The Great Chess Master: The Prophets of The Board

By Don Paton

FIVE VOICES. TWO EMPIRES. ONE WARNING NOBODY WANTED TO HEAR.

Some prophets are cheered. These five were filed away.

In a labor camp of the Solharic empire, a woman named Issra has a dream. She sees a field that is every field. Two crowns lie in the dirt, and no one claims them. A scroll fills with words she cannot read. At the edge of it all, something stands that is not broken. Issra speaks her dream aloud three times. The empire records it as emotional distress.

Then a grain store floods, exactly as she said it would.

Officer Bellamon has spent ten years managing quotas for the camps. He knows what the flood means. He rises in a regional council and says so. Nobody arrests him. They promote him to a distant province, where he can trouble no one. It is the quietest punishment an empire has.

Far south, an old woman who buried six loved ones weeps a harder word. Her people must stop making themselves small. Her own camp sets her gently aside.

In Ardennum, Solharic's great rival, a border soldier named Corvath climbs an empty tower nightly. He dreams of an army. His council grants him a fraction of what he asks.

Four warnings. Four costs. None of them fully heard.

A young scribe begins to gather their words. He cannot stop writing. He does not yet know why. Satchels go missing. Pages vanish. Clerks forget what they filed, and powerful men grow calmly certain that nothing needs doing. Something old is working against the gathering. It does not strike. It misplaces.

Then he lays the four testimonies side by side. He sees a pattern none of the prophets could see alone. It changes how he reads the whole game. What he does with the record is his own quiet act of defiance.

THE PROPHETS OF THE BOARD is Book Four of The Great Chess Master. It follows the Dark Strategist's long war against a promise older than both empires. It is a slow, human story about calling and cost. It asks what faithfulness is worth when no one is listening.

It also asks who has really been moving the pieces.

If you love sweeping, historical, faith-rooted fiction, step onto the Board.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HLVDPGXC
• ISBN13: 9798178451083
• Release Date: October 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 118 Pages
• Weight: 0.29 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.5"