The whiskey in the bottle was arguably poison, but the men drinking it didn't seem to care. They were mostly dust-miners and hired guns, their lungs coated in the purple silt of the Frontier, their eyes dull and shifting.
Silas wiped the mahogany counter of The Dead Man's Hand. The wood was stained dark, drinking in the oil and sweat of a thousand bad nights.
Two hours, Silas thought, watching the slow revolution of the ceiling fan. The blades sliced through the thick, tobacco-heavy air with a rhythmic thwup-thwup-thwup. Two hours until closing. Then I can lock the door. Then I can sleep.
He was twenty years old, with the face of a scholar and the eyes of a man who had watched the sun burn out. He wasn't the Card Sovereign anymore. He wasn't the deity who gambled with the lives of emperors. He was just Silas. A bartender.
"Master," a voice whispered. It wasn't loud, but it cut through the din of the saloon like a razor across silk.
Silas didn't flinch, but his grip on the rag tightened. "Silas," he corrected, his voice low. "Just Silas. And stop looking at them like they're cattle."
Elara leaned against the bar. She was wearing the stained apron of a barmaid, but it fit her like a royal gown. Her hair was a cascade of dark crimson, and her eyes—a startling, inhuman violet—glittered with a suppressed, manic energy.
She was the Witch of Calamity. In another life, she had razed a continent because Silas had complimented the color of the flames. Now, she was carrying a tray of dirty mugs.
"But they are cattle," she murmured, tracing a finger along the rim of a glass. "Look at them. Loud. Dirty. They smell of fear and cheap leather. They don't deserve the air you let them breathe."
"Go run table four," Silas ordered, looking away. "And behave."
Elara's lips curled into a smile that didn't reach her eyes. It was a predator's smile. "As you wish."
She pushed off the bar, her hips swaying with a hypnotic, deliberate rhythm. Silas watched her go, a cold knot forming in his gut. The peace was fragile. It was a house of cards in a windstorm, and Elara was the wind.
Table four belonged to the Iron-Eye Gang. Three men, led by Krell. Krell was a brute of a man, half his jaw replaced by a crude steam-piston prosthetic that hissed every time he laughed.
Silas watched Elara approach. He saw the subtle shift in her center of gravity. It wasn't a trip. It was a calculation.
She pivoted. The tray tipped. A pitcher of amber ale cascaded directly into Krell's lap.
The saloon went dead silent. Even the piano player in the corner froze.
"You blind harlot!" Krell roared. The steam-piston in his jaw vented a hiss of white vapor as he stood, shoving the table aside.
Elara fell to her knees. To the room, she looked terrified, trembling like a leaf. But Silas, watching from the bar, saw the way her fingernails dug into the floorboards. She wasn't trembling from fear. She was trembling from anticipation.
She looked back at Silas. Her violet eyes were wide, wet with fake tears, but deep inside them, the fire was lit.
Play with me, Silas, her eyes screamed. Destroy them.
"I-I'm so sorry!" Elara cried, her voice pitching perfectly into hysteria. "I'll clean it up!"
"Damn right you will." Krell grabbed a handful of her red hair, yanking her head back. "With your tongue."
The air in the saloon grew heavy. The pressure dropped, pressing against the eardrums of every patron.
Silas set the rag down. He sighed—a long, weary sound that carried the weight of a past life. He walked out from behind the bar. His boots thudded heavily on the floorboards. He didn't hurry.
"Let her go, Krell," Silas said. His voice was flat. Bored.
Krell laughed, the sound grinding like metal on bone. He kept his grip on Elara's hair. "Or what, bar-keep? You gonna cut me off?"
"I'm giving you an out," Silas said, stopping three paces away. "Walk away. Take the girl's mistake as bad luck, and leave."
"I make my own luck," Krell snarled. He released Elara, his hand dropping to the heavy iron revolver on his hip.
Wrong answer.
The moment Krell's fingers grazed the textured grip of his gun, the air in the room curdled.
For Silas, the world turned grey. The color leeched out of the walls, the patrons, and the spilled beer. The dust motes in the air froze in suspended animation. The sound of Krell's breath stretched into a low, distorting drone.
It was a sensation Silas knew intimately—the intrusive, headache-inducing pressure of the System forcing its way into his reality. He hadn't summoned it. It had summoned itself, sensing the violence like a shark sensing blood in the water.
A translucent, golden interface flickered into existence, overlaying Krell's sneering face. Silas looked at it with the exhaustion of a man reading his own obituary.
[THE HOUSE IS OPEN] [HOSTILE INTENT DETECTED: LEVEL 4]
Three cards materialized in the air, face down, rotating slowly. They hummed with a sound that vibrated in Silas's teeth. He knew the cost before he even looked.
[Choose Your Hand]
Card 1: 2 of Clubs (Blunt Force) – Non-Lethal. High Noise.
Ante: 10 Mana.
Card 2: Ace of Hearts (Charm) – Subjugation. Total Control.
Ante: 50 Mana + Emotional Resonance.
Card 3: 3 of Spades (The Severed Nerve) – Lethal. Silent.
Ante: 5 Mana.
Silas stared at the 3 of Spades. It pulsed with a cold, sickly black light.
He hated the Spades. In his past life, the Suit of Spades had been his primary tool. It was the suit of assassins, of executioners, of the void. It required the least amount of Mana because it aligned so perfectly with the entropy of the universe. It was cheap to kill. It was expensive to save.
I wanted a quiet life, Silas thought bitterly. But the System always incentivizes the slaughter.
Krell's gun was clearing the holster. In real-time, Silas had less than a second.
He reached out. To the onlookers, it looked like he was grabbing empty air. His fingers closed around the third card.
He felt the Ante trigger immediately—a sharp, stinging sensation in his chest, as if a thimble-full of his body heat had been siphoned off to pay for the miracle.
[DRAW: 3 OF SPADES] [EFFECT: PRECISION SEVERANCE]
SNAP.
The grey world shattered. Time rushed back in.
Silas didn't draw a weapon. He didn't throw a punch. He simply flicked his wrist in a sharp, dismissive motion.
A thin, jagged line of obsidian energy materialized in his hand, looking like a playing card forged from black glass. He tossed it.
It moved faster than a bullet. It didn't make a sound. It was a shadow passing through light.
The card phased through Krell's leather vest. It phased through his skin. It bypassed the bone. It severed the spinal cord at the C2 vertebrae with surgical perfection.
Krell didn't fire. He didn't scream. The light simply vanished from his eyes. He dropped like a marionette with cut strings, hitting the floor with a heavy, wet thud.
The other two gang members froze, their hands halfway to their guns. They stared at their leader, then at the bartender who was still standing with his hand extended.
A wisp of black smoke curled from Silas's fingertips, smelling of ozone and old blood.
"Fold," Silas said.
The word hung in the air, absolute and terrifying.
The two men didn't argue. They didn't swear vengeance. The primal part of their brains, the part that feared the dark, screamed at them to run. They scrambled over each other, dragging Krell's limp body out the swinging doors, crashing into the dusty street.
Silence returned to The Dead Man's Hand.
Silas closed his eyes, exhaling slowly. He could feel the universe shifting around him, the invisible scales of probability tilting dangerously.
[WINNER] [KARMA DEBT INCREASED: 1%] [CURRENT DEBT: 1% (Low probability of immediate misfortune)]
He gritted his teeth. 1 percent. It sounded small, but Silas knew better. That 1% was a cracked axle on a wagon. It was a stray bullet finding a gap in armor. It was the universe remembering that Silas cheated, and the universe always collected its dues eventually.
He felt a soft weight against his chest. Elara had risen and pressed herself against him. She didn't check on the patrons. She didn't fix her hair. She pressed her ear to his heart, listening to the thudding rhythm.
"There he is," she whispered, her voice thick with a dark, terrifying adoration. She ran a hand down his arm, her fingers lingering on the wrist that had thrown the card. She could feel the lingering cold of the Spade suit, and it made her shudder with pleasure. "I missed him so much."
Silas looked down. Her pupils were blown wide, swallowing the violet irises. She was flushed, her breathing shallow. The violence didn't scare her. It was an aphrodisiac.
"You provoked them," Silas said, his voice hard. "You made me raise the Debt."
Elara looked up, smiling. It was the smile of a catastrophe waiting to happen. "The House always wins, Silas. Stop pretending you don't like the game."
She stood on her toes and brushed her lips against his jaw. "Now... deal me in."