Opening
The first stage of the Grandest Game ends with a sword—and a showdown. As teams splinter into sealed chambers, rivalries, secrets, and old wounds press in as tightly as the metal walls. What follows is a gauntlet of riddles that exposes motives, tests alliances, and turns every player into both solver and solution.
What Happens
Chapter 36: sword
Rohan and Savannah Grayson crack the final anagram: sword. Even as he says the word, Rohan studies Savannah, prodding at her boundaries with calculated endearments—“love,” “Savvy”—designed to feign intimacy. The wall slides open, revealing the prize. In a burst of athletic showmanship, he skims across the dining table and snatches the blade a heartbeat before she reaches it.
A trapdoor yawns elsewhere in the room. Savannah steps into Rohan’s space and dissects his performance with surgical precision: the body angle, the nicknames, the claim to “see” her. She rejects it all—and him. Then she catches what he missed: an inscription on the sword, “From every trap be free, For every lock a key.” Before she descends, Savannah promises this is the last time he will beat her, dismisses the power of names to define her, and leaves him with a vow that lands like a blade point-down: “I promise you: I want it more.” The confrontation, a flare of Competition and Ambition, jolts a dark, drowning memory in Rohan—proof that his poise hides something broken.
Chapter 37: Three paths diverge
Lyra Catalina Kane, Grayson Hawthorne, and Odette Morales descend a hidden staircase into a cylindrical metal chamber. Grayson offers his hand; Lyra wants to take it but refuses. The door seals. Lights flare. The next stage literally hides in plain sight, underscoring Secrets and Hidden Truths.
A curved monitor and a transparent retro phone hum to life. A verse appears: “Three paths diverge.” The game splits their journeys and teases three emblems—“A crown, a scepter, an empty throne”—that echo Family and Legacy, power, and inheritance. “Make the call,” the screen instructs. Metal grinds. The chamber shifts, readying them for whatever their path demands.
Chapter 38: I COME BEFORE FALL
Gigi Grayson, Brady Daniels, and Knox Landry enter their own chamber, cramped tighter by a red London phone booth. The air between Brady and Knox feels weaponized—a living example of The Influence of the Past. Their wall flashes a riddle: “I COME BEFORE FALL / AFTER THE CENTER... WHAT AM I?”
Words spark sparks. Talk of “lily” and “rose” detours into a shared wound: Calla. “So you do remember,” Brady says, a line that turns subtext into shrapnel. Gigi feels the shockwave but walls off the drama. She wants to win so she can fly again. She focuses on letters and structure, scrubbing out everything except the riddle’s shape.
Chapter 39: 88 LOCKS
Rohan and Savannah step into a chamber with a rotary phone and a wall that thinks in riddles. Rohan catalogues everything—leverage, tells, the shifting maze of his own mind—and keeps circling Savannah herself. Why does an heiress need to win this badly? He notes that all teams saw “three paths” and that their challenges have now diverged, the earlier “crown, scepter, empty throne” clue still threading through.
Their verse appears: “88 LOCKS / WAIT, THAT’S NOT RIGHT / AT LEAST THE ANSWER IS BLACK AND WHITE.” Savannah parses syntax; Rohan splits his focus between the wall and the woman he wants to solve. He smiles like a wolf and says he’s concentrating on the riddle. Inwardly, he reframes the game: You are the riddle, Savannah Grayson. The move reveals his appetite for control and his talent for Games, Puzzles, and Strategy.
Chapter 40: MAKE A WISH
Lyra, Grayson, and Odette face: “YOU MIGHT FIND ME IN A CAVE... DON’T SAY A WORD / BUT MAKE A WISH.” Grayson admits he often lost his grandfather’s games—an unexpected crack in an otherwise flawless surface—and Lyra hears Rohan’s critique of the Hawthornes echo. The riddle jolts her father’s final words: “What begins a bet?”, a private puzzle that still steers her life.
Grayson notices Lyra drifting and anchors her attention. She sets down the sword; he picks it up with easy mastery and reads the inscription: “From every trap be free, For every lock a key.” Lyra’s frustration with endless riddles spikes. Grayson, eyes on her, says, “I’m rather starting to like them.” He means the puzzles—and Lyra—folding the game into Romance and Complicated Relationships.
Character Development
Competition sharpens edges; confinement strips away polish. These chapters squeeze the cast until truth leaks out.
- Rohan: Polished manipulation meets a fracture line. His charm is calculated, his curiosity predatory, yet the drowning flashback hints at trauma that could unmake his control.
- Savannah Grayson: Refuses objectification, names, and false intimacy. She seizes narrative power, reads what others miss, and declares a relentless will to win.
- Lyra Catalina Kane: The public game and her private riddle tangle. She resists help even as she wants it, defining herself against desire and legacy.
- Grayson Hawthorne: Vulnerability surfaces—he loses, admits it, and redirects his competitive focus toward understanding Lyra as much as the game.
- Gigi Grayson: Cheer tilts into steel. She quarantines team drama to chase a personal goal: flight, freedom, victory.
- Brady Daniels and Knox Landry: A single name—Calla—reopens an old wound. Their rivalry acquires shape and source, transforming sniping into tragic history.
- Odette Morales: Observant and steady, she clocks the interpersonal calculus while keeping to the task.
Themes & Symbols
Riddles as mirrors: Every puzzle reflects the player. Solving “sword” moves the plot; who grabs it, who reads its inscription, and who misses it reveals character. Once the game branches, each chamber becomes a crucible where intellect, pride, and pain combust. The hidden rooms literalize secrecy, the phone commands confession, and each riddle drags buried motives into light.
Power and inheritance—“a crown, a scepter, an empty throne”—reframe the Grandest Game as more than spectacle. The prize isn’t only money; it’s story, status, and who gets to define both. Confinement amplifies conflict: with nowhere to run, teams must reckon with the past, each other, and themselves. The sword’s inscription—promise and permission—becomes the game’s thesis: traps exist, keys exist, and there is always a way through.
Key Quotes
“From every trap be free, For every lock a key.”
- The blade speaks the game’s ethos: puzzles have solutions, prisons have exits. Savannah sees it; Rohan doesn’t. That gap defines their duel—she reads beneath the surface, he plays the room.
“I promise you: I want it more.”
- Savannah reframes victory as desire, not destiny. It isn’t talent or lineage that wins here; it’s hunger—and hers burns hotter.
“Three paths diverge... A crown, a scepter, an empty throne... Make the call.”
- The game fractures. The imagery invokes dynastic power, shoving family politics and inheritance into the foreground. The phone turns knowledge into action: answers matter only when you risk them.
“I COME BEFORE FALL / AFTER THE CENTER... WHAT AM I?”
- A classic word puzzle that doubles as character excavator. For Gigi’s team, the solve is secondary to the way the riddle detonates history—Calla—between Brady and Knox.
“88 LOCKS / WAIT, THAT’S NOT RIGHT / AT LEAST THE ANSWER IS BLACK AND WHITE.”
- Visual pun and logic tease that also maps Rohan’s worldview: binary veneers masking messy gray. He treats the verse—and Savannah—the same way: as patterns to control.
“YOU MIGHT FIND ME IN A CAVE... DON’T SAY A WORD / BUT MAKE A WISH.”
- Silence meets longing. The riddle pulls Lyra toward her father’s last words, fusing public play with private obsession and tilting her closer to Grayson.
A riddle
A puzzle
A Hawthorne game
Once more with feeling:
They’re all the same
- Meta-commentary on structure. Different rooms, same crucible: tests that don’t just measure intellect—they reveal identity.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters pivot the Grandest Game from a shared sprint to a branching gauntlet. The split chambers force intimacy and expose fault lines: Rohan vs. Savannah’s duel of will and perception, Lyra and Grayson’s charged alignment of minds and hearts, Brady and Knox’s past combusting in the present. “A crown, a scepter, an empty throne” broadens the stakes from cash to power and legacy, while the sword’s inscription reframes the narrative promise: every trap hides a key. The game isn’t just about finding answers—it’s about who you become when you dare to make the call.