Cole left the wreck behind him, but it didn't leave him.
The air still felt bent.Not much.Just enough to make every sound one note flatter.
Dusty kept glancing back, ears twitching toward where the man had stood, like he expected the shape to reassemble itself out of dust.
It didn't.
Didn't need to.
Some encounters stayed long after the footprints were gone.
Cole nudged the mule forward. The road narrowed into a strip of cracked asphalt barely wide enough for one wagon. Scrub grew high on both sides, thick enough to hide anything that wanted hiding.
That wasn't what bothered him.
What bothered him was the quiet.
Wind moved.Sand shifted.But the land itself… held still.
Like it was waiting to see what he'd do next.
Dusty slowed, nose low, tail stiff.
Cole trusted that. More than maps. More than memory.
"Easy," he said.
Dusty didn't ease.
The dog stopped at the lip of a shallow cut in the land—two low ridges pinched together, making a narrow pass where the road dipped. Shadow pooled there stubbornly, refusing to burn off even as the sun climbed.
Cole scanned it.
Distance.Shadow.Sound.
The closer he got, the quieter everything became. Even his breath seemed muffled.
Some roads were built for people.Some for cattle.Some for things that didn't ask.
Cole dismounted.
He walked the mule forward by the reins, each step slow. Dusty moved ahead, paws soundless on the gravel.
At the mouth of the cut, Cole stopped.
Something wasn't right.
The shadow wasn't dark.It was thick.
He stepped into it.
The temperature dropped a full twenty degrees.
His breath didn't fog, but it felt like it should have. The shadow clung to him like fabric. The world beyond the cut narrowed to a slit of light behind him.
Dusty whined.
Not fear.Warning.
Cole moved on.
The cut twisted slightly, curving between the ridges. The walls weren't natural—too smooth in some places, too jagged in others, like the land had been persuaded into shape by something impatient.
Halfway through, Cole stopped again.
The air pressed against his skin. A low, almost inaudible hum passed through the rock.
System attention.
He felt it in his teeth.
HOUSE OF RECKONINGPROXIMITY EVENT CALCULATING…
The text flickered, then vanished.
The mule jerked forward, nearly pulling the reins from Cole's hand.
Dusty snarled.
Something moved ahead.Not a shape.Not a creature.
A ripple.
As if the shadow itself flexed.
Cole raised the revolver.
"Don't," he said softly.
The air tightened. Dust rose in a line across the ground—same pattern as before. Same border. Same unseen dealer.
Then the hum stopped.
Everything went still.
Dusty stepped sideways, hackles up.
Cole's hand stayed steady.
A single pebble rolled down the ridge wall to his left.
Then nothing.
No attack. No message. No figure stepping out of the dark.
The House was watching him.
Not dealing. Not judging.
Just… watching.
Cole holstered the revolver.
"Not your day," he muttered.
He walked forward. The shadow thinned. The hum faded. The temperature rose again.
Dusty looked back one last time.
Nothing followed.
They stepped out of the cut onto open land again—vast, flat, white-bright under the sun. The sky was a hard blue. Heat shimmered off the road.
Behind him, the cut looked small. Harmless. A trick of the land.
Cole didn't believe in harmless.
He mounted the mule again and rode north.
The world stretched out in front of him—long straight road, scattered bones of old towers, wind turbines rusted into sculptures. The kind of landscape where a man could ride for hours without seeing another soul.
But he wasn't alone.
He felt eyes on him.
Not the man from the wreck.Not the House.
Someone else.
Dusty felt it too. The dog slowed, sniffing the wind.
Cole scanned the ridge lines.
Heat distortions.Broken shadows.Nothing solid.
Then—movement.
Far ahead.
A figure walking the road. Slow. Limping slightly. Back to him.
Cole debated stopping.
He didn't.
He rode steady, letting the distance close gradually.
Dusty's growl came first. Soft. Uneasy.
Cole tightened his grip on the reins.
As they neared, the figure resolved into a man wearing a long coat torn at the hem, hat pulled low. His hands hung at his sides. He didn't turn as Cole approached.
Didn't react at all.
"Rider behind you," Cole called out.
No answer.
"Step aside."
Still nothing.
Cole slowed the mule to a cautious stop ten yards behind the man.
Dusty barked once.
The man turned.
Face was blank.
Not emotionless.
Blank. Like something had wiped the features clean. Eyes dull. Mouth slightly open.
Cole stayed mounted.
"You hurt?" Cole asked.
No reaction.
The man blinked once. Slow.
Then he lifted his right hand.
Something dangled from his fingers.
A playing card.
Ace of Spades.
Blood pooled along his wrist, dripping down the back of his hand.
Cole's breath locked.
"Where'd you get that?" he asked.
The man opened his mouth.
The voice that came out wasn't his.
"You're late, Cole Marrow."
Cold slid down Cole's spine.
He dismounted.
"Put the card down," Cole said.
The man didn't.
Dusty lunged forward, teeth bared.
"Back," Cole snapped.
The dog froze mid-stride, trembling with restrained instinct.
The man held the card higher. It shimmered with faint heat.
A voice rolled out of him again—layered, too many tones echoing inside it.
"You were dealt. You were told. You will be collected."
Cole drew the revolver.
"Step away from him," Cole said.
"I can't."
"Why not?"
The man's head tilted at a wrong angle.
"Because I'm already gone."
Something hit the man's spine from inside.
Not visibly. Conceptually.
He convulsed once.
Twice.
His body folded forward onto the road. The card fluttered down beside him like a feather falling through dead air.
Dusty whined.
Cole approached slowly, gun raised.
The man was dead.
Not recently. Long enough that rigor had started.
He'd been walking dead for miles.
Cole crouched carefully and picked up the card with two fingers.
It was warm.
Too warm.
On the surface, where normal cards had pattern and texture, this one was raised slightly—etched with a faint, invisible pattern only visible when the sun hit it right.
Cole turned it over.
A single line of system text burned across the back, flickering like heat haze.
HOUSE OF RECKONINGACE MARKER — TRANSFER COMPLETENEXT TARGET: COLE MARROW
The text vanished.
Cole exhaled sharply through his nose.
"Damn it," he muttered.
Behind him, the wind finally returned, carrying the smell of rust and dead sage.
He put the card in his coat.
They had to move.
He mounted up.
Dusty trotted close at his side, uneasy.
The road ahead stretched into a heat-warped distance, same as always.
But Cole knew better.
Rustline Hold waited up there.
And the House had just declared the stakes.
He rode on, one hand on the reins, the other brushing the coat where the card rested against his ribs.
The Ace of Spades burned faintly through the fabric, as if keeping score.
Cole didn't look back at the body.
No point.
Whatever had walked it wasn't walking anymore.
He kept riding.
Sun high. Dust thick. Wind sharp.
And somewhere far ahead, the next dealer waited—shuffling a deck Cole hadn't agreed to play.