There are two ways for the road to end: touching someone, and being seen by someone. They are not the same thing, and the second is a narrower rule than you might assume.
Contact
Being on the same node as an enemy is capture. It does not matter who walked into whom: if you step onto them the turn ends there, and if they step onto you it ends after the enemy phase.
Contact applies to every kind of entity. The one exception is the takedown: if you walk onto an enemy's node from any direction other than the one it is facing, the enemy is taken off the board and the contact produces no capture. If an enemy walks onto your node, the result is always capture.
Being seen
If the enemy phase ends while you are standing on a node under a lethal gaze, you are caught. If you are on a hiding spot, you are invisible.
The word doing the work here is "lethal".
Not every gaze is lethal
This is the most misunderstood rule in the game and one of the most important:
- A sentry's and a patrol's sight is lethal. Stepping into their gaze ends the road.
- A chaser's sight is not. Seeing you does not catch you — it raises the alarm and sends it after you. A chaser catches only by contact.
That distinction makes the chaser a threat of pursuit rather than of distance. The tension comes not from being spotted at range but from watching your escape route slowly close. You can walk into a chaser's gaze on purpose to see the chase happen — and that is the fastest way to learn how the rule works.
Passing through does not count
The sight check only looks at where your move ends. You can cross a whole chain and stop at the far side; if you do not stop inside it, you are not seen.
This is the simplification that keeps the board computable. The detail is on Turn order.
After being caught
Nothing is lost. The board stops, shows you what happened, and waits for you to take the move back. The level does not restart, the counter does not reset, and your star does not drop — see There is no losing.
The screen also tells you the reason for the capture: which enemy, on which node, under which rule. "You ran into the …" and "the … spotted you" are different sentences, and beneath it is written the rule's id (for example "Rule NB-01 · Guard"); on your next attempt you know what to change.