The win didn't settle right.
Cole felt it before he saw anything change. A drag behind his eyes. A delay between breath and relief. Like the world had accepted the result but hadn't agreed to it.
Rustline kept moving.
That was wrong.
After a hand like that, things were supposed to lurch. Lights fail. People forget where they were standing. Time misstep.
Instead, the town carried on.
Too clean.
Cole walked with Dusty tucked against his chest, boots steady on ground that felt… late. Every step landed a fraction after he meant it to. Every sound arrived a beat behind its cause.
Dusty's breathing was off too.
Not labored.
Layered.
Like there were two rhythms sharing the same chest and negotiating whose turn it was.
Cole didn't slow.
Didn't hurry.
Hurry was how the House decided you were panicking.
He reached the edge of the square just as the first crack showed.
A lantern swung on its hook.
Then swung again.
Same motion.
Same arc.
Twice.
The third swing didn't match the first two.
Cole stopped.
People didn't notice.
That was worse.
A man crossed the square carrying a crate. His footsteps echoed wrong—one set landing ahead of his body, the other catching up after.
The crate slipped from his hands.
Hit the ground.
Didn't break.
It phased—half in, half out—then snapped whole again like the world had corrected a typo.
Dusty growled.
Low. Confused.
Cole lowered him to the ground carefully.
The dog stood.
Didn't stagger.
Didn't sit.
He just… listened.
The air rippled.
Not heat.
Latency.
System text flickered—then stalled—then flickered again, words trying to decide which order they belonged in.
HOUSE OF RECKONING—POST-HAND RESOLUTION—STATUS: PENDING FINALITY
Cole swallowed.
"Pending," he muttered. "That's new."
The town bent.
Not visibly.
Conceptually.
Like Rustline existed in overlapping drafts and the House hadn't picked which one to file yet.
A scream cut through the square.
Then another.
Then silence swallowed both like they'd been written out.
Cole turned.
A warehouse at the edge of town sagged inward, beams folding like wet paper. Men ran after the collapse, not before, reacting to something that had already happened twice.
Cole backed away instinctively.
Dusty stepped forward.
Straight toward the distortion.
"No," Cole said.
The dog didn't listen.
He couldn't.
Dusty stopped three paces from the collapsing warehouse and froze, body rigid, eyes locked on something Cole couldn't see.
The ground around the dog shuddered.
Then… split.
Not a crack.
A seam.
Time peeled back like fabric and showed the thread underneath.
Cole felt the King then.
Not as presence.
As pressure.
Like a thumb on a scale that had already been weighed.
The House snapped awake.
HOUSE OF RECKONING // INTERFERENCE DETECTEDSOURCE: ROYAL OVERRIDEWARNING: ILLEGAL PROBABILITY SHIFT
The air screamed.
Not sound.
Alignment tearing.
The King pushed again.
Harder.
The seam widened.
People flickered—double images of themselves offset by inches, by seconds. A woman cried out as her arm moved before she did.
Cole moved.
Didn't think.
Didn't plan.
He grabbed Dusty by the scruff and hauled him back.
The seam lunged.
Missed.
Snapped shut with a sound like a deck being slapped flat.
The warehouse finished collapsing.
This time, only once.
Dust settled.
People screamed for real now.
Cole staggered back, heart hammering.
Dusty shook once. Hard.
Then looked up at Cole.
Different eyes.
Not glowing.
Not altered.
Just… focused in a way no animal should've been.
The House fired text faster now, lines stacking and overwriting each other.
ROYAL INTERFERENCE BREACHHAND OUTCOME: DISPUTEDWIN STATUS: CONDITIONAL — UNDER REVIEW
The ground lurched.
Cole went to one knee.
He felt it then—the cost coming due late, interest compounding while he wasn't looking.
The Queen's voice echoed in memory.
Victory isn't clean. It's just expensive later.
The seam reopened.
Smaller.
Sharper.
Right in front of the central table.
The table itself shuddered, wood groaning, scars lighting faintly like old wounds remembering how they were made.
A card pushed up through the tabletop.
Not dealt.
Rejected.
The King's mark burned through it, warping the face.
Then the House slammed down on it.
HARD.
Text snapped into place, louder than before, sharper than anything Cole had ever seen.
HOUSE OF RECKONING—FINAL ADJUDICATION—ROYAL OVERRIDE: DENIEDHAND RESULT: ACCEPTEDSTATUS: WIN (IMPERFECT)
The card disintegrated.
The seam collapsed inward, folding like paper burned from the edge.
Rustline slammed back into one version of itself.
The lights steadied.
People dropped to their knees, breath ragged, confused, alive.
Cole stayed down, one hand on the dirt, the other on Dusty.
The dog trembled.
Not weak.
Charged.
Text flickered again. Slower now.
POST-HAND EFFECT: RESIDUALVARIABLE: DUSTYCHANGE TYPE: PERMANENT (MINOR)
Cole closed his eyes.
"Define minor," he whispered.
The House didn't answer.
Dusty lifted his head.
Sniffed the air.
Then turned his gaze—not to the square, not to the wreckage—
—but east.
Past Rustline.
Past the road.
Past the next table.
He growled.
Soft.
Warning.
Cole followed his gaze and felt it too.
A tug.
Not direction.
Foreknowledge.
Cole rose unsteadily and pulled Dusty close.
Around them, Rustline limped, survivors taking inventory of a disaster they didn't understand.
The table sat quiet again.
Scarred deeper now.
Owned by nobody who would admit it.
Cole didn't look back.
He turned east with Dusty at his side, the dog's steps sure, deliberate, like he was walking toward something he could already hear breathing.
Behind them, the House closed the ledger.
Not clean.
But final.
And somewhere far beyond Rustline, a King of Spades realized the hand he'd interfered with had taught something how to listen.
That realization hurt worse than losing.
And it wasn't done hurting yet.