The rhythmic clatter of steel wheels against ancient tracks echoed through the Alps as the private train cut through the darkness like a serpent in exile. Its golden interiors concealed the chaos that had just erupted within. Hours earlier, it had been marketed as a luxury summit, a symbolic gesture of reconciliation and innovation between business titans and their families. Now, it had devolved into a gilded prison, and at its center stood a man who was no stranger to secrets and vengeance. He had arrived as Cain Ashb, his return marked by stunned disbelief and lukewarm welcomes. But it was now clear Cain had never truly come back. What stood before them, revealed in the stark silence after a single loaded name, was Aristotle Dumas.

Billy Flynn’s smile, once easily dismissed as smug confidence, had transformed into something predatory, something cold and calculative. The moment he spoke those words, “I am Aristotle Damas,” it was as if the air had been siphoned from the room. Even Victor Newman, whose legacy was defined by surviving betrayal, looked momentarily disoriented, as if staring into the abyss and seeing a shadow from a past he never knew he’d wronged.

The opulent dining car had become the arena for a psychological chess match that would determine not only who lived, but who would carry guilt into whatever future lay ahead. Victor stood at the head of the table, his knuckles clenched against the velvet wood, his eyes dark pools of resistance. Around him sat his family: Nikki, who hadn’t stopped trembling since Dumas’s first chilling laugh; Victoria, whose CEO composure was slowly fracturing; Nick, tensed and ready to charge; and Adam, silent but deadly, his eyes never leaving the man who had turned their summit into a hostage crisis. Summer and Clare huddled in the corner, their shoulders nearly touching, trying to breathe in sync, trying to understand how a weekend trip had become a theater of violence.

And yet, it was not the fear of death that haunted them in this moment. It was confusion. What did Aristotle Dumas want? What did he hope to gain from all this, if not merely blood? Was this about power, legacy, or something even darker? Dumas paced slowly, relishing the weight of his footsteps, as if each one drove home a nail in the Newman family’s legacy. He held the pistol delicately, like a conductor holding a baton, as if orchestrating a final symphony. His tone, smooth and deliberate, contrasted sharply with the nightmare he had unleashed. “You ask why,” he mused, looking directly at Victor. “What grievance I could possibly carry. After all, Cain Ashb had no quarrel with you. But I am not Cain. Cain was a mask. A costume stitched from your own neglect.” He paused, eyes sweeping across the room. “This train, this glorious illusion of unity, this entire spectacle. You thought it was about the future. You fools. It has always been about the past. Your past, my past, and the fire that links them.”

Victor didn’t flinch even as the muzzle of the gun was pointed at him, hovering like a silent accusation. His voice was calm, almost bored. “So what? You want me to apologize for something I didn’t do? You think because you put on a dead man’s skin and learned how to mimic his walk, you’ve earned the right to pass judgment on my family?” His words were heavy, not with fear, but with the weight of experience. Victor Newman had stood against empires. He had watched sons betray him, women leave him, friends die in his name. He would not bow to a ghost with a vendetta. But Dumas’s laugh, brittle and sharp, silenced any thoughts of negotiation.

e tossed the pistol toward Victor. It landed with a dull thud on the carpeted floor. Yet its presence rang louder than any scream. “No apologies, Victor. I’m not interested in remorse. I’m interested in results.” He moved closer, eyes glittering. “Here’s the game. You die and your family lives. One bullet, one noble sacrifice. Or,” he spread his arms mockingly grand, “I empty this chamber slowly, starting with your precious Nikki. Then Adam, then Victoria. I’ll let you choose the order.”

A ripple of panic passed through the room. Clare let out a strangled gasp. Nikki turned pale, but Victor didn’t pick up the gun. He didn’t even look at it. He looked at Dumas. “You expect me to believe you’ll stop at just me? You think I’d take you at your word? That I’d give you the satisfaction of seeing me on my knees?” He stepped forward, his stature unbroken. “You may be many things, but you are not a god. You are a coward. A man who couldn’t win in life, so he chose to haunt the living like a disease. But I don’t negotiate with diseases. I kill them.” That was when Dumas’s smile faltered just slightly, enough for Adam to notice. Something in Victor’s defiance struck a nerve, pulled a thread from whatever tapestry of revenge Dumas had woven. He stepped closer, lowering his voice to a whisper. “I died once,” he hissed. “In flames, in exile, because of your greed, because of the empire you built to top the bones of men like me. I don’t want your apology, Victor. I want to erase you and I want your family to watch. I want the Newmans to remember that their legacy ends with a whimper. Not a bang, just a click.” He motioned toward the gun. “Pick it up.” Victor did, slowly, steadily.

The room held its breath. Nick tensed to lunge, but a quick shake of Victor’s head stopped him. There was something terrifying in how calm Victor looked, how methodical. He examined the weapon, eyes scanning the chamber, thumb brushing the trigger. And then he raised it, pointed not at himself, but directly at Aristotle Dumas. The room exploded into motion. Dumas leapt back, too slow. Victor fired. A single shot. The bullet tore through Dumas’s shoulder, spinning him backward against the paneled wall. Blood sprayed, not fatal, but incapacitating. Dumas screamed, not just in pain, but in rage, in betrayal of the script he had written for them all. Nick and Adam were on him in seconds, tackling him to the floor. The pistol clattered from Victor’s hand as Clare kicked it away. Victoria grabbed the emergency call switch near the paneling, overriding the train’s internal locks. Outside, the storm had begun to clear, and the snow-covered tracks ahead stretched into uncertain freedom. Dumas bled on the floor, his eyes burning holes into Victor as if hatred alone could set him aflame. “You still don’t understand,” he rasped. “This isn’t over. I have people. There are more like me. This was only the beginning.” But Victor didn’t respond. He turned away, walked to Nikki, and held her as the train hurtled toward the light. What no one noticed in that final moment, what would only be discovered later, was that Dumas had not acted alone. Somewhere deeper in the train’s locked cargo car, something ticked, a secondary plan, a contingency. Because if Aristotle Dumas had learned anything from the Newmans, it was this: Never put all your revenge in one bullet.

The shriek of the steam whistle pierced the early dusk like a signal to the underworld. From the polished marble platform at Genoa City’s private terminal, a sleek obsidian train stood waiting like a coiled serpent, ready to slither its way through the frosted countryside. Its windows were tinted, its contours elegant and ominous, and as the last rays of sun bled behind the winter hills, it hissed as if alive—alive with secrets, with ambitions, with vendettas old and unresolved. Sharon Newman stepped aboard first, her eyes lit with a childlike excitement she hadn’t felt in years. “Can you believe this?” she said, slipping her arm into Nick Newman’s. They walked together through the corridor, awash in the opulence of dark velvet and gold trim, past etched crystal light fixtures and stained glass panels depicting Greek myths. The train was theatrical, no doubt intentionally so.

As they settled into a plush corner booth, Sharon gazed out the window, watching the city disappear. “It feels like we’re heading into another world,” she whispered. Nick merely nodded, his jaw tight. Something in the air was off, and his instincts, honed by years of Newman family betrayals, told him this wasn’t just a business trip. In another car, Billy Abbott leaned against the wall across from Sally Spectra, arms crossed, lips tight with calculation. His normally restless energy had transformed into a chilling stillness. “Victor doesn’t know what he’s walking into,” he said, his voice laced with something darker than concern. “This isn’t just another corporate stunt. This is Dumas. And if the rumors are even half true, we’re not headed to a wine tasting.” Sally raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. Her presence beside Billy was as strategic as it was personal. She was a survivor in stilettos, and she knew better than to question power dynamics when they were still shifting.

In the forward cabin, Victor Newman sat in silence, staring out into the abyss of pine forests that rushed past. He was not a man easily rattled, but his eyes were narrowed, his grip on the armrest unusually tight. Dumas. The name itself stirred something ancient, like a wound long-healed, but not forgotten. Behind him, Victoria whispered with Nate, while Adam remained eerily quiet. Perhaps too quiet. Across from them, Lily Winters leaned closer to Devon and murmured, “I have a terrible feeling about all this. It’s too elaborate, too theatrical. It’s like we’re being led into a trap, and we’re pretending it’s a vacation.”

When the train finally slowed, its screech echoing through a canyon of stone, the guests stepped off onto an unlit gravel path rather than a grand station. There was no red carpet, no attendants, only a thin man in a black coat with salt and pepper hair standing at the gate of an impossibly large hedge maze. He introduced himself with a crooked smile. “Carter,” he said, bowing slightly. “Welcome to the first test.” Jack Abbott blinked, taken aback. “Test?” he asked, gesturing toward the looming hedges. “This is a maze.” Carter’s grin widened. “It is the beginning of your invitation. Mister Dumas believes that a worthy guest should be willing to lose their way before they find the truth.” Diane, standing just behind Jack, tightened her grip on his sleeve. “Jack, this isn’t normal,” she whispered. “Nothing about this is normal.” Nearby, Kyle and Audra exchanged glances. Both too proud to admit they were nervous. Both too tangled in their own schemes to realize that in Dumas’s world, pawns didn’t survive. As the group slowly entered the maze, the hedges swallowed them whole.

The night had arrived in full force. A velvet sky pin-pricked with stars too dim to guide them. The maze was alive, whispering with cold winds and flickering lanterns set just far enough apart to make everyone question what lay in the shadows. They moved in pairs and trios, some holding hands, others walking in silence, each unaware that high above them, a figure sat in a dark room, watching them through hidden cameras embedded in stone gargoyles and twisted branches.

Aristotle Dumas sat in a leather chair draped in shadows, sipping absinthe from a silver cup. On the wall behind him, dozens of monitors flickered. Some showed live feeds from the maze. Others captured images from inside the castle’s ornate halls, its chandelier-lit corridors, and the grand ballroom where no music played. Only the faint echo of dripping water. He watched each of them with clinical precision. The way Sharon clutched Nick’s arm a little tighter with each wrong turn. The way Billy lingered behind the group as if waiting for something or someone. He studied Audra’s expressionless face and Jack’s growing impatience. He watched Victor most of all. This was no ordinary invitation. This was an audition, a trial, a reckoning. Dumas had orchestrated this evening with meticulous detail. Each corridor, each lock, each misdirection designed to expose the rawest parts of his guests. They were not just navigating a hedge maze. They were navigating a map of his vengeance. And somewhere inside that labyrinth, behind one of those pristine ivy walls, lay a single doorway, slightly ajar with no handle, an entrance to a chamber few would ever see, and fewer would survive.

Back in the maze, the first scream shattered the silence. It was Summer. She had stumbled over a motionless figure sprawled across the gravel. At first, she thought it was a prank. A statue, maybe, but the blood told another story. A man, one of the security team, face down, unmoving. Clare rushed over, her hands trembling, and Adam pulled her away, his expression unreadable. Panic rippled through the group like a virus. Phones failed. The lanterns flickered out one by one. In the castle above, Dumas smiled faintly and pressed a button. Somewhere deep within the maze, an old grandfather clock began to toll. Midnight, the beginning, the end.

As the guests regrouped in the central clearing, Victor’s voice cut through the hysteria like a blade. “Enough,” he barked. “We find the exit. We get to the castle. And we end this madness.” But even as he spoke, the hedges began to shift. Carter’s voice echoed through hidden speakers, smooth and surreal. “Welcome to the Dumas clock. Each turn brings you closer to truth or to oblivion. Only those who face what they fear most will earn passage.” One by one, the group was split apart again, channeled down diverging paths by walls that seemed to move on their own. In the grand dining hall above, a long mahogany table had been set for dinner, though no guests had yet arrived. A single place card rested at the head, “Victor Newman.” Dumas poured another glass of absinthe and waited, the firelight dancing in his eyes. This was not just a revenge plot. This was theater, ritual, legacy, and by sunrise, someone would be dead, perhaps several. Because Dumas wasn’t merely seeking retribution; he was seeking transformation. He believed Genoa City’s elite had become soft, entitled, corrupt. If they could not survive one night of clarity, they did not deserve their empires. Outside, the maze grew colder. Blood stained the gravel. Secrets swirled like smoke. And above it all, the ticking of the Dumas clock counted down toward a finale no one would forget.

With Victor’s daring defiance and the chilling revelation of the maze’s lethal purpose, will Genoa City’s most powerful families uncover the full extent of Cain Ashb’s dark design before the “Dumas clock” strikes its final, devastating hour?