The town showed up the way trouble did out here.
Not announced.Not welcomed.Just… present.
A knot of scrap roofs crouched around a dry well and a leaning sign that once promised FUEL in letters half eaten by rust. Somebody had painted a fresh white stripe across the sign's bottom half like a bandage. No words. No explanation. Just a clean line that didn't belong on old metal.
Cole slowed the mule on the ridge above it.
He didn't ride straight in.
He watched first.
People moved between structures like they knew the angles. Coats tight, heads down. A barrel fire burned lazy, smoke rising then breaking apart like it couldn't commit to being a signal. A man sat on a chair that used to be a car seat, facing outward, shotgun across his knees like it was a job he'd done too long to feel pride about.
No sentry on the back side.
That meant either they were honest or they were sure nobody could afford to come from that direction.
Cole didn't believe in honest towns.
Dusty stood beside him, ears forward, mouth closed. He didn't range. He didn't sniff the air. He stared down at the rooftops like the place had a shape only he recognized.
Cole's fingers brushed the inside of his coat without looking.
Ace of Spades. Cold.Ten of Clubs in oilcloth. Cold.Three of Diamonds—a new wrong weight—resting against the lining like a tooth you hadn't noticed you'd swallowed.
He didn't pull any of them out.
Seeing was agreement.And he'd agreed to enough.
He took them down the slope.
Not fast. Not slow. Just decided.
The mule walked like it didn't trust the ground's intentions. Dusty moved ahead, too steady, too quiet, then checked back like he needed to confirm Cole was still there.
That was becoming a habit.
At the edge of town, the man with the shotgun stood. He didn't raise it. That was either courtesy or math.
Cole gave him nothing to add up.
He tipped his hat brim a fraction.
The man's eyes went to Dusty.
They lingered. Tightened. Then snapped back to Cole's face like he'd remembered something he wasn't allowed to say.
"You passing through?" the man asked.
Cole nodded. "Need water."
The man's gaze slid to the well. "We got it."
Cole let the silence sit long enough to make the man fill it if he wanted. The man didn't.
"What's it cost?" Cole asked.
"Chips," the man said. "Or you can sit."
Cole looked past him.
Under a patched canvas awning, a table sat in shade like it had always been there. Two chairs. A third shoved back against the wall. A lantern hung over the felt-less wood even though the sun still had hours left.
The lantern wasn't lit.
It didn't need to be.
People stood nearby pretending not to watch while watching anyway. Their eyes moved like dogs' ears: trying to catch danger without showing fear.
Dusty stiffened.
Cole felt the pressure behind his eyes begin to rise. Not text. Not interface. Just that familiar sense of being measured, like a thumb pressing in to test how much he'd flinch.
Still, the air stayed empty of words.
No offer.
That was wrong. The House loved announcing itself.
Cole looked at the table and felt something older than caution move through him.
A memory of a kitchen table that had been safe once.
He shoved it down before it could breathe.
"You run games?" Cole asked.
The shotgun man shook his head. "We don't run it. It runs when it wants. Folks sit. Folks win. Folks lose."
His eyes stayed on Cole. "You look like you know how to sit."
Cole didn't like the phrasing. Like he'd been seen somewhere else. Like he'd been filed.
He walked toward the awning anyway.
Standing at a table made people nervous. Sitting made them respectful. Cole stayed standing at first, hands loose at his sides, letting the table show itself.
The wood was scarred. Old casino salvage, edges gouged by knives and fingernails. The grain looked thirsty. Somebody had set a tin cup on the corner as if it belonged there. The cup held nothing but dust.
The lantern above the table clicked once. Not lit—just acknowledged.
Across from Cole, the empty chair felt less empty. Not visually. Meaningfully. Like the air had weight where a body should be.
Then a man stepped out of the shadow near the wall.
Not a town man.
Too clean. Too calm. Coat buttoned right. Collar straight. Boots not patched. Face plain in the way clerks were plain—men who lived behind counters and learned to hide their opinions in paperwork.
A Dealer.
Not the theatrical kind. Not the smiling kind.
This one looked like an accountant with a gun he didn't show.
He tipped his hat at Cole like it was polite to do so before taking something.
"Ranger," he said.
Cole didn't blink. "I don't know you."
"You don't know most things the House knows," the Dealer said.
Cole didn't like the word knows. Knowledge wasn't neutral out here. It was leverage.
"What's the game," Cole asked.
The Dealer slid a deck from inside his coat and set it on the table.
Clean. Dark-backed. Edges sharp enough to cut.
"Frontier Draw," he said. "One hand."
Cole's jaw tightened.
One hand meant no mercy. No correction. No time to feel your way into survival.
It was how the House liked to test men already tagged.
"Ante," Cole said.
The Dealer's eyes flicked once, brief, to Dusty. Then back to Cole.
"Chips," he said. "And endurance."
Cole didn't move.
Under his ribs, the old injury lived like a quiet animal. Something he'd carried for years. Something the House hadn't earned.
The House never asked what it had earned.
Cole glanced toward the well. Water sat there, close, almost reasonable.
The table sat here, closer.
"You said water costs chips," Cole said.
"It does," the Dealer replied.
"And the table costs me," Cole said.
The Dealer didn't deny it. He only waited, like waiting itself was part of the contract.
Cole opened his pouch and set a small stack of ceramic chips on the wood. They clinked and drew eyes from the watchers. Currency always did.
The Dealer didn't touch them.
He offered the deck.
"Cut."
Cole cut.
The cards whispered like dry leaves. Like paper dragged across bone.
The air snapped tight.
Text appeared above the table, flat and cold as a terminal screen.
HOUSE OF RECKONING // WAGER REGISTEREDVARIANT: FRONTIER DRAW // ONE HANDOPPONENT: DEALER-BOUNDANTE: ENDURANCE (MINOR) + CHIPSREWARD: WATER (FULL) + INFORMATION (MINOR)LOSS: ENDURANCE (MINOR) + INTEREST
Cole stared at the last word.
Interest.
That meant delayed payment. That meant compounding.
The Dealer dealt five cards to Cole with hands that moved like they belonged to someone else. Then five to himself. He did not look at his own cards.
He didn't need to.
Cole picked up his hand.
Trash.Off-suit. Low. A pair buried under nothing.
The kind of hand the world gave a man when it wanted him to accept a small loss and call it fair.
Cole looked up.
The Dealer's gaze wasn't on the table. It was past it—toward the town, toward nothing, like he was listening to someone speaking from behind a wall.
Cole felt it then. A second pressure in the air. Not the House. Not the clean, neutral weight of the system.
This was angled. Personal.
Like a finger on the scale.
Cole's eyes lifted to the lantern above them.
The glass was dusted. Old. Dead-looking.
But inside it, shadow moved.
Not flame. Not smoke.
Ink.
A faint swirling darkness, slow as a thought trying to form.
Cole didn't like that at all.
He set his cards down face-up.
Not surrender. A demand to see the truth.
The Dealer finally looked at Cole's hand. His expression didn't change. Not pity. Not satisfaction. Just process.
Then he placed his own cards down.
A straight.
Not high. Not royal.
Just clean enough to take.
The House didn't hesitate.
LOSS NOTEDADJUSTMENT APPLIEDENDURANCE -MINOR
Cole felt it like something scooped heat out from under his ribs. His breath caught—not from surprise, from the sudden knowledge that his body had been opened like a drawer.
Pain lit behind his sternum.
Hot. Sharp. Familiar.
His old injury flared like a match.
He kept his face still anyway.
Letting people see pain was like leaving a gate unlatched.
Still, blood doesn't ask permission.
Warmth spread under his shirt. A slow seep.
Cole's eyes dropped to his coat front.
Darkness blooming through dust.
Blood.
Not a lot.
Enough to remind him this was not a game.
The Dealer gathered the cards without haste.
He still didn't touch the chips.
"That wasn't the reward," the Dealer said.
Cole's voice stayed even. "Water and information."
"You got water," the Dealer said.
Cole stared at him. "And the information."
The Dealer's eyes flicked, quick, to the lantern. Then back, as if the glance cost him.
The system text typed again, slower this time, like it wanted Cole to read every letter.
INFORMATION (MINOR): DISPENSEDOBSERVATION: ROYAL INTERFERENCE — INCONCLUSIVENOTE: YOUR ACCOUNT IS NOT PRIVATE
Cole held still.
Not private.
That meant watched. That meant other hands could lean into his draws. That meant this town table wasn't just a town table.
It was a relay point.
A place where someone could put their thumb on him without touching him.
The Dealer slid the deck back into his coat.
"You should leave," he said quietly.
Cole almost laughed. It would've come out like a cough.
"Why."
The Dealer's mouth tightened—closest thing to fear on him yet.
"Because you're making the air… interesting."
Cole breathed in and tasted metal.
Dusty pressed against his leg, warm, steady, eyes fixed on Cole's stained coat as if the dog understood accounts better than men did.
Cole turned toward the well.
The watchers parted without meaning to. A man bleeding did that. Blood made room.
He drew the bucket up. Water sloshed, dark and real, smelling of rust and old pipe. He drank anyway. Survival didn't care about manners.
He filled his canteens. Hands steady by force. The endurance drain tried to put a tremor in him. He refused it.
Dusty drank next, careful, then backed away like the water tasted wrong.
Cole looked back under the awning.
The Dealer was gone.
Not vanished. Not magic.
Just not present—like a clerk stepping behind a counter you couldn't see.
The lantern above the table still hung there.
Unlit.
But that ink-shadow inside it kept turning, slow and patient, like a thought waiting to be finished.
Cole led the mule out of town.
No one stopped him.
No one asked his name.
That was worse than hostility.
That was instruction.
When they reached the ridge again, Cole stopped and looked back once.
The awning sat in the center like a bruise. The table beneath it looked ordinary from up here. Like nothing had happened. Like no man had bled for paper.
Cole pressed two fingers to the blood on his coat. It had started to tack, drying in the dust. The pain under his ribs stayed hot and honest.
He didn't mind pain.
Pain was real.
He minded the way it had felt planned.
He rode east.
The sun slid lower. The wind turned colder, dragging grit along the road in long fingers. Cole's breath came a little shallower now. Endurance loss did that—it stole the excess you didn't notice you had until it was gone.
Dusty stayed close.
Too close.
Like he was afraid to get ahead again.
Cole didn't correct him.
A mile out from town, the road bent and opened into a flat stretch where the horizon sat like a blade.
Cole saw movement there—steady, distant.
At first it looked like heat shimmer.
Then dust.
Then shape.
A caravan. Not large. Not loud. Moving with quiet purpose like people who'd already decided what the world owed them.
At the front, a banner rose on a pole.
Black cloth.
No paint. No ink.
But stitched into it—faint, pale, almost invisible unless you knew to look—was a spade.
Not drawn.
Sewn.
Bone-white thread tight enough to look like teeth when it caught the light.
The caravan didn't slow.
No heads turned his way.
No glance. No acknowledgement.
Like he wasn't a man on the road.
Like he was a mark in a ledger they'd already read.
Cole slowed the mule.
Dusty stopped too.
Cole's hand hovered near his revolver, but he didn't draw. Drawing was intention, and he could feel it now—the air listening, the world leaning in, the House counting in silence.
The banner shifted once in the wind.
For a heartbeat, the stitches flashed.
Then the caravan passed behind a low rise and vanished from sight like it had never been there at all.
The road stayed open.
The horizon stayed sharp.
And under Cole's coat, the blood stayed warm.
A small, steady reminder:
The table had bitten.
And it hadn't finished chewing.