''Check''

In this world, you are born one of three things: King, Knight, or Pawn. Like a game of chess come to life. You can’t choose it, you can’t stop it...it just is. You can only play it, hoping you’re not thrown off the board the next second.

Everything is decided the moment you are born. Kings come from royal families, destined to rule. But it is never that simple. The moment a King acts out of character or disregards the rules, they are eliminated and reduced to a Pawn. Simple, effective, and utterly cruel.

But there is a hidden group of people. People like me. The Executors.

I have seen Kings fall because of love for someone of lower class, or simply because they showed mercy to a Pawn. And that is where I come in, to put things back how they’re supposed to be. To make the rotten system work. To reduce a King to a Pawn.

I love my job. I love seeing the desperation on their faces when they realize where it all went wrong. They say you don’t have to see the Executors to feel them. I live by that. I let them feel me lurking in the shadows.

First, the adrenaline spikes. Their breathing gets heavy. They look in all directions, wondering when or from where I’ll strike. This is phase one. Then their fight-or-flight response takes over, when people realize there are worse things than death. When it all comes down to survival.

To be a Pawn is to be a servant. But this society doesn’t accommodate servants. It doesn’t offer them food or shelter or anything they need to do their work. They die young; they kill for a piece of bread.

When Pawns crash out, it becomes entertainment for the Kings and Knights. Pawns are like wild animals in human form. Some are frightened and begging. Some are so beyond broken they don’t speak. But then there are the entertainers,the ones who rebel, who kill one another, who set themselves on fire just to end it all.

What I love most about my job is watching how people react to all this. We think we’re conscious creatures with free will. Nothing could be further from the truth. We act according to the roles assigned to us.

Kings who become Pawns immediately humble themselves. They lower their heads. They are not ashamed to be on their knees. Pawns who become Kings act like their shit doesn’t stink; they have no mercy, and they don’t care about their past, as if it never existed.

People are fascinating creatures when given power. In a world like ours, that is all that matters. Without power, you have nothing.

Everything was clear to me. Nothing managed to surprise me. I was doing my job. The others were doing theirs… until yesterday. Until the whole thing collapsed. And at the center of it all was a woman.

A simple woman, like countless others I have seen. She was a Pawn. One simple Pawn who one day stood up and started walking. She didn’t stop when the Kings she served called her. She didn’t stop when the Knights chased her. She kept walking , with a purpose no one understood.

As an Executor, I could do nothing. She was already a Pawn; I couldn’t reduce her to anything less. And I hated how, for a moment, I actually slowed down to watch her. Executors don’t get curious. We don’t get… whatever the hell that feeling was. But something about the way she moved made the world feel off by a fraction of a degree.

In a day she became a national sensation, a woman walking straight ahead without stopping. The news covered it. People tried to stop her. She somehow always outmaneuvered them without ever changing direction.

Her footsteps were soft, but somehow they echoed. Not loud, just… consistent. Like a metronome only she could hear.

Until yesterday, when she stopped at a cliff and said only one word:

“CHECK.”

Then all hell broke loose.

She touched the ground at the cliff’s edge, and with a flick of her wrist, everything changed direction. The ground was up and the sky was down.

We fell. We have been falling ever since.

Kings, Knights, and Pawns...it doesn’t matter anymore.

It was a game of chess after all. And we still don’t know the players. But the board is flipped, the game is over, and we are staring into the abyss.

We are still falling, and I fear we will never be able to play again.