*Day 25 - Millhaven*
The gambling den hung beneath Millhaven's bridge like a parasite, swaying slightly in the void wind. The Broken Promise, they called it. Where desperate people made desperate bets.
Ora needed information. The Distillers' next shipment route. Worth any stakes.
The dealer, a woman with too many fingers (she'd won them), smiled. "Il Gioco delle Ossa. Know it?"
"I know enough."
Three other players: a merchant sweating gold-flecked perspiration, a veiled assassin whose breath came in counted intervals, and something that might have been human once but now looked like bad decisions incarnate.
"Stakes?" the dealer asked.
"Information against information," Ora said.
"Boring. Bones prefer blood, memories, years. Information is just noise."
Ora placed Lyra's finger bone on the table. Didn't know why she still carried it. The tiny carved thing her sister had given her, claiming it was a "lucky dragon tooth."
The dealer's extra fingers all pointed at it simultaneously. "Prophet bone. Old. Older than old. That'll do."
The merchant staked three years. The assassin, her ability to feel pain. The maybe-human thing placed a jar of something that screamed silently.
"Throw."
The First Throw
Seven bones each, scattered across worn felt that remembered every game ever played on it.
Ora's corruption let her see more than others. Each bone glowed with prophet-memory, fragments of futures that might have been. The Crowned Skull landed pointing at her - death pattern, but distant. The Dancing Hip touched three ribs - chaos coming through truth.
But more importantly, she could taste the other players' intentions.
The merchant was already cheating, time-magic making his perception faster. The assassin had weighted bones. The maybe-human was... oh god, it WAS the bones. A shapeshifter pretending to be a player while being the game itself.
"Interpret," the dealer commanded.
The merchant spoke first: "Wealth pattern. The bones show profit through violence. A war beginning soon."
Wrong. Ora's corruption could taste the lie in future-memory. No war. Something worse.
The assassin: "Death pattern, but reversed. Someone important will not die when they should."
Closer. But still missing the real pattern.
The maybe-human made sounds that weren't words. The dealer nodded as if understanding.
Ora's turn. She let corruption flow into her vision, reading the bones' deepest memories. These weren't just any prophet bones. These were from the Last Oracle of Crysillia. They remembered the city's fall. They recognized her.
"The bones show convergence," she said. "All patterns leading to one point. Not war - reunion. The Distillers aren't shipping goods. They're shipping witnesses. For something that requires observers to become real."
The bones screamed.
She was right.
The Second Throw
"Double or nothing," the merchant gasped, aging before their eyes as his staked years began collecting interest.
New throws. New patterns. But now Lyra's finger bone was in play, and it was changing everything. The other bones orbited around it, drawn to its age and power.
Ora felt the bone's memory for the first time. Not a dragon tooth. Not even from a prophet.
From the Original Prophet. The one who saw everything before the First Lie.
It showed her not just possible futures, but THE future. The one that would actually happen.
"Final interpretation," the dealer said, her extra fingers now numbering in the dozens, stolen from other games.
Ora saw it all. The Distillers' plan. The God-Eater's true purpose. The witnesses they were gathering. What they planned to make real through observation.
"The bones show the Distillers sail on tomorrow's tide. South cargo dock. Ship called 'The Last Argument.' Carrying seven Seers whose combined observation will make Vorgoth's ascension irreversible. If they witness him consume the Prima Fragment, he becomes conceptually unkillable."
"How could you possibly—"
"Because," Ora said, gathering her winnings as the other players aged, died, and revealed their true forms respectively, "the bones remember tomorrow as clearly as yesterday. And this one," she picked up Lyra's gift, "remembers everything."
The Revelation
The dealer laughed, all her stolen fingers applauding. "You're her. The Ashkore. The one the Lottery King has been waiting for."
"I'm just leaving."
"With the Twenty-Third Bone? I don't think so. He'll pay anything—"
Ora's corruption flared. The bones on the table began showing everyone's death simultaneously. The dealer saw herself dying in exactly three seconds if she didn't let Ora leave.
"Perhaps the game is complete," the dealer said quickly.
Ora walked out, Lyra's final gift warm in her hand. She knew now what it was. Why her sister had it. What it meant.
The Twenty-Third Bone. The one that could ask any question about any future and receive truth.
She had one question she needed answered: Could she save everyone without losing herself?
The bone was already warming, preparing to show her the answer.
She wasn't sure she wanted to see it.
The Echo
Behind her, the Broken Promise collapsed into the chasm. The maybe-human's death (it was made of borrowed bones) destabilized the building's probability.
The Lottery King would know she had the Bone now. He'd come for it. But she'd learned what she needed.
Tomorrow's tide. The Last Argument. Seven Seers.
And in her hand, a gift from her dead sister that could show her exactly how this all ends.
If she was brave enough to look.
The bone whispered futures in her grip, each one bloody, each one necessary, each one requiring sacrifices she wasn't sure she could make.
But at least now she could choose which future to make real.
That was more hope than she'd had in years.
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*End Chapter 19.8*
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