Lahat ng Kabanata ng Tricky Game The Luna And Alpha Fell Into:Would They survive?: Kabanata 31 - Kabanata 40

Joy didn't stop running until she reach the open field where the rest of Team Sun still work through the afternoon's challenges, chest heaving, umbrella clutch so tight against her body her knuckles had gone pale.Kian spot her first, and the moment he see her face, he abandon whatever task he was working on and cross the field fast, alarm plain in his eyes. "Joy? What happen? You're shaking—""Adaeze," Joy gasp out, barely able to catch her breath. "She attack me. Behind the rocks. She had a sword, Kian, she try to cut me—""What?" Serena appear beside them fast, having heard enough of the exchange to abandon her own section of the field. "Are you hurt? Did she—""I'm fine," Joy said quick, holding up her uninjured arms to prove it. "The umbrella. It—" she hesitate, still trying to understand fully what had happen herself. "It stop her. Threw her back hard. She's hurt bad, broken arm maybe, but she was still breathing when the guards took her."Kian's jaw tighten, fury and relief mix

"You're staring at her again," Kian said.Joy startled slightly, pulled from the direction of her own gaze — across the ration line, where Adaeze sat alone, arm still bound in its splint, picking at a small tray of food with her uninjured hand."I'm not staring," Joy said. "I'm watching.""Those look the same from where I'm standing.""They're not." Joy turned back to her own tray, though her appetite had wandered off somewhere in the last hour and hadn't returned. "Staring is suspicion without purpose. Watching is trying to understand something before it becomes a problem I can't undo."Kian studied her for a moment, something softening in his expression despite the tiredness that had settled into both their faces these past weeks. "And what have you understood, watching her?"Joy considered the question honestly. "She eats alone every meal now. No one approaches her, and she doesn't try to approach anyone either. She flinches when guards walk too close. And twice today, I caught her

"A seer near the mountain," Kian repeated, once Joy had relayed everything to him and the others gathered near the shelter's edge. "That's not exactly a place we can just walk to, Joy. The mountain is where the Final Eight trials are supposed to end. We won't get anywhere near it until we've survived everything standing between here and there.""I know," Joy said. "But it means if we do reach the mountain, there's a chance — however small — that this seer might already be waiting somewhere along the way, not just at the summit.""Or it means Rosalind heard an old rumor from someone who heard it from someone else," Serena said, not unkindly, "and we're building a plan around a story that might not hold any weight at all.""Maybe," Joy admitted. "But right now, a possibility is more than I've had since this whole thing started. I'd rather chase something uncertain than sit here waiting for the Omega to try a third time."Farrah, who'd been quiet through most of the conversation, finally

The second day's climb began beneath a sky the color of dull iron, clouds gathering low and heavy over the mountain's upper slopes."Storm's coming," Priya said, studying the horizon with a practiced eye as the group shouldered their gear. "Maybe not today. But soon.""Then we move fast while the weather still allows it," Callum said, already testing the first handhold of the morning's climb.They pushed upward through the thinning air, the trail growing steeper with every hour, and twice more they found sections of path deliberately damaged the same way as the day before — clean, precise cuts disguised as natural wear. Each time, Joy felt the umbrella warm faintly against her back moments before Priya's sharp eyes or Kian's careful hands found the danger first."It's like it's warning you before we even see anything," Kian murmured, once they'd marked the second suspicious section with torn fabric."I don't fully understand how," Joy admitted. "It's never been this consistent before.

The last day's climb began before sunrise, urgency pressing the group forward faster than exhaustion wanted to allow."The trail narrows considerably past this point," Priya warned, studying the map one final time before tucking it away. "According to this, we lose the marked path entirely for the final stretch. From here, it's just the mountain.""How do we know which way to go, then?" Callum asked."We follow whatever's guided us this far," Kian said, glancing meaningfully at Joy.She understood immediately, one hand drifting instinctively to the umbrella strapped across her back, its familiar warmth already stirring faint beneath her palm as though it, too, understood the day ahead mattered more than any before it.They climbed in near silence through the morning, the air growing thinner with every hour, breath coming harder, muscles burning with an exhaustion that had settled bone-deep after three full days of ascent. Twice more Joy felt the umbrella warm sharply against her back,