"Do you py chess?" Marcus asked, studying the miniature board that had emerged from the box.

  Elias made a so-so gesture with his hand. "I know how the pieces move. Beat my dad a couple times when I was a kid. You?"

  "I used to py online sometimes," Marcus said. He leaned closer to examine the board. "This isn't a standard setup though."

  The tiny chess pieces were arranged in what was clearly a mid-game position. The white pieces—glowing with that faint inner light—were outnumbered by the bck ones. At first gnce, it looked like white was in serious trouble.

  "So what do we do?" Elias asked. "Py the game out from this position?"

  Marcus nodded slowly. "I think so. But..." He studied the board more carefully. "This feels like one of those chess puzzles. You know, 'White to move and win in three turns' or something like that."

  "Can you solve it?" Elias's faith in him was apparent.

  Marcus felt a flutter of nervousness. "I can try. Chess puzzles are usually about finding the one perfect sequence of moves."

  He studied the board more carefully, mentally cataloging the positions. White had a king, a queen, a knight, and three pawns. Bck had a king, both rooks, a bishop, and five pawns. The white king was in a vulnerable position, with one of the bck rooks putting it in check.

  "White is in check," Marcus murmured. "So the first move has to address that."

  He tentatively reached for the white king, wondering if the pieces would move like normal chess pieces or if there was some magical mechanism. When his fingers touched the king, it felt warm, almost alive. He carefully moved it one square to the right, out of the bck rook's line of attack.

  The piece moved smoothly, and when he let go, it settled into its new position with a soft click. Immediately, without any visible intervention, one of the bck pieces—the bishop—moved diagonally, putting the white king in check again.

  "It's pying itself," Elias whispered, watching with wide eyes.

  Marcus nodded, his focus entirely on the game now. He studied the new position, seeing several possible moves but unsure which was the correct one for the puzzle. After careful consideration, he moved the white queen to block the bishop's attack.

  Again, as soon as he completed his move, a bck piece moved automatically—this time, the second rook slid across the board to attack the queen.

  "Damn," Marcus muttered. "I don't think that was right."

  "What happens if we lose?" Elias asked, a note of worry in his voice.

  "Let's not find out," Marcus replied, biting his lower lip in concentration. "Let me try again."

  The pieces had reset to their original positions as soon as the bck rook had moved. It was as if the puzzle was giving him another chance.

  This time, Marcus studied the board even more carefully, trying to see beyond the obvious moves. Chess puzzles often required counterintuitive thinking.

  "Wait a minute," he said, noticing something. "Look at the white knight's position."

  Elias leaned in closer. "What about it?"

  "If I move it here," Marcus pointed to a square, "it puts the bck king in check. Bck would have to address that, which might give us some breathing room."

  "Try it," Elias encouraged.

  Marcus moved the white knight to the position he'd indicated. Sure enough, it pced the bck king in check. The bck pieces automatically responded by moving the king one square to the left, out of danger.

  "Now what?" Elias asked.

  Marcus examined the new configuration. With the bck king moved, a new possibility had opened up. "Now the queen can move here," he said, sliding the white queen diagonally across the board. "That's check again."

  The bck pieces responded by moving a pawn to block the queen's attack.

  "And now," Marcus said, growing more confident, "the knight can move here." He repositioned the white knight. "Checkmate!"

  The bck king was cornered, with the white queen and knight creating an inescapable trap. All possible escape squares were covered, and no bck piece could block or capture the attacking pieces.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then the bck king tipped over on its own, acknowledging defeat. As it fell, all the chess pieces began to glow with an increasing intensity.

  "You did it!" Elias excimed, his face lit by the radiant chess pieces.

  The entire chess board suddenly liquefied, the pieces melting into the board surface, which itself seemed to be transforming into a pool of luminescent liquid. The light grew brighter, and then, just as suddenly, it dimmed. The liquid solidified, leaving behind not a chess board, but what appeared to be a circur maze with a mirrored surface.

  "The sixth yer," Marcus breathed, relief and excitement mingling in his voice.

  Elias cpped him on the shoulder, his touch lingering. "That was amazing. I didn't even see that solution."

  Marcus felt his face warm at the praise. "It's just pattern recognition. Once you see enough chess puzzles, you start to recognize the structures."

  "Don't downpy it," Elias insisted. "You're brilliant."

  Their eyes met for a moment, and something in Elias's gaze made Marcus's heart skip. There was admiration there, certainly, but something else too—something warmer, more intense. Before Marcus could decipher it, Elias had already turned his attention to the new puzzle.

  "So, a mirror maze," he said, studying the sixth yer. "This looks tricky."

  The circur maze was made of what appeared to be tiny mirrored walls, creating a complex byrinth in miniature. In the very center was a small crystal sphere that glowed with a pale blue light. Around the edge of the circle were seven small indentations.

  "We probably need to get that crystal into one of these indentations," Marcus suggested, indicating the depressions around the edge.

  "Or all of them," Elias added. "Seven indentations, seven yers. Might need to visit each one."

  Marcus nodded. "But how do we move the crystal? There's no way to reach into the maze."

  They both studied the puzzle in silence for a moment. Then Elias snapped his fingers.

  "It's a mirror maze! We need to use light." He jumped up and went to Marcus's desk, grabbing his phone. "Can I use your fshlight?"

  "Sure," Marcus said, still examining the maze.

  Elias turned on his phone's fshlight and aimed it at the maze. The effect was immediate and startling. The beam of light bounced off the mirrored walls, creating a complex network of reflected light throughout the byrinth.

  "That's cool," Marcus admitted, watching the dance of light. "But how does it help us move the crystal?"

  Elias experimented, changing the angle of the light. As he did, the crystal in the center of the maze seemed to respond, moving slightly toward the most concentrated path of light.

  "It's photosensitive," Elias realized. "The crystal follows the strongest light path."

  "So we need to create a path of light that leads the crystal out of the center and to each of the seven indentations," Marcus said, understanding dawning.

  "Exactly. But the light keeps scattering." Elias frowned, trying different angles without much success. "We need to be more precise."

  Marcus thought for a moment. "My dad has a ser pointer in his office. Would that work better?"

  "Definitely," Elias agreed. "Much more focused beam."

  Marcus hurried downstairs to his father's home office, returning moments ter with a small red ser pointer. "Let's try this."

  He aimed the narrow beam at the maze, and the effect was dramatically different from the phone fshlight. The ser created a single, precise line of light that reflected off the mirrored walls at exact angles.

  "Perfect," Elias said. "Now we need to figure out the right sequence of reflections to guide the crystal to each indentation."

  It quickly became apparent that the puzzle was even more complex than they'd initially thought. The crystal would only follow a path created by exactly seven reflections—no more, no less. And the angles had to be precisely calcuted to ensure the light reached the crystal with sufficient intensity after all those reflections.

  "This is like billiards, but with light," Marcus muttered, adjusting the ser for what felt like the hundredth time.

  They took turns with the ser pointer, each attempting different angles and entry points around the circur maze. After nearly an hour of trial and error, they had managed to guide the crystal to four of the seven indentations.

  "My hand is cramping," Elias compined, shaking out his fingers after his test attempt had failed. "And my eyes are starting to hurt from staring at reflections."

  "Let's take a quick break," Marcus suggested, setting down the ser pointer. "Mom said dinner would be at seven, and it's..." He checked his phone. "Wow, it's already six-forty-five."

  "Time flies when you're bending light to your will," Elias quipped, stretching his arms overhead. "Do you think we'll finish this yer tonight?"

  "If we don't, we can always continue tomorrow," Marcus pointed out. "It's not like the box is going anywhere."

  Elias nodded, but there was a restlessness to him that Marcus recognized. Once Elias became fixated on a puzzle or problem, he hated leaving it unsolved.

  They headed downstairs for dinner, where Marcus's mother had prepared sagna. The conversation was light, with Mrs. Reyes asking about their day at school and Elias charming her with stories about their calculus teacher's notorious sweater collection.

  "So what's this project you boys are working on?" she asked as they were finishing their meal.

  Marcus and Elias exchanged a quick gnce. "Just a puzzle," Marcus said vaguely.

  "A really complex one," Elias added. "With multiple yers."

  Mrs. Reyes smiled knowingly. "Well, if anyone can solve it, it's you two. Just don't stay up all night again, okay? It's still a school night."

  "We won't," Marcus promised, even as Elias made a crossing motion over his heart.

  Back in Marcus's room, they returned to the mirror maze with renewed determination. Elias picked up the ser pointer, aiming it carefully at the maze.

  "I've been thinking," he said, his eye to the ser. "What if we're overthinking this? The previous puzzles all had connections to each other."

  Marcus considered this. "The first puzzle was the map with seven ndmarks. The second used those ndmarks as part of a celestial cipher. The third was a byrinth that used the same sequence..."

  "And the fourth gave us the key pattern, which unlocked the fifth," Elias continued. "So this one should connect to the chess puzzle somehow."

  They both looked at the mirror maze thoughtfully.

  "Chess is all about angles and positions," Marcus said slowly. "About seeing several moves ahead and calcuting the consequences of each move."

  "Just like plotting the reflections in this maze," Elias nodded. "But is there something more specific?"

  Marcus suddenly remembered something. "In the chess puzzle, what were the pieces we used to checkmate the bck king?"

  "The queen and knight," Elias recalled.

  "And in chess, how does the knight move?"

  Elias's eyes widened. "In an L-shape! It's the only piece that moves that way."

  "So what if..." Marcus took the ser pointer from Elias and aimed it at the maze from a specific angle. "What if each reflection needs to create an L-pattern, just like a knight's move?"

  He directed the beam to hit a mirror wall, creating a reflection that indeed formed an L-shape pattern as it bounced to the next wall. From there, he carefully calcuted the next reflection to create another L-shape.

  The beam danced through the maze, each reflection forming a distinct L-pattern. After the seventh reflection, the light hit the crystal sphere in the center, which began to glow brightly. It moved slowly but surely along the path of light until it reached one of the indentations they hadn't yet filled.

  "It worked!" Elias excimed.

  Encouraged, they continued using the knight's movement pattern as their guide. With this insight, the remaining indentations were filled much more quickly. As the crystal settled into the seventh and final indentation, the entire maze lit up with a brilliant blue glow.

  The mirrored walls seemed to vibrate, then shattered into countless tiny fragments that rose into the air and reassembled themselves above the box's surface. They formed a perfect, three-dimensional replica of the consteltion they had identified in the second puzzle—the Big Dipper.

  The crystal sphere, now glowing even more intensely, rose from the final indentation and took its position at the handle end of the Dipper pattern. With a soft chime, the entire consteltion rotated slowly, then sank back into the box's surface.

  In its pce appeared the seventh and final yer—a completely bnk, mirror-like surface that reflected their own faces back at them.

  "Is it... broken?" Elias asked, frowning at their reflections.

  "I don't think so," Marcus said. "This must be the final puzzle."

  They stared at their reflections in silence, trying to understand what the puzzle wanted from them. The surface was perfectly smooth, without any obvious mechanisms or patterns.

  "The shopkeeper said the box reveals your heart's true desire," Elias said quietly. "Maybe this is where that happens."

  Marcus nodded, his throat suddenly dry. This was the moment he'd both anticipated and dreaded since they began working on the puzzle box.

  "So what do we do?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

  Elias looked just as uncertain. "I'm not sure. Maybe we just... ask it to show us?"

  They both gazed into the mirrored surface. Their reflections looked back at them, unchanged.

  "I think," Marcus said slowly, "maybe we need to be honest. With ourselves, I mean."

  Elias turned to him, a question in his eyes. "What do you mean?"

  Marcus swallowed hard. "The other puzzles all required us to be active participants. To trace patterns, solve ciphers, navigate mazes. What if this one requires us to... reveal something?"

  Understanding dawned on Elias's face. "To reveal our true desires. Before the box will reveal them back to us."

  "Exactly," Marcus nodded, his heart pounding. This was dangerous territory. If he had to verbalize his deepest desire, there would be no more hiding how he felt about Elias.

  "So, what?" Elias asked, a nervous edge to his voice. "We just say it out loud? Or think it really hard?"

  "I don't know," Marcus admitted. "But I think we need to be honest. Completely honest."

  They looked at each other for a long moment, something unspoken passing between them. Then, simultaneously, they turned back to the mirrored surface.

  "Box," Elias said, his voice steadier than Marcus expected, "show me my heart's true desire."

  Marcus echoed the words, his own voice barely audible. "Show me my heart's true desire."

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then, slowly, the mirrored surface began to ripple, like water disturbed by a gentle touch. Their reflections distorted, then faded entirely, repced by a swirling mist that gradually took on color and form.

  They leaned forward, breaths held, waiting to see what images would emerge from the mist—what desires the box would reveal about each of them.

  And as the mist cleared, they both gasped at what they saw.