The card appeared in Twisted Fate's hand before he'd consciously decided to draw it.
Bad sign.
He sat alone in the Slaughter Docks tavern—third table from the back, exit in peripheral vision, coat unbuttoned for quick access to the deck holstered at his hip. The establishment smelled like every other Bilgewater dive: salt rot, cheap rum, and the particular funk of sailors who'd been at sea too long. Rain hammered the roof. Outside, the docks creaked and groaned under angry waves.
The card between his fingers was the Hanged Man. Reversed.
Worse sign.
TF flicked his wrist. The card vanished, replaced by the Two of Swords. He shuffled through the deck without looking, fingers moving on instinct, each card appearing and disappearing in fluid sequence. The meditation usually calmed him. Tonight it just reminded him how badly he needed calm.
The letter sat on the table. Black wax seal, already broken. Three lines of elegant script:
Your debt comes due.
The Chronolith Shard. Noxus.
You have six weeks.
No signature. Didn't need one.
TF had spent five years running from this conversation. Five years building scores, making connections, staying ahead of the people he owed and the people who wanted him dead—sometimes the same people. He'd almost convinced himself the debt was theoretical. Something he could outrun forever if he just kept moving.
The Broker had a different opinion.
"Mister Felix."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. The tavern's ambient noise—drunk singing, dice clattering, arguments over card games—continued unchanged. Nobody else reacted. Just TF, sitting alone with a voice that wasn't quite sound.
He didn't look up. Kept shuffling. "Thought you'd send a messenger."
"This is a messenger." The voice had no gender, no accent, no human warmth. Pure transaction. "You're familiar with the terms?"
"Terms were I got three years grace. Been five."
"Interest compounds."
TF finally looked up.
The figure sat across from him, appearing between one shuffle and the next. Hooded, face in shadow, hands folded on the table. The hands were wrong—too many knuckles, fingers that bent at odd angles. Not human, or not anymore.
"The Chronolith Shard," the Broker said. "Shuriman temporal artifact. Currently held in Noxus's Eternal Archive. You retrieve it. Your debt is cleared."
"And if I can't?"
"Then the debt continues. With new terms." The shadow where the face should be tilted, considering. "I wonder, Tobias—do you remember what you borrowed from me? What you spent that required such desperate measures?"
TF's fingers stilled on the cards. He remembered. Late night in Piltover, cards running cold, mark getting suspicious, needed an edge he didn't have. The Broker's agent had appeared with an offer: one perfect hand, one guaranteed win. Price to be determined later.
He'd taken the deal. Won the score. Lost something else.
"The artifact," TF said. "What's so special about it?"
"It rewrites personal history. One moment. One choice. Changed." The Broker's hands spread. "Invaluable to some. Irrelevant to me. I have a buyer. You have a deadline."
"Six weeks to break into the most secure vault in Noxus. During Victory Festival when the whole damn military is celebrating. Sure. Simple."
"You're the Cardmaster, aren't you? The man who can calculate any odds?" Something that might have been amusement crept into the voice. "I have faith you'll find a way."
TF pulled a card. King of Spades. Risk and authority. "I'll need a crew."
"Then assemble one."
"Resources. Equipment. Intel—"
"Will be provided." The Broker pushed a small leather case across the table. "Contacts. Funding. Everything you need to plan the impossible." The shadow-face leaned forward. "But understand this—you deliver the Chronolith, or you deliver yourself. Those are your options."
The figure stood, impossibly tall, coat rippling like liquid shadow.
"Six weeks, Tobias. Don't disappoint me."
Between one blink and the next, TF sat alone. The chair across from him was empty, dust undisturbed. The leather case remained. Outside, rain continued its assault on rotting wood and rusted metal.
He opened the case.
Documents. Maps. Photographs of Noxus during past festivals. Guard rotations. Vault schematics—incomplete but detailed enough to know someone on the inside had provided them. And names. Five names with dossiers attached, each marked with locations and known abilities.
TF spread them across the table like his own private tarot reading.
Ekko. Zaun. Time manipulation specialist. Age 19.
Photograph showed a kid with a white mohawk and a device strapped to his back that looked like it could tear holes in reality. According to the file, it could—sort of. Four to seven seconds of personal timeline rewind. Limited uses, required recharge. But useful. God, so useful for navigating a vault full of traps.
Samira. Noxus expatriate. Combat specialist. Age 31.
Military record, heavily redacted. What remained painted a picture: expert marksman, acrobatic fighter, former Trifarian legion. Left under unclear circumstances three years ago. Now freelance. And—crucially—someone who knew Noxian security from the inside.
Seraphine. Piltover. Social infiltration, empathic abilities. Age 22.
Pop star. Actually famous, which made her either perfect or catastrophically stupid for a heist. Empathic perception—could sense emotions, manipulate social situations. Plus connections in high society. The kind of person who could get them into places weapons couldn't reach.
Malcolm Graves. Bilgewater. Demolitions, heavy weapons. Age 41.
TF's fingers stopped on that dossier.
He knew that face. Knew those scars. Knew the particular way Graves looked at cameras—like he wanted to shoot them.
Of course the Broker would include him. Nothing was ever simple.
TF pulled another card. Three of Swords. Heartbreak and betrayal.
He grimaced and kept reading.
Graves's file was shorter than the others, mostly because his reputation spoke for itself. Best shotgun operator in Valoran. Explosives expert. Survived things that should've killed him three times over. Current location: Bilgewater, working solo jobs, drinking too much, avoiding old partners.
The last detail was underlined: Has history with Tobias Felix. Complicated.
"Understatement," TF muttered.
He gathered the dossiers, mind already calculating. Time manipulator for navigating defenses. Combat specialist who knew the territory. Social infiltrator for accessing restricted areas. Demo expert for the hard breaches. And himself—the mastermind holding it together.
Could work. Maybe. If they didn't kill each other first.
TF checked the documents again. Festival in six weeks. Planning would take three. Travel, another one. That left two weeks for recruitment and prep. Tight. But he'd worked tighter margins.
The real question was whether he could convince these people to risk their lives for his debt.
He'd need leverage. Everyone had something they wanted badly enough to do stupid things. The trick was finding it, then using it without getting stabbed in the back.
TF stood, tucking the case under his coat. Rain had eased to a drizzle, typical Bilgewater weather—miserable but manageable. He dropped coins on the table, more than the watered-down rum was worth, and headed for the door.
Outside, the docks stretched into fog and darkness. Ships groaned in their berths. Somewhere, someone was singing a shanty about a woman in every port and knives in every back.
TF pulled his hat low and started walking.
First stop: Zaun. The kid with the time machine. If Ekko said yes, the rest became possible. If Ekko said no...
Well. TF had six weeks to find out just how impossible this job really was.
The card appeared in his hand again, unbidden. He glanced down.
The Fool. Beginning of a journey. Leap of faith into the unknown.
"Perfect," TF said to nobody, and shuffled it back into the deck.
Behind him, the Slaughter Docks tavern settled into its usual rhythm: violence, commerce, and the particular brand of hope that came from believing tomorrow's score would finally be the big one.
TF knew better.
Tomorrow's score was always just another way to dig the hole deeper.
But he walked anyway, coat collar up against the rain, cards ready, debt hanging over him like a sword on a thread so thin it was basically already falling.
Six weeks.
He'd need a miracle.
Or five very dangerous people.
Same thing, really.