Ashe’s mind still swam with questions and half-formed memories, uncertainty about what came next pulling at him. He felt like he was riding a bicycle downhill without brakes, unable to stop.

  Rasmus’s voice cut through his spiralling thoughts. “It’s your turn. Are you sleeping again?”

  His tone was more jovial than annoyed; Ashe wasn’t even sure Rasmus could get annoyed. He shook his head, trying to rebuild the board from memory. “Rook to E5.”

  An audible sigh came from the other end. “Mate, both your rooks are dead.”

  Ashe didn’t remember that, but if Rasmus said so, it was probably true. He could’ve sworn—

  He grabbed his mouse and hovered over each piece, building a clearer picture of the board. Sure enough, he was about to lose; four pawns, his queen, and a knight. It was all he had left.

  “I surrender.”

  “Another one?” Rasmus asked.

  Ashe shrugged out of habit. “Sure. Why not.”

  All he really wanted was to relax, listen to the news, and get ready for the next jump, but he’d been neglecting his friendships. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t let the few he had left rot.

  It was Rasmus’s turn to be white, so while he started the game Ashe opened a new browser tab and put on the newest WarFronts episode.

  The familiar voice rang out in his headset. “Your move.”

  “Yeah, I’m thinking,” Ashe muttered, a little annoyed at being rushed after all the times Rasmus had been late.

  “Thinking about the opening really is the hardest part, huh?”

  Ashe didn’t respond. He just played his usual line, a standard queenside opening.

  Between his moves, Rasmus’s stray comments, and WarFronts murmuring in the background, his mind finally felt occupied. For the first time all day, his thoughts actually rested.

  It didn’t last.

  His panic spiked and he nearly slipped from his chair as the host of WarFronts said,

  “Project DragonSpire has been expanded to an additional one hundred teams. Of those teams, only thirty-six completed their assigned D-rank portal, twenty-four teams were wiped out, and the remaining forty escaped.”

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  Ashe swallowed. He had been one of those teams.

  He pictured the bodies, the families left waiting at home. If each team had four members, that meant more than five hundred people dead out of four thousand. He rubbed at his temple, trying to wrap his head around it.

  Yet beneath the nausea and horror, a tiny spark of pride stirred. They’d just talked about him—not by name, just one success buried in a lump of numbers, but still his. He’d helped pull the average up instead of dragging it down.

  Ashe was hovering his queen when he heard the familiar ping of his turn. His mind was still half on death counts and news anchors, and without really thinking he nudged the queen forward. The click of the move registering sounded distant. The game had drifted to the edges of his attention.

  Rasmus spoke after a beat, clearly surprised. “You good, mate? I know you’re not exactly in great shape right now, but hanging your queen on the sixth move is slightly faster than normal.”

  The comment only tugged part of Ashe’s brain back into the room. “Yeah, slightly distracted. Did you hear about WarFronts?”

  “You know I try to stay clear of depressing places and news channels,” Rasmus said. “I like listening to things that won’t make me want to jump off a bridge, you know?”

  That… actually sounded kind of healthy. Maybe Ashe needed to learn how to turn his mind away from portals sometimes. Now that he was a Jumper, he dealt with enough death and destruction during the day. Obsessing over it at home too might be too much. Even for him. But he wasn’t quite ready to let it go yet.

  “But so many people died,” Ashe said. “How do you just…block that out?”

  “Easy,” Rasmus replied. “I don’t click on anything with a title that sounds depressing, and I can’t exactly see the news anyway. It’s actually quite simple.”

  “But don’t you get curious?”

  Rasmus laughed. “Curious about death? That’s like you getting curious about the physics behind proton decay.”

  “So not really. Thanks, that was super helpful,” Ashe said sarcastically.

  “Anytime. I’m a fountain of emotional wisdom,” Rasmus shot back.

  Ashe huffed a small laugh. Maybe his mind was just wired to be interested in it whether he wanted to be or not.

  He reluctantly moved his mouse and closed the WarFronts tab. The sudden silence weighed on him more than the knowledge of those dead. For a moment he sat there, debating whether to turn it back on, when Rasmus’s voice yanked his thoughts back to the chess board.

  “Alright, will you focus now?”

  He nodded slowly at first, then faster as a weight seemed to lift. “Yes sir.”

  They played for hours. They laughed, joked, talked about absolutely nothing.

  It was weird. Not long ago this had been his whole life, just him and Rasmus. Stupid games and just as pointless arguments, and all he’d thought about were the portals. Now he realised how much he missed this—the simpler stretch of his life where death wasn’t a daily line item.

  He heard Rasmus’s mum in the background. “Dinner!”

  “I gotta go,” Rasmus said quickly. He was never one to turn down food.

  “Alright. Good night.” Ashe closed Discord and pulled off his headset.

  Only then did he notice the change in the room. The warmth had cooled to what he imagined blue might feel like. The smell of dinner drifted up the stairs, and he realised he’d been so distracted the world had shifted around him—not because of a portal, but because he’d actually had fun.

  A smile slid across his face. He headed downstairs. He needed to remember this part too: to calm down, to take a break once in a while. Tonight had been exactly what he needed.