Fortnite's mysterious cube is slowly moving across the map (Updated)

The cube is moving every 1 hour 43 mins at the current rate with the next rotation set to occur at 8:26am ET/12:26pm GMT. #Fortnite pic.twitter.com/Koq2Vq8vyVAugust 26, 2018

Update 3: The big mystery cube is now moving through the map, though very slowly. Its current rate, according to Fortnite Battle Royale News is one 'step' every hour and 43 minutes. See the embedded video above, showing the cube slowly turning over as it crawls toward a likely Fortnite Season 6 launch.

Update 2: At 2:04 pm PT, the purple lightning summoned a massive purple cube. It's covered in strange symbols, and if you touch the cube it sends you flying. Standing near it slowly fills your shield up, and shooting it sends out sparks of lightning.

Breaking news: The cube is bouncy pic.twitter.com/vgbGOOzNtQAugust 24, 2018

Update: It turns out the lightning is striking the same mountaintop in the desert region with greater and greater frequency. On this mountaintop is (or was) a circular arrangement of cacti that the lightning has been permanently destroying one by one every hour or so. With one left, chances are something big is going to happen in Fortnite, and soon. We'll be keeping watch and update this story as soon as we know more.

What's going to happen when lightning destroys the last cactus in Fortnite? https://t.co/rG8RmsMnUS pic.twitter.com/PeUFVB2LNSAugust 24, 2018

Original Story: The rift that opened over Fortnite's map in the lead up to Season 5 has started closing, but that doesn't mean everything is going back to normal. As of update 5.30, the rift has shrunk significantly and turned a malevolent shade or purple. Even more eerie are the lightning strikes players are reporting. Take a look at the footage capture from LootLake.net below.

A lightning strike coming from the rift just hit the southeast part of the map! What could this mean? #Fortnite pic.twitter.com/qmhlgrN9VKAugust 23, 2018

Much like Season 3's meteor shower, purple streaks of lightning are landing all over the map, and seemingly at random. With Tomatohead reappearing as the overlord of a saucy cult, chances are that something bigger is happening soon. At the very least, this marks the beginning of a thematic shift towards Season 6. Time sure flies, eh?

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Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.