2026-11-01 05:48:13
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Chapter 11: The Voice of the Throne
Cole’s POVDex didn’t cut to a commercial after the invitation. He let it hang on the screen for three long seconds, smiling into the lens, and then he did something he had never done on his show: he pushed up his right sleeve and turned his wrist toward the camera.The lion tattoo was smaller than I remembered, its gold ink faded almost to brown.“People ask me about this every week,” he said, “so here’s the story. Two of us were supposed to get matching ones after our third title. My buddy booked the shop, picked the design, paid the deposit… and then he never showed up.” He laughed, soft and easy, and somebody on his crew laughed with him off-screen. “The man faced fifty thousand people without blinking, and he was scared of a needle.”I looked down at my own right wrist, pale and bare under the cuff of my hoodie.I hadn’t been scared of the needle. The appointment had been for the Tuesday after the third final, at a little shop on Pier Street, and by that Tuesday I was in a motel
Chapter 10: The Agent at the Door
At 8:50 a.m. on Monday, I sat at a small table in the coffee shop on the ground floor of the Lockwood Holdings tower, a cheap cup of tea in front of me and one earbud in my right ear.Thirty floors above me, the Lockwood family was gathering in the boardroom to sell my wife’s team for one dollar.“Can you hear me?” Maggie’s voice came through the earbud, low and quick.“Clear.”“Good. My phone’s in my jacket pocket. Don’t talk unless you have to. I’m getting in the elevator.”“Maggie.”“What?”“Thank you.”“Thank me when we’re out,” she said. “Hang on, kid.”My eyes still hurt from last night. When I woke up that morning, the world had been gray for almost an hour before it slowly came back, and I’d sat on the edge of my bed with my hands over my face, waiting. I’d been lucky. I knew that luck wouldn’t last forever.Through the earbud, I heard the elevator ding, footsteps on carpet, a door.Then voices.“…and on page four, the transfer of all league rights.” That was Spencer’s lawyer,
Chapter 9: Long Live the King
At 8:58 p.m. on Sunday, the back room at Respawn was so quiet I could hear Maggie’s heart pounding beside me.Or maybe it was mine.“Two million,” she whispered, staring at the viewer count on her laptop. “Two million people, Cole. That’s more than some Pro League finals.”“Don’t tell me numbers.”“Sorry.”I pulled the black visor over my head and put the headset on over it. The small camera in the corner blinked red. On the stream, my window showed only dark glass, and Reaper_0’s window beside it showed nothing at all, a black square with his name in white letters. No face, no voice, no camera.Somewhere across the city, I knew, the whole Lockwood family was sitting in front of the giant TV in the mansion, because Tyler had made them. He’d texted the family group chat three times since dinner. Final at 9!!! LastLight vs Reaper!!! History!!!Brandon had answered with a picture of his PeakBet ticket. Twenty thousand dollars on Reaper_0.Three minutes earlier, a private message had popp
Chapter 8: The Ghost in the Bracket
“You did what?” Maggie stared at me across the back room. “You told Blaze Vitale you’ll take off your mask if you lose?”“I won’t lose.”“Cole, three million people heard you say that!”“Then three million people will watch him lose.” I sat down in the chair and pulled on the headset. “When does it start?”“Quarterfinal first, against some American kid. Then Blaze in the semifinal, best of five. Then the final tonight at nine.” She threw up her hands. “You’re going to give me a heart attack.”“You’ve been saying that for eleven years.”“And one day it’ll be true.”The quarterfinal was quick. The American kid was good, but nervous, and I beat him 3-1 before two o’clock. I closed my eyes for ten minutes and put my drops in.My phone buzzed. It was Dr. Morgan.How are the eyes?Fine, I typed.Liar, she wrote back. Ten minutes every hour. And if the center goes dark, you STOP.I put the phone face down, and then it was time.Blaze came on camera first. The tournament put his face in a sma
Chapter 7: Coffee for the Enemy
On Sunday morning, the sun came up warm over Bayview Hills, and the Lockwoods held brunch on the patio as if nobody’s life was about to be sold for a dollar.I carried out the coffee at ten. My eyes felt like someone had rubbed sand in them, and I’d slept for three hours, but nobody at that table cared how I slept.“There he is,” Brandon called, waving his phone. “The runaway. Where’d you go last night, Cole? Did you finally find a job?”“I was with a friend.”“You don’t have friends,” Vivian said, feeding a piece of bacon to the little white dog in her lap. “You have a phone and a candy game.”Howard sat at the head of the table in a gray suit, even on a Sunday, reading the business pages. Sienna sat beside him with her laptop open, answering emails, her ponytail tight, her face pale. She hadn’t said a word to me since our talk in her office.At ten-thirty, a long silver sports car rolled up the driveway, and Spencer Dalton stepped out in a cream suit and his bright white sneakers, f
Chapter 6: Playing in the Dark
By nine o’clock on Saturday night, the King’s Gauntlet had shrunk from five hundred and twelve players to sixty-four, and LastLight was still in it.“Round of sixty-four,” Maggie said, leaning over my shoulder in the back room. “A Brazilian kid, number nine on the South American ladder. Fast hands, bad temper.”“I’ve seen him play.”“When?”“An hour ago, while you were ordering pizza.” I rubbed my eyes. “He gets angry when he’s losing. Make him lose early.”She laughed. “You haven’t changed at all.”But I had. I’d been staring at a screen for most of the day, and Respawn’s back room had only one dim lamp, because bright light made the pain worse. Every hour, I closed my eyes for ten minutes like Dr. Morgan said; every hour, when I opened them, the world was a little darker at the edges.The Brazilian kid lasted twelve minutes. The next player, a German, lasted fourteen. By eleven o’clock, there were sixteen players left, and I was one of them.The last round of the night would decide
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