Blackstone did not erupt.
It tightened.
Leon felt it in the air as he stood on the rooftop overlooking the Outer Ring. Mana currents bent unnaturally, flowing toward guild towers and sealed chambers. Information was being locked down. Contracts were being rewritten.
The world hadn't panicked.
It had prepared.
Behind him, Nyx watched the city with narrowed eyes. "Iron Vein will deny the retreat. They'll frame it as a probe."
Rook leaned against a vent pipe. "And behind closed doors, they'll triple the price."
Leon flexed his fingers.
The Wild Card was gone, but its afterimage lingered in his mind like a scar. His system window pulsed erratically, struggling to stabilize new parameters.
Rule Interference.
That wasn't an ability.
It was a threat.
---
They moved before dawn.
Not as a group, but as shadows slipping through Blackstone's blind spots. The Underground Table had protocols for this. Safe routes, mana-silent passages, unregistered transit points carved through old dungeon strata.
Leon followed Nyx through a forgotten sewer gate reinforced with layered concealment runes.
"You can't stay here," she said quietly. "Not anymore."
Leon nodded. "I know."
Rook glanced back. "There's a place."
Nyx stopped walking.
Rook met her gaze. "Don't look at me like that. You know it exists."
"Exiles don't come back," Nyx said flatly.
"They don't need to," Rook replied. "They survive."
Leon frowned. "What place?"
Nyx sighed. "The Fracture Belt."
Leon had heard the name.
A stretch of broken territory where dungeons overlapped, collapsed, and fused together. No guild jurisdiction. No stable system support.
A place where Irregulars vanished.
Or became legends.
---
They reached a sealed platform beneath the city.
Ancient.
Pre-system.
A circular gate stood dormant at its center, cracked runes lining its surface.
Rook placed a hand on it. "One jump. After that, you're off the board."
Leon hesitated.
"What about you?"
Nyx smiled faintly. "We'll misdirect. Spread the noise. Make them chase ghosts."
Rook added, "Besides. Someone needs to keep the table standing."
Leon nodded.
He turned toward the gate.
His system window flared.
Warning: System Influence Weakening.
Deck Stability Fluctuating.
The Wild Card pulsed faintly in absence.
As if waiting.
Leon stepped onto the platform.
The gate activated.
---
The Fracture Belt was wrong.
The sky fractured into layers, each tinted with a different hue of mana. Broken dungeon spires floated like corpses, tethered by unstable energy streams. Gravity shifted every few steps, pulling in directions that made no sense.
Leon staggered as he arrived.
His system window flickered violently.
System Assistance: Minimal.
Environmental Rule Set: Inconsistent.
He laughed weakly.
"Of course."
He moved forward.
Almost immediately, the world tested him.
A ripple in the air formed into a creature that looked like a dungeon guardian stripped of classification. Its body glitched between forms, half stone, half mana.
Leon raised a hand.
Gold Card.
The stun landed—and failed.
Not resisted.
Ignored.
Leon's heart skipped.
Red Card followed.
The explosion tore through the creature—but it reformed, pulling itself back together from ambient mana.
Leon grimaced.
"Fine," he muttered.
He reached inward.
The deck shifted.
The Wild Card manifested.
Black.
Unstable.
The system screamed.
Critical Instability Detected.
Leon released it.
The creature's regeneration stuttered.
Its form misaligned, limbs detaching from cause and effect.
It collapsed.
Didn't reform.
Leon dropped to one knee, gasping.
Stability warnings flooded his vision.
He dismissed them.
---
He moved deeper.
The Fracture Belt responded.
Not as a dungeon.
As an ecosystem.
Fragments rearranged. Threats adapted. The environment learned his cards.
Leon adapted back.
He stopped thinking of throws as attacks.
They were negotiations.
Gold controlled space.
Red enforced consequence.
Blue sustained continuity.
Black bent rules.
His deck wasn't a weapon.
It was a language.
---
Hours blurred.
Days maybe.
Time meant less here.
Leon reached a plateau overlooking a vast convergence of dungeon fragments. At its center hovered something massive.
A Nexus.
Not a core.
A meeting point.
Leon felt it resonate with his deck.
His system window stabilized briefly.
New Condition Detected.
Deck Evolution Opportunity.
Requirement: Establish Domain.
Leon stared.
Domain.
That was a word reserved for monarchs, dungeon lords, and system anomalies.
Leon laughed softly.
"So that's the next bet."
He stepped forward.
The Fracture Belt trembled.
Far away, deep within the system's hidden layers, something noticed the shift.
For the first time, the dealer wasn't reacting.
He was choosing where to play next.