Cole wasn't built to sit.
Stillness rubbed him raw. Made his thoughts start circling like flies.
But the road didn't call.
Not yet.
No pull in his gut. No direction that felt cleaner than the rest. Every horizon looked the same kind of wrong. So he stayed where he was and pretended it was a choice.
Two nights.
That's all he gave it.
First day passed quiet. Too quiet to trust. He checked the land twice. Then again. Nothing moved that shouldn't. The wind behaved. The sky kept its distance.
Dusty stayed close. Watched everything. Slept light.
Cole cleaned his gear again though it didn't need it. Recounted rounds he already knew the number of. Ate sparingly. Drank careful. Kept his thoughts short so they wouldn't wander somewhere soft.
Night came.
No House.
That made his jaw ache.
Second day broke harder. Sun meaner. Light sharper, like it was trying to cut through him and see what he'd kept.
Cole was boiling water when the pressure arrived.
Not sudden.
Just… weight.
Like a hand resting on his shoulder that hadn't been there a moment before.
He froze.
Didn't turn. Didn't reach for the revolver. That was what it wanted.
The air thinned. Sound dulled. Even the fire seemed to pause mid-crackle.
Text slid into his vision without ceremony.
HOUSE OF RECKONING // ACCOUNT REVIEWSTATUS: DELAYEDCORRECTION REQUIRED
Cole exhaled through his nose.
"Figures," he said.
Dusty lifted his head. Growled once. Low. Not at anything he could see.
The text continued.
MANDATORY WAGERSTAKE: TEN PERCENTCATEGORY: SELF
Ten percent.
Not specified. Never specified.
The House loved round numbers. Loved fractions of a man more than whole pieces. Easier to measure that way.
Cole stood slowly and faced the empty air.
"What's the table," he said.
No answer.
The ground in front of him shifted.
Not moving. Not forming.
Revealing.
A flat slab of stone pushed up through the dirt like it had always been there and the land had just decided to admit it. Two chairs. Rough. Uneven. No comfort built into them.
The deck appeared last.
Clean. Dark-backed. New.
Cole felt the Ace of Spades in his coat pulse cold, like it recognized a cousin.
Dusty circled the table, hackles up. Stopped. Sat. Watched.
Cole took the chair that faced the wind.
He didn't like his back to open land.
The House didn't care.
Text formed, crisp and final.
FRONTIER DRAW // ENFORCEDANTE: TEN PERCENTREWARD: CLEARANCE (TEMPORARY)PENALTY: IMMEDIATE
Immediate.
That word mattered.
Cole rested his hands on the table. Felt the stone. Real. Grounded. Not illusion.
"Deal," he said.
The deck cut itself.
Five cards slid across the stone to him. Five to the empty seat opposite.
No flourish. No warning.
Cole looked at his hand.
Bad.
Not tragic. Not insultingly bad.
Just… thin.
The kind of hand that didn't win unless the other side wanted you to believe in miracles.
The air across from him moved. Not shape. Not body. Just presence settling into the chair like a man easing down after a long ride.
The cards opposite flipped.
Full house.
Clean. Calm. Certain.
Cole didn't move.
Didn't swear. Didn't argue.
He'd known the outcome the moment the House said "correction."
LOSS NOTED PENALTY EXECUTION: IMMEDIATE
The pain wasn't pain.
It was absence arriving fast.
Something peeled away inside him—not ripped, not torn—lifted clean like a layer of skin he hadn't known he was standing on.
His breath hitched once. Just once.
Cole gripped the edge of the table until his knuckles went pale.
Ten percent.
Of what?
The answer came without words.
His mother's voice.
Gone.
Not silenced. Not distant.
Erased.
The sound of it—rough-edged, steady, calling his name the way only she ever had—collapsed into nothing. Not even an echo left to chase.
Cole swallowed hard.
That was how the House took things. Not by hurting you. By leaving you with a shape where something had been.
The table sank back into the dirt.
The deck vanished.
The pressure lifted.
Dusty rushed him then, pressing hard against his leg, whining low. Confused. Alarmed.
Cole crouched and rested his forehead against the dog's neck. Breathed until the world steadied again.
"Alright," he said. "Alright."
The House left him the reward anyway.
CLEARANCE GRANTEDWINDOW: SHORT
A favor that tasted like blood.
That night, the sky stayed too clear.
Stars sharp enough to cut.
Cole lay back and stared at them until sleep took him whether he wanted it or not.
The dream didn't ease in.
It dropped.
Cole's jaw clenched. His hand around the revolver steadied. He could shoot the card. He could shoot the table. He could shoot the air.
He could shoot until the cylinder clicked empty and it wouldn't change what was on the floor.
His eyes went to his wife's hand. The skin near her wrist still showed the faint white line where her bracelet had rested—a little band of braided leather, worn, soft. The one he'd fixed twice when it snapped. The one she'd told him was "just a thing," even though he knew better. Even though he'd seen her touch it when she thought nobody was looking.
That bracelet wasn't on her wrist.
His daughter's small hand was open. Empty.
Cole's gaze went to the shelf by the sink where his daughter kept her treasures: a bent button, a smooth stone, a piece of blue glass that caught the light like water. The shelf was disturbed. Dust smeared. Something had been taken.
He'd been robbed. Not just of people.
Of pieces. Of meaning.
Of the last soft corners of his life.
The Ace of Spades stood on the table like a judgment.
Cole looked down at Dusty beside him—alive Dusty, breathing, eyes alert. The dog looked back like nothing was wrong, like the world hadn't just broken into two versions of itself.
Cole didn't trust it. He didn't trust any of it.
But he trusted the feel in his gut. The same feel that had kept him alive on runs through raider territory and kept him from drinking bad water and kept him from stepping on old mines half buried in sand.
This wasn't mercy.
This was an offer from something that ate men for sport.
And still.
His eyes drifted to his daughter's drawing on the floor. A sun with too many rays. A little house. A stick figure with a hat—him—and another with long hair—her mother—and a smaller one with arms outstretched.
Dusty had been drawn too, a four-legged blotch with a smile that looked like a wound.
Cole's throat tightened until it hurt.
He lowered the revolver an inch. Not surrender. Just… acknowledgment.
"What are the rules?" he asked, and hated himself for making it a question instead of a demand.
The interface didn't answer him directly. It never would. It didn't do comfort. It didn't do conversation.
It did transactions.
A new line appeared.
RULE ONE: WIN EARNS
RULE TWO: LOSS TAKES
RULE THREE: THE HOUSE COLLECTS
The dream folded in on itself.
Cole woke with his hand clenched in the dirt and his throat burning like he'd swallowed dust and glass.
Dusty was on him instantly. Licking. Pressing. Real.
Cole sucked in air until it hurt.
The sky above him had started to lighten. That pale hour before dawn where everything felt unfinished.
The Ace of Spades was cold against his ribs.
Colder than before.
Text bled faintly at the edge of his sight.
CLEARANCE ENDINGDIRECTION NOW AVAILABLE
Cole sat up.
East.
The pull was there now. Sharp. Unmistakable.
Rustline.
The table was set.
He rose, joints stiff, grief quiet and heavy where it always settled. Packed away. Not healed. Never healed.
Dusty stood with him.
Cole didn't look back at the place he'd rested.
Rest was over.
The House had collected.
And the road had finally decided where he belonged