The storm hit three days out from Fortuna.
It came howling across the waves like a living thing, turning the sea into a churning nightmare of black water and white foam. The Wandering Mirth groaned as it climbed each mountainous wave, only to plunge into the abyss between them. Sailors scrambled across the deck, their shouts torn away by the wind, their hands raw from hauling sodden ropes.
Arno clung to the mainmast, salt spray stinging his eyes, the blank card burning against his chest like a brand. The starlight in his veins flared with each lightning strike, casting his vision in silver-edged shadows. He could see too much—the fraying fibers of the ropes, the individual raindrops hanging frozen in the air for a heartbeat too long, the faint glow of something massive moving beneath the waves.
A wave taller than the mast loomed over the ship.
The world went black.
….
Arno woke on a beach of black sand, his clothes stiff with salt, his mouth full of the taste of blood and brine. The wreckage of the Wandering Mirth lay scattered down the shore like the bones of some great beast, its ribs picked clean by the tide.
Vey knelt beside him, their hands pressing a strip of torn sailcloth to the gash on his forehead. "Don't move," they muttered. "Your skull's cracked like an egg."
Arno tried to sit up. The pain nearly blinded him. "The crew?"
"Gone." Vey's voice was flat. "All but one." Vey drizzled something Arno assumed was healing potion onto his skull, and he felt his wounds closing up.
They nodded toward the treeline, where the ship's cook—a wiry man named Pell—stood staring at the jungle with wide, terrified eyes. "Says we're on the wrong island."
Arno forced himself upright, his vision swimming. The beach curved around a sheltered bay, the jungle beyond so dense it seemed to swallow the light. The air smelled of rotting fruit and wet stone. And beneath it all, something else—something metallic and sharp that made the starlight in his blood hum in recognition.
The blank card pulsed once, hard enough to stop his breath.
Pell turned, his face ashen. "This ain't Fortuna," he whispered. "This is the Gambler's Grave."
The Gambler's Grave was not a building.
It was a clearing in the jungle where the trees grew in perfect concentric circles, their trunks carved with symbols that made Arno's eyes water to look at. At the center stood a stone table, its surface worn smooth by centuries of hands.
A man waited there.
He was old in a way that had nothing to do with years, his skin stretched too tight over his bones, his smile showing too many teeth. A deck of cards sat before him, their edges gleaming gold in the dappled light.
"Ah," he said, his voice like dry leaves rustling. "Players."
Vey's dagger was in their hand before he finished speaking. "We're not here to play."
The old man laughed. "Everyone plays here, little shadow. The only choice is the stakes." His gaze slid to Arno. "And what will you wager, blank one?"
The card burned against Arno's ribs.
Pell made a strangled noise. "Don't—"
The old man dealt a card without looking. It skidded across the stone, coming to rest before Arno.
The Knight.
"The game is simple," the old man said. "Answer a question truthfully... or draw again."
Arno reached for the card.
Vey grabbed his wrist. "Don't touch it."
Too late.
The moment his fingers brushed the gilt edge, the world twisted.
Arno stood in a hall of mirrors, his reflection stretching away into infinity. Each showed a different version of himself—one bleeding from empty eyes, one with skin peeled back to reveal the starlight beneath, one holding a card that burned with black fire.
The old man's voice came from everywhere at once. "What do you seek?"
Arno's mouth moved without his consent. "Power."
A pause. Then laughter, soft and mocking. "Liar."
The mirrors shattered.
Arno gasped as he was flung back into his body, his fingers still touching the Knight. The card's surface now showed his own face, his eyes wide with terror.
The old man smiled. "Your turn to deal."
Vey stepped forward, their dagger flashing in the green light. "We're leaving."
The old man didn't move. "Of course. But the boy owes a debt first." He nodded to Pell. "The sailor will do."
Pell screamed as his skin began to peel away in long, curling strips.
Arno ran.
Behind them, the old man's laughter followed, fading only when the jungle swallowed them whole.
Vines as thick as a man's arm coiled around the trees, their leaves edged with serrated teeth that clicked softly as Arno brushed past. The air was thick with the scent of rotting blossoms and wet earth, the canopy above so dense that only slivers of moonlight pierced through. Every step sank into the spongy ground, the mud pulling at their boots like greedy hands. The climate was so different than back ViaVia and his little hut.
Pell was gone.
One moment, the sailor had been gasping behind them, his bare feet slapping against the damp earth. The next—silence. When Arno turned, there was no trace of him. Only the jungle, watching.
Vey's dagger was already drawn, their free hand gripping Arno's wrist hard enough to bruise. "Don't stop," they hissed. "Don't look back."
Then the whispers began.
At first, it sounded like Pell's voice, calling out from somewhere to their left.
"Wait! Gods, wait—don't leave me here!"
Arno's steps faltered.
Vey's grip tightened. "It's not him."
The voice shifted, melting into something older, rougher—a voice Arno hadn't heard in ten years.
"Arno."
His father stood between the trees, his mason's apron streaked with mortar, his face lined with grief.
"You should have drawn better."
Arno's breath caught. The blood in his veins flared, sudden and searing, and for a heartbeat, the illusion wavered—revealing not his father, but a thing of knotted vines and wet, glistening bark, its mouth a yawning hollow in the wood.
Then the blank card burned.
The pain was blinding. Arno gasped, doubling over as the card's heat lanced through him, purging the fog from his mind. When he looked up, the figure was gone.
Vey's eyes were wide. "You saw it too."
Arno nodded, his fingers pressed to his chest where the card still pulsed like a second heart. "It's playing with us."
A low, rattling laugh echoed through the trees.
The old man's voice.
"All games have rules, little players."
One moment, they were stumbling through undergrowth. The next, the trees parted, revealing a clearing bathed in sickly green light. At its center stood the stone table again, the old man waiting behind it.
This time, the deck was spread before him, each card face-up.
The Knight. The Wheel. The Shattered Sun.
And one more—a card Arno had never seen before.
The Hollow King.
The old man's grin stretched too wide. "You owe me a game."
Vey stepped forward, their dagger flashing. "We're not playing."
"You already are." The old man's fingers tapped the Hollow King. "The jungle hunts. The House watches. And the Grave…" His eyes, black as the spaces between stars, locked onto Arno. "The Grave waits for you."
The blank card thrummed, a deep, resonant pulse that shook Arno's ribs. The starlight in his blood answered, rising in a silver tide.
He didn't remember reaching for the deck.
His fingers closed around the Hollow King.
Arno stood in a city of bone.
Towers of yellowed ribs arched overhead, their peaks lost in a swirling black mist. The streets were paved with finger bones, the gutters running thick with something dark and glistening.
And on a throne of fused skulls sat the Hollow King.
Not a man. Not a monster. A concept given form—a silhouette of absence, its edges blurring like smoke, its face a yawning void.
"You are not the first to come here," it whispered, though it had no mouth. "But you will be the last."
The blank card hummed in his chest. Not aggressively, not in distress but… almost comfortable.
Arno woke choking on saltwater, his body half-buried in black sand. He felt a gnash in his torso that hadn't been there moments before Vey knelt beside him, their hands shaking as they pressed a wad of torn cloth to a wound on his side he didn't remember getting.
"Cleore," they gasped. "We have to reach Cleore."
Behind them, the jungle rustled.