The cut wasn't dramatic.
That was the problem.
Cole felt it before he saw it—a warm slip under the sleeve, a sting that arrived late like it had taken the long way around. He looked down and saw red welling through fabric, slow and steady.
Wire.
Old fence wire half-buried where the ground slumped near a wash. Rusted thin as hair. He'd stepped wrong, paid for it.
He stopped moving.
Let the moment settle.
Dusty came back at once, nose to the wound, ears tight.
"Easy," Cole said.
The wire had opened him clean along the forearm. Not deep. Not shallow either. The kind of cut that pretended it didn't matter until infection taught you otherwise.
Cole wrapped it tight with cloth torn from the inside of his sleeve. Pulled until the bite of pain sharpened his thinking.
He kept riding.
By noon, the arm throbbed.
By midafternoon, it burned.
By evening, the burn had turned dull and wrong, like the pain had gone somewhere else and left a substitute behind.
Cole chose a low bluff overlooking dry land and stopped before the sun gave up. No shelter worth naming. Just rock and wind and the promise of cold.
He sat with his back to stone and waited for the ache to argue itself down.
It didn't.
The pressure arrived instead.
Not heavy.
Focused.
Like the world had narrowed its attention to one small, bleeding thing.
Text slid in at the edge of his vision.
HOUSE OF RECKONING // OPTIONAL RESOLUTIONCONTEST AVAILABLESTAKE: WOUNDWIN: HEALINGLOSS: ESCALATION
Cole closed his eyes once.
Opened them again.
Of course.
The House never missed a chance to turn maintenance into meaning.
"Figures," he said.
Dusty growled low. Not at the air. At the idea.
Cole stood. The bluff flattened beneath his feet, stone smoothing itself like it had been waiting for permission.
The table arrived without ceremony.
Two chairs.
One deck.
No flourish.
No audience.
This wasn't theater.
This was triage.
Cole took the seat that let him keep his good arm loose.
The other chair filled slowly.
A man resolved into it like fog deciding to be solid. Mid-thirties. Sun-burned. Eyes tired past their age. Left hand wrapped thick in cloth already soaked dark.
He looked at Cole. Then at the table. Then back.
"Well," the man said. "That answers that."
"You hurt too," Cole said.
The man snorted. "Been hurt a while."
Text clarified.
HEADS-UP // MEDICAL STAKEOPPONENT: REGISTEREDANTE: CURRENT WOUNDLOSS CONDITION: ESCALATION
No mention of what escalation meant.
It never did.
The man flexed his good hand. "I need this," he said, not pleading. Just stating weather.
"So do I," Cole said.
The man nodded. "Yeah. I figured."
They didn't shake.
The deck cut itself.
Five cards slid to Cole.
Five to the man.
Cole glanced at his hand.
Decent.
Not strong.
Playable.
Across from him, the man didn't look right away. He stared at the cards facedown like he was already calculating loss.
"What happens if you lose," Cole asked.
The man swallowed. "Doc said infection takes my fingers first. Then the arm. House offered me a fix. Or a faster ending."
Cole absorbed that.
"And you still sat," he said.
The man finally looked up. "Didn't have another table."
Cole laid one card down.
Not the best one.
A test.
The man flinched—just a fraction. Enough.
They played quiet.
No talk.
No theatrics.
Cards moved. Stakes tightened.
Cole watched the man's breathing more than the deck. The way he hesitated on certain draws. The way his good hand shook when the pain crested.
Cole had been there.
Not this wound.
Others.
The final hand came quick.
Cole saw it before it landed.
A narrow win.
Not pretty.
But clean.
He laid his cards down.
The man stared at them. Then at his own.
Then he laughed once. Short. Broken.
"Well," he said. "That's that."
Text appeared.
WIN RECORDEDHEALING APPLIEDOPPONENT LOSS REGISTEREDESCALATION CONFIRMED
Cole felt it first in the arm.
Heat.
Then pressure.
Then the sensation of something knitting itself together without asking permission.
The wound closed.
Not smooth.
Not gentle.
Skin pulled tight, pale and new, a raised line already forming like a promise that wouldn't keep.
The pain dulled.
But something else crept in.
Cold.
Deep.
Like the arm remembered being open and wasn't done with the idea.
Cole flexed his fingers.
They moved.
Slower than before.
Just enough to notice.
He looked up.
The man was slumped forward, breathing hard.
"What happens now," the man asked.
The House answered instead.
OPPONENT STATUS: ESCALATEDPROGRESSION: ACCELERATED
The man laughed again. "Always liked straight answers."
He stood with effort.
"Name's Callen," he said. "In case that matters to you later."
Cole nodded. "It does."
Callen hesitated. "If you run into someone with a limp and a bad cough headed west—"
"I'll remember," Cole said.
Callen stepped back.
The chair emptied.
The table sank.
The bluff returned to stone.
Dusty pressed close, sniffed the healed arm, then pulled back like it smelled wrong.
"Yeah," Cole said. "Me too."
They made camp there anyway.
No fire.
Cole sat awake longer than he should have, testing the arm. The grip. The feel.
Functional.
But altered.
The House healed what it had promised.
Nothing more.
Sometime before dawn, Cole thought he heard footsteps.
Not close.
Not retreating.
Just… passing.
He didn't rise.
Didn't reach for the revolver.
The night didn't offer anything else.
When morning came, frost rimed the stone. The air felt thinner. Sharper.
Cole packed up and mounted.
The arm worked.
He could live with that.
But as they rode east, he noticed something he couldn't ignore.
When he reached for the reins too fast, the arm lagged.
Just a breath.
Just enough.
The House had taken its cut.
And somewhere behind him, another man was learning what escalation meant when it finished its work.