was already here.