“Settlement?” she called back. “Vaelor, listen to me!”
“I don’t have time. My father needs—”
“He isn’t here! This is not your home world. We’re in the Games. What you’re seeing isn’t real.”
He tried to move away so she jumped on his back.
“Close your eyes. Listen to me.”
“This is an illusion. The Galactic Survivor Games. You’re safe. I need you here.”
Vaelor opened his eyes.
“I understand. If our eyes can’t be trusted, how do we move forward?”
“I have an idea.”
“What is it?”
“My father once got lost camping in the middle of a severe storm. He said he couldn’t even see his hands in front of his face. He relied on reading the wind.”
“How do we do that?”
“Ignore all the visual illusions and follow the physical flow of the drifting snow across the ice to find the solid, real ground. I can feel the wind, but I can tell how the snow is drifting.”
“I can feel the snow.”
“Then let’s close our eyes and head in that direction.”
They took each other’s hands and began to follow the snow. It seemed to take forever, but eventually they stepped through a barrier, then the bright sun greeted them along with the Game Master’s voice.
“Welcome players, Vaelor and Mara. You have passed the first challenge.”
Chapter 12
Vaelor
After the first challenge ended, the Grand Master’s image flickered one final time across the sky before the transmission cut off. Silence followed—thick, heavy, almost unreal after the chaos of the Field of Magnetic Mirrors. One pair of players had been disqualified. The all-female team.
Mara didn’t say a word, but Vaelor felt the shift in her beside him. Relief mixed with something darker. Guilt, perhaps. Survival always came at a cost in the Games, and today it had claimed its first victims.
Once the announcement was complete, the camera drones buzzed away, their cold, unblinking lenses retreating into the sky. The small green technicians vanished with them, leaving the remaining players alone on the ice once more.
They fell into a steady rhythm as they made their way across the frozen terrain toward the next campsite, though it was slower than either of them would have preferred. The ice thinned here, giving way to packed snow and jagged stone that jutted through the surface like dark scars. Each step required thought. Balance. Effort.
The cold bit less sharply with movement, but exhaustion clung to them in a way warmth couldn’t chase off. The Field of Magnetic Mirrors had taken more than energy—it had scraped something raw inside them both. Vaelor felt it in the heaviness of his limbs, the faint pressure behind his eyes, as if his mind had not fully settled back into his body.
Mara lagged half a step behind him.
Not enough to call out, but enough that he noticed. Her breathing was measured, her steps careful, deliberate. She was pushing through something she hadn’t named out loud.
Her boot slid on a patch of half-buried ice.
She stumbled, momentum tipping her forward before she could recover. Vaelor reacted without thinking, his hand shooting out to catch her arm and steady her before she went down.
“I’ve got it,” she said quickly.
She pulled free almost at once, straightening, her jaw set. Pride flashed in her eyes—sharp, stubborn. She took a few firm steps ahead, as if distance itself could prove she didn’t need the help.
