The Sleeper's Rumor
Part III — Kay's Unease
Kay sat cross-legged above the fractures, the board of the world sprawled beneath them. Their dice rolled lazily between their fingers — gold, pale, black — the same set they had thrown since the First Game. They glittered like little suns in Kay's palm. Normally, the sight soothed them.
Not today.
The board had shifted. It was subtle, but Kay felt it in their bones. The rivers of A'Xarch no longer bent by their nudges, the storms of An'Qlox no longer surged when they coaxed them, even the fire of Ra responded sluggishly to their hand. Their dice tumbled, but the board rolled them differently.
"Not my throw," Kay muttered. "Not my game."
They tried again. The dice danced, scattered across fault lines, yet each landed in patterns too neat, too tame. No chaotic bloom, no screaming fracture. Balance. Always balance.
Kay bared their teeth in a grin too wide. "Balance is not a game. Balance is a coffin."
---
A Forbidden Thought
Their gaze turned to Halveth. The market still lay fractured, but at its center curled the child. Yuu. The Sleeper.
Kay tilted their head. What if I touched her?
The thought was barely formed before the world resisted.
The suns flared against their fingers, burning them like coals. The fractures around them slammed shut. The dice froze mid-air, refusing to fall. For one long instant, Kay felt something impossible: they were not the master of the board. The board itself had turned against them.
A soundless voice seemed to hum through every stone, every star: do not.
Kay hissed, shaking their hand, the gold die cracking down its middle. Fear surged through them — raw, choking, alien. They had faced gods, Puppets, mortals with teeth of iron, and laughed through it all. But never had the board itself told them "no."
---
The Trick of Ignorance
Panic clawed at them, but Kay forced themselves to stillness. "Fine," they said softly. "Let us see what happens when I ignore you."
They shut one eye, opened the other, and looked deliberately away from the child. The board relaxed. The dice tumbled again, obedient. The suns dimmed politely, fractures opened and closed at their whim.
Kay laughed, breathless. "So that's it. I must pretend you are not here, and the world pretends too."
The knowledge chilled them deeper than any failure. It meant the world itself was complicit in her protection. As long as Kay kept their gaze half-blind, the world let them play. But if they dared think of her too clearly, all play ended.
---
Dice in Ashes
Kay scattered their dice in rage. Gold, pale, black clattered into dust, breaking into sparks that fizzled against the rift. They clenched their fist and remade them instantly — they always could — yet even remade, the dice felt lighter, hollower, like tokens at a rigged table.
They whispered to themself: "What is a gambler when the rules are no longer mine? What is a wager against silence?"
For a moment, Kay nearly dropped through the rift, nearly reached out to seize the Sleeper's shoulder, to prove they still held sway. But again the thought itself brought resistance. The world locked around them, their body heavy as stone.
And for the first time in countless eons, Kay felt something they could not bet against: futility.
---
Watching Through One Eye
They forced their grin back onto their face, manic and brittle. "Fine. I will not touch her. I will not name her. I will play with one eye shut, one eye open. That way the world forgets my intent."
Kay rocked back and forth, dice tumbling nervously. "But I will not leave the table. Never. I will wait. And when she stirs… oh, when she stirs, I will be ready."
The laughter that followed cracked at the edges. It was not the laugh of a gambler savoring the risk, but of one who knew the house had shifted against them and could not admit it aloud.
---
Fear
For all their theatrics, Kay could not silence the truth vibrating in their chest:
They feared her.
They feared the quiet, the way silence undid their dice. They feared that the Sleeper was not just another player, but the dealer, the one for whom even the world would fold its hand.
And most of all, they feared that when she woke, there would be no table left to gamble upon.
Kay curled tighter in the rift, dice clutched in sweating palms. They shut both eyes, then forced one open again, keeping the ritual of ignorance alive. "Sleep then," they whispered. "Stay cold, stay still, stay blind to me. I do not care. I do not care."
But they did.
Every gambler knows the deepest terror: not losing, but a game that will not play at all.
And in Yuu's silence, Kay heard the echo of a table already folded, already done.