Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 198: Ch196. [Interlude] - Of chess and Stories

Chapter 198: Ch196. [Interlude] - Of chess and Stories

Somewhere outside the reach of time and space itself, in a room where silence was neither empty nor still, two hooded figures sat at a table.

The table was small and round, carved from a single slab of ancient petrified wood, etched with rings older than any world still spinning. Between them sat a chessboard made of light and shadow, the pieces carved from fragments of crystal, bone, ink, and memory.

One figure moved first. Slender fingers wrapped in bandages picked up a knight carved from broken clocks and set it forward with a soft click.

"Well, well..." Said the figure in a lilting, amused tone. "Miles again?"

The other figure chuckled, low and gravelly, and leaned back. Smoke wreathed his hood as if the air itself dared not settle too long on his presence.

"You know I’ve always liked his kind." The second figure said, watching the board. "The ones who break rules because they believe too hard in them."

"Jackal," said the first with a tilt of the head. "You say that like belief is a virtue."

"Belief is a tool. Just like chaos... Just like control." Jackal answered with a snort. "It keeps us alive, after all."

The old TV on the table behind them flickered and crackled to life, grainy footage rolling across the screen. It had no buttons, no knobs, no cables. Only a static-choked hum that whispered like old pages turning.

On it, Miles roared across the battlefield in the [Mouth of the Abyss], wielding his scythe like a devil from the hells themselves. Sarissa was beside him, her face cold, eyes deadened by the Dee’s fall, her steps fast and deliberate, yet wild like a dance of fire and steel as she rewrote the final seconds of every creature she struck down.

The first figure moved a rook made from fractured silver.

"You gave them hope, just to take her away, Jackal?" The figure said, not accusingly. "And you expected them to kneel?"

"They did, Trickster..." Jackal spoke in a flat tone, unmoved. "Just not in the way we hoped."

The TV shifted scenes.

Cass and her team, barely alive, crawling their way through the haunted [Dark Forest]. Alric shielding Riven and Jake with his own body. Elise screaming through the trees.

Trickster tapped a pawn.

"They don’t know when to give up."

"That’s what makes them interesting." Jackal said. "Pawns that think they’re kings. Every move they make, they pay in full."

"But what fascinates you, Jackal?" Trickster asked, moving a bishop carved from feathers and ink. "You’ve watched countless games. You witnessed countless champions rise and fall. What makes this one worth playing?"

Jackal leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table.

"You’ll know when the time is right..." Jackal’s beastly lips curled up into a grin.

The screen cut to black for a moment, and then light flared.

Sarissa again, bloodied, barely standing, her eyes fixed on the child she had once been. The blade of [Regression] rising to strike. But instead of countering, instead of fleeing or killing, she stepped forward.

And hugged her.

The moment froze, and the chessboard quivered faintly.

"You didn’t see that coming." Jackal said softly.

"No." Trickster admitted. "I thought she’d destroy it, but she chose to remember it instead. To accept it. How... Interesting..."

The image on the screen fractured outward like blooming glass. Petals of silver and gold unfolded from Sarissa’s heart, not in the world outside, but within the deeper space of her soul.

A new Story sparked into being.

[The One Who Moves Forward]

The light bled into the room where Trickster and Jackal sat. It touched the chessboard, and for a moment, every piece trembled.

Trickster leaned back, hands folded.

"I see..." they said with a slow, mischievous smile.

Jackal said nothing, but his fingers brushed the edge of the board, thoughtful.

"It’s starting." Trickster whispered. "The board is shifting. Your old rules are going to break."

"Good." Jackal’s voice rumbled like distant thunder. "They were never rules. Only suggestions dressed in certainty."

The screen kept rolling.

Another scene. Mara at the war council, firelight in her eyes, the guild masters gathered around her as the wards cracked from the inside. Her voice cold and commanding even as the magic bent to crush them all. She rose from the chaos along with them, unsinged and unbeaten.

Trickster tapped a queen carved from obsidian glass.

"Mara plays like she knows where every piece will land."

"Because she does." Jackal said. "She remembers being wrong more than anyone else."

The board shifted again.

Cheshire flickered into the screen like an afterthought, slipping through Miles’ inventory, whispering riddles only he could hear. In another frame, Cheshire padded beside Sarissa in her quiet moment of awakening.

Trickster picked up a piece shaped like a cat’s tooth and set it near the edge of the board.

"He’s not part of the game..."

"No." Jackal said. "He was never supposed to be part of it, and that’s what makes him dangerous."

"Or useful."

"Same thing."

The screen began showing echoes, not just of heroes, but of their failures.

Miles kneeling over Sarissa’s corpse in a failed turn. Cass screaming as Elise bled out. Mara in a silent room full of names she would never speak aloud.

And then, again and again, Sarissa, alone.

Waking, dying, and waking again.

Killing Miles, letting Dee die, restarting.

Again, and again.

And again.

Jackal reached across the board and moved a black pawn into the center of the board. A gentle click echoed, louder than it should have.

"You left [Regression] in her for a reason." Trickster said.

"Yes." Jackal said. "To give her the option. After all, a story must have a way out."

"But you never expected her to burn the exit."

"She didn’t burn it. She buried it, and that’s even harder." Jackal smiled faintly.

They sat in silence for a moment. The TV faded again, and the chessboard slowly shifted, some of the pieces glowing with a faint inner light. The light of new potential.

The balance of the game trembled on a knife’s edge.

Trickster leaned back, gazing at the board. Their voice turned soft, almost reverent.

"You see what this means, don’t you?"

"I do."

"She’s not just a player anymore."

"No." Jackal said, lifting one hand to rest it over his bishop. "But neither are Miles, Mara, Diego, and many others. They’re something new."

The screen flared again, not with a past, but with a future. Faint outlines of battles to come. Of the Dungeon War reshaping the world, of Shinji standing over a city of broken dreams, bones and souls, his eyes alight with dark, ancient madness.

Of Sarissa standing before him, her shadow long behind her.

Of Mara, with fire in her veins.

Of Miles, smiling, bloody, broken, and brave.

And others too. Cass, Riven, Elise, Alric, and Jake, new stories in motion, still unwritten, but moving.

The TV dimmed again, as if exhausted, and the room held its breath. Jackal moved a single white pawn forward, letting it land with a gentle click.

"It has begun."

"I see..." Trickster smiled wide, their grin sharp and curious.

They looked at the board.

Then at the dark space beyond the table. And without looking back, Trickster whispered to the void, like a storyteller closing the page.

"Let the next turn begin, then."