The bill came quiet.
That was how Cole knew it mattered.
Rustline woke wrong the next morning. Not broken. Not screaming. Just… off. Like a man who'd slept through something important and was pretending he hadn't.
Cole sat on the depot steps with Dusty beside him, watching people move through routines that didn't quite line up with memory. A woman swept the same patch of ground twice, frowned, then moved on. A man argued with a generator like it owed him money, then laughed halfway through the sentence like he'd forgotten why he was angry.
Dusty's ears kept turning.
Not tracking sound.
Tracking almosts.
Cole noticed the absence first.
Not his memories.
Those hurt loud when they went.
This was different.
A space where something should've been and wasn't, like a tooth pulled clean and the tongue kept checking the gap.
He looked at the square.
The table was still there.
But the carving on the north edge—deep gouges that once spelled out a name nobody used anymore—were gone.
Sand-smoothed.
As if they'd never been cut.
Cole stood slowly.
His knees complained. His head didn't. That worried him more.
He walked the edge of the square, boots scuffing familiar dirt that felt unfamiliar underfoot. He passed the old well and stopped.
The plaque was wrong.
It listed four names.
There used to be five.
Cole stared at it until his eyes burned.
The fifth name wasn't scratched out.
Wasn't erased.
It simply had never been there.
He swallowed.
Dusty growled softly, facing east.
"Yeah," Cole said. "I feel it too."
A man approached from the street—local, mid-thirties, oil-stained hands, eyes tired but alert.
"Ranger," he said.
Cole nodded.
The man hesitated. "You headed out today?"
"Soon."
The man shifted his weight. "You'll want to avoid the south spur."
Cole frowned. "Why."
The man blinked. "It collapsed last year. Sinkhole. Took three families."
Cold slid down Cole's spine.
"That didn't—" He stopped himself.
The man waited.
Cole nodded slowly. "Right. Forgot."
The man smiled, relieved. "Happens. Town's had a lot happen."
He walked off.
Cole didn't watch him go.
He walked back to the depot wall and sat down hard.
"That was this winter," Cole murmured. "Not last year."
Dusty whined.
Cole pressed his palms against his thighs, grounding himself in pressure and pain.
The House didn't announce itself.
Didn't need to.
Text slid into view like it had been waiting for him to notice first.
HOUSE OF RECKONING // POST-RESOLUTION COSTCATEGORY: HISTORICALSCOPE: LOCALIZEDSTATUS: PAID
Cole's jaw clenched.
"You took the town," he said.
Not everything.
Just… pieces.
He stood again and walked deeper into Rustline, following instinct instead of memory.
A mural on the side of a warehouse showed a poker table with seven figures around it.
Cole counted.
It should've been eight.
The artist had signed it with a flourish he remembered complimenting once.
The signature was different now.
Simpler.
Like the man had never learned how to loop his letters that way.
Cole backed away.
The cost hadn't been him.
It had been context.
The House had taken a slice of history and filed it down until it fit better with the ledger.
Rustline would survive.
But it would remember itself wrong.
That was worse.
Dusty stopped suddenly and sat.
Not obedience.
Alert.
His ears angled east. His head tilted. His body leaned, like gravity had shifted just for him.
Cole followed the line of his gaze.
Felt it.
A ripple ahead.
Not now.
Soon.
"Don't," Cole said softly. "Not yet."
Dusty looked back at him.
For a moment—just a moment—Cole swore the dog understood time.
Then Dusty stood and shook himself, the tension bleeding off, but not leaving.
They walked to the edge of town.
The road out of Rustline looked the same.
That bothered Cole.
No scorch marks. No cracks from the seam. No sign anything unnatural had happened here at all.
Behind him, Rustline breathed, alive, altered, unaware of what it had lost.
Cole rested a hand on Dusty's head.
"You feel them before they move," Cole said. "Don't you."
Dusty barked once.
Short.
Certain.
Cole closed his eyes.
Not in prayer.
In acceptance.
The House spoke one last time.
HOUSE OF RECKONING // NOTICEVARIABLE: DUSTYTRAIT: PRE-INTENT SENSITIVITYRISK CLASS: ROYAL INTEREST
Cole opened his eyes.
"So that's it," he said. "You marked him."
The House didn't deny it.
Cole looked east, where the land flattened into long stretches of road and ruin and tables that hadn't been set yet.
Royals would come.
Not today.
Not tomorrow.
But they would come.
Because Dusty could hear the cards shuffle before they hit the table.
And that made him dangerous.
Cole adjusted his coat, feeling the cold weight of the Ace, the colder weight of what he'd lost, and the living, breathing weight of the dog at his side.
"Alright," he said. "We keep moving."
Dusty stepped forward without being told.
Together.
Behind them, Rustline forgot a little more with every breath.
Ahead of them, the road waited.
And this time, it wasn't watching Cole Marrow.
It was watching the dog.