The purple dust from the 9 of Clubs hung in the air like a bruise, thick and choking.
Silas stood in the center of the cratered street, his chest heaving. The 9 of Clubs hadn't just taken mana; it had taken a piece of his equilibrium. The sheer, blunt force of the Gravity suit left him feeling heavy, as if his own bones had suddenly doubled in density.
For a fleeting second, as the shockwave had ripped through the earth, Silas had felt it—the intoxicating, electric surge of being a god again. The rush of absolute power. The high.
But the crash was immediate and brutal. His stomach churned. The adrenaline soured into nausea.
[MANA RESERVES: 65%] [ANTE PAID: 25 MANA]
Silas grit his teeth, the taste of copper sharp in his mouth.
Twenty-five.
He looked at the deputies scattered across the street. They weren't dead, but they were broken. The shockwave had ruptured eardrums; blood trickled from their noses and ears. One man was clutching a leg that was bent at a sickening angle. Another was vomiting into the dust, concussed and disoriented.
I spent twenty-five mana to keep them alive, Silas thought, a dark bitterness rising in his throat. The Ace of Spades costs five. I could have severed their heads for a fraction of the price.
The System was a rigged table. It taxed mercy. It subsidized murder. It wanted him to look at the math and decide that saving a life was simply bad business.
"You..."
The voice came from the edge of the dust cloud.
Cain, the Geomancer, stumbled forward. His pristine white coat was shredded, stained with the purple silt. His glasses were cracked, hanging lopsidedly off one ear. He wasn't afraid. He was furious.
"You dare?" Cain spat, blood flecking his lips. He slammed his iron staff into the ground. The green crystal atop it flared with a blinding, angry light. "A hedge-wizard dares to strike an Officer of the Guild?"
[HOSTILE SPELL DETECTED: EARTH SPIKE (TIER 3)] [LETHALITY: HIGH]
The ground beneath Silas began to rumble. The vibrations were sharp, focused. Cain wasn't trying to capture him anymore. He was aiming to impale him.
"Silas!" Elara's voice rang out from the porch. She wasn't hiding anymore. She was leaning over the railing, her eyes wide and glittering. "Kill him! Draw the King! Show him the Void!"
Silas ignored her. He couldn't draw a King. A King card would drain his remaining reserves and likely level the entire block. He needed finesse. He needed to break the man, not the street.
The rumbling grew louder.
Silas reached into the aether. He bypassed the Spades. He ignored the Clubs. He reached for the suit of lies.
[THE HOUSE IS OPEN] [DRAW: JACK OF DIAMONDS (THE MIRAGE)] [ANTE COST: 20 MANA]
Another twenty down, Silas thought, feeling the drain like a physical blow to the kidneys. This pacifism is going to bankrupt me.
"Die, trash!" Cain roared, thrusting his staff upward.
Three jagged spears of rock erupted from the ground beneath Silas's feet.
But they hit nothing.
Silas wasn't there.
Or rather, what Cain saw was no longer Silas the bartender.
The Jack of Diamonds didn't just create an image; it warped the observer's perception of reality. It took their fear and projected it onto the user.
To Elara and the deputies, Silas simply stood there, surrounded by a shimmering haze.
But to Cain?
Cain froze. His eyes bulged behind his cracked lenses.
He didn't see a bartender in a dusty apron. He saw a titan.
The sky turned black. The two moons of the frontier vanished, replaced by a single, massive eye that looked down with cold indifference.
Silas stood before him, but he was ten feet tall, draped in a cloak made of shifting shadows and burning cards. In his hand, he didn't hold a simple spell; he held the concept of Probability itself, a swirling vortex of outcomes where Cain died in a thousand different ways.
"What... what are you?" Cain whispered, his voice trembling. The arrogance evaporated, replaced by the primal terror of a prey animal realizing it has walked into a dragon's den.
Silas stepped forward. In the illusion, this step cracked the foundation of the world.
"I am the House," Silas's voice boomed in Cain's mind, distorted and layered with echo. "And you are out of chips."
Cain screamed.
It was a high, thin sound of pure psychological break. He dropped his staff. He scrambled backward, crab-walking through the dust, kicking away from the monster only he could see.
"Get away! Get away!" Cain shrieked, clawing at his own eyes. "Don't look at me! I fold! I FOLD!"
He scrambled to his feet and ran. He didn't run toward his deputies. He didn't run toward the Sheriff. He ran blindly into the desert, screaming about eyes in the sky and the death of luck.
The illusion snapped.
The black sky vanished. The giant Silas disappeared.
Real-Silas stood there, panting, sweat dripping from his nose. The Jack of Diamonds dissolved in his hand.
[WINNER] [OPPONENT STATUS: MENTALLY BROKEN] [KARMA DEBT: 1% (STABLE)]
Silence reclaimed the street.
Sheriff Voss, still clutching his ruined arm, looked at the fleeing Geomancer, then at his groaning deputies, and finally at Silas.
Silas didn't need magic to finish this. He stared at Voss with the dead, tired eyes of a man who had just spent a fortune to buy a moment of peace.
"Leave," Silas rasped.
Voss didn't argue. He signaled the two deputies who could still walk. They dragged the others away, leaving a trail of blood and dust in the dirt. They moved with the urgency of men who had seen a ghost.
Silas watched them go until they turned the corner.
Only then did he allow his knees to buckle.
He slumped against the hitching post, his vision swimming. The Mana fatigue was setting in. It felt like a fever—hot and cold at the same time.
Boots crunched on the gravel.
Elara stood over him. She wasn't offering a hand. She was looking down at him with a mix of awe and frustration.
"You let him go," she said, her voice tight. "He saw the Sovereign. You showed him the truth, and you let him run."
"If I killed him," Silas wheezed, wiping the sweat from his eyes, "The Guild would send an army. A crazy mage running into the desert is... a tragedy. A dead mage is a declaration of war."
Elara crouched down. She reached out, wiping a smudge of purple dust from his cheek. Her touch was gentle now, possessive.
"You're exhausted," she noted, her thumb tracing the dark circles under his eyes. "You spent too much. You're weak."
"I'm alive," Silas countered.
"For now." She leaned in, her lips brushing his ear. "But you can't stay here, Silas. The town saw. Voss saw. The quiet life? It died the moment you drew that first card."
Silas looked up at The Dead Man's Hand. The sign was crooked. The windows were shattered. The porch was cracked.
She was right. The sanctuary was broken.
"Get the wagon," Silas said, closing his eyes. "We're going to the Salt Flats."
Elara smiled. It was the smile of the Queen of Ruin, watching her King finally take his first step back toward the throne.
"All in," she whispered.
A/N: I hope you enjoy this novel. Support by adding to your library and giving a power stone or two. Thank you.