The audience was silent in excitement of what unexpected twist comes next.
The timer reset 60 seconds for the third round.
Albert Newton leaned back. Brim hat shadowed half of his eyes. The faint reflection of the table lights gleamed across his iris.
A dull, steel-gray light that mirrored composure but hid calculation aside. His fingers were loose and relaxed. Drummed against the polished wood as if thinking to the rhythm of an invisible metronome.
Across him, Varn Okra leaned forward. Letting elbow on the table, chin balanced between his fingers. His sly, foxlike grin was gone.
In its place was a sharpened smirk. Now he was gambler who'd seen through the trick, yet wasn't sure how to respond without losing more. His thoughts were malfunctioning.
He didn't play the previous round. He baited me into burning Rage. That means his "neutral" play isn't just luck. It's part of his math.
Varn's tongue brushed his teeth. He's using the system's own structure. Each round, both cards contribute to the emotional pool. If he can maintain neutrality longer than I can stay truthful, he drains me without acting.
The logic stung. Albert wasn't just playing the game. He was turning inaction into action.
And worst of all, it worked.
Varn wasn't a fool. His father had gambled his life away; his family was torn down by rules, debts and the mockery of control. If Albert thought he was the only one who could manipulate systems, he hadn't met Varn Okra's true nature.
So, you want me to lie, detective? he thought eyes his narrowing. Then maybe I'll make the lie eat you instead.
If Albert's trick was peace, Varn would give him too much noise to process it.
Meanwhile, Harriet, seated a few rows back in the dim hall, crossed his arms. The candlelight cast hard shadows over his face. He wasn't amused anymore. His gaze pierced straight through Albert.
Harriet whispered under his breath, "That bastard is playing the long game.… Varn doesn't even realize he's inside Albert's box. Every move Varn makes is already calculated five steps back."
He shook his head. "But Albert's burning himself too. He's pretending he doesn't care but one wrong guess and his entire bluff might collapse."
He knew how Albert's brain worked. A queer madness disguised as control. That detective mind could disassemble a human being with logic alone.
What Harriet feared wasn't Albert's intelligence. It was that Albert's game was built on fragility. One miscalculation, one slip of overconfidence and the whole illusion would fall apart.
Harriet muttered, "That trap.... it's literally unavoidable and suicidal. If Varn plays it backward. Albert's checkmate collapses into his own trap."
"Round three preparation time, thirty seconds."
Albert adjusted his cuff slowly, eyes still closed. His mind wasn't running through emotions.
It was mapping Varn's breathing patterns, remembering when his gaze shifted, when his smirk appeared, when the sweat gathered near his temple. All that noise told him truth.
You want me to play? Albert thought. Then you'll have to show me why I should.
He wasn't trying to win by emotion anymore. He was trying to erase it from the equation.
Varn, meanwhile, smiled with restrained madness. Fine, detective. Let's see who can outthink the system. You're betting on absence. I'll bet on distortion.
Varn's hand hovered over his cards. Albert's hand didn't move. Both minds spinning in paradoxes of possibilities.
Twenty three seconds left the air folded into silence. The patience among audiences that didn't belong to this world it. The room itself had stopped breathing only the clock dared to move. Every second fell like a heartbeat inside a coffin and Varn Okra was the one holding the nails in his grin.
He looked at Albert across the table. Lightly half closed eyes like a man who'd already died once and found it amusing to return.
He didn't blink he didn't speak he just smiled. That small curved twitch that tore through the quiet like a scalpel made of thought and madness.
Albert's hand hovered above the cards. The brim of his hat shadowing everything but the stillness in his jaw.
Varn leaned forward slowly his voice thin like glass scraping on glass
"Tell me detective what does control feel like when it starts to slip through your fingers"
Albert said nothing but his pulse trembled just once and that was all Varn needed
Varn whispered again softer almost kindly
"You thought not playing is safety? Foolishness. Thinking to not choosing means you've already won thus but that's still a choice, isn't it? And you made it long before the match began so I'll just take it from you."
The lights around the ring flickered just slightly. The system responding to his words as if reality bent with the cadence of his intent. He was altering something not through code or power but through belief. Through the manipulation of perception itself the crowd didn't notice the shift. Albert did saw the edges of the room. Which seemed to melt until every shadow mirrored Varn's face.
Varn reached out his hand slow and deliberately. The card between his fingers trembling not from fear but anticipation the timer dropped to seventeen seconds and his tone broke into something divine.
"You built a system of logic detective but I shall build the ruin of it, place where the rules choke themselves."
The card hit the table Varn's voice rose in tempo like a preacher at a burning altar.
"I feel greed because I want to see what breaks you. I want to see if your silence can scream out when I take the ground from under it."
The card glowed green then flared into gold light flooding. The room for a breath before dimming again. Greed had answered truthfully.
Albert's mind swam the voices in his head weren't words they were echoes of Varn's rhythm repeating without end the manipulation was emotional but it wasn't about emotion it was about forcing emotion into contradiction
He felt something crawling behind his eyes like static thought leaking from the edge of sanity every breath shorter than the last
Varn tilted his head whispering,
"Your turn detective or are you too pure for rage."
Ten seconds left....
Albert's mind tried to anchor but the ground beneath thought was gone
He placed his card on the table. His movements acting mechanical. His voice seemed a whisper that barely existed.
"I feel rage....?"
Varn smiled slow like sunrise over ruins,
"Then let's see what your truth costs you."
They revealed together Varn's Greed shone like molten metal Albert's Rage erupted in red fire and burned into dust
The crowd gasped but all Albert could hear was the sound of something breaking inside his skull.
He could no longer tell if it was the game or himself.
Varn leaned close his whisper threading through the ash between them,
"You wanted a bait, now you will drown in the ocean you made."
Albert's Rage card burned.
The flame did not rise like fire. It fell. It folded inward.
A quiet implosion of colour and light. The air trembled for one second, and then there was nothing. Only the faint smell of scorched emotion.
Varn smiled. His Greed card glowed on the table. His eyes found Albert's and they did not blink. "You call it Rage." he said softly. "But it's only proof that you still expect the world to listen."
Albert didn't respond. His jaw was tight. His eyes still. But inside, the noise was unbearable. Every word Varn spoke seemed to carve lines into his thoughts. Nietzsche would have smiled at such cruelty. Varn wasn't mocking him. He was dissecting him. Ripping his spirit out inch by inch.
The Announcer's voice came like a distant trumpet through fog.
"Round Four begins. This could be the last round if Albert wins."
Both had three cards left. Both had too much to lose.
The room held its breath.
Varn leaned back. His hand hovered above his remaining cards. He was thinking, no longer smiling. He had seen what happened when the detective's wisdom turned person.
Albert's stillness wasn't calm. It was the pause before something divine decided what to destroy.
Albert studied Varn from every directions possible. The air between them was thick with unspoken thought. Their eyes were locked with suspenee but both saw something beyond. The shape of each other's next move. The rhythm of the match was no longer in the rules. It was in the silence.
They both knew each other's current emotions but that was not it. The person with more resonance gets the point.
Varn placed his card. His fingers were steady, movements slow and deliberate. "Joy," he whispered. "That is what I feel. The joy of having things in control. The joy of watching truth shatter and myself march onwards." His words rang hollow. Like laughter after death.
Albert's hand dropped his card without looking. He closed his eyes. "Fear." he said. " Because, I just remembered the unknown, the unknown that has neither any end or solution, is what I fear."
The cards waited in the space between them. Both players breathed once. Then again. The lights dimmed as if the world leaned closer to see.
Varn's Joy began to pulse faintly. Albert's Fear did not glow but it didn't burn either. It stayed still. A void in colour.
The Announcer's voice broke through. "Reveal confirmed."
Both cards ignited but not in the same way. Varn's Joy flickered bright for one instant, then cracked and fell apart like broken glass. Albert's Fear pulsed once, then began to glow.
The table shook. The symbols burned into the floor.
Varn's chair slid backward. His eyes widened not in horror but in awe. "You turned fear into strength." he whispered. "You made your weakness your weapon."
Albert said nothing. His hand was trembling from something harder to name. The glow around his card faded slowly.
The Announcer stood, voice trembling but loud.
"Albert Newton has won three rounds out of five. The match is over."
The hall erupted in silence. It wasn't applause. It was disbelief.
Varn stared at his burned cards. Three piles of ash. Two still glowing. His Greed and his Trust. But something in his eyes dulled, like colour being drained away. His hand moved to his chest as if feeling for something missing.
The Announcer spoke again, voice lower now,
"By the rules of the Wager, Varn Okra loses one emotion for eternity. His emotion of Sorrow has been erased."
Varn laughed. The sound was beautiful and broken.
"Sorrow?" he said. "What a relief. I've always hated funerals."
The audience didn't laugh. No one did.
He looked at Albert and gave a small bow. "That was good. You didn't defeat me with truth. You defeated me with lies. I can respect that."
Albert nodded. "Then don't lose the rest of yourself chasing what's gone."
Varn smiled again. A hollow smile. "Don't worry. I couldn't feel sad even if I wanted to."
He turned and walked away from the table. The light above flickered once, then steadied.
Albert sat back. The game was done. But the feeling of it wasn't. He still heard the recounds of Varn's laughter. And for the first time since the match began, he felt cold.
He still needed one more win to reach the quarterfinals.
But for now, victory didn't feel like winning. It felt like surviving.