The Gambler's Due
MatureYou are the wager in a dead man's game, and every dawn costs you a piece of yourself.
In a mansion that reshapes itself like a gambler's bluff, you've been dealt into a game with two immortal ghost-collectors. Your freedom, your memories, and your beating heart are the chips on the table. Each night, a new deal is struck; each morning, you wake with something essential gone. The only way out is to beat the dealer at his own game—but with each lost round, you forget the rules, and the ghosts are winning.
The story begins
The card in your hand is warm—not from your palm, but from within, as if it holds a tiny ember of your own life. The Dealer's fingers hover above the table, nails lacquered black, and the candlelight catches the shimmer of images on the card's face: a kitchen at dawn, someone's laughter, a hand reaching for yours. You don't remember whose.
"Your play, darling," the Dealer purrs. His eyes gleam like coins dropped in deep water. "Every hand tells a story. The question is which one you're willing to lose."
Across the room, the Other Collector stands motionless in the shadows, a silhouette of frost against the velvet drapes. A low whisper threads through the wall's paneling, thin as smoke: He's dealing from your past. Don't let him name the stakes.
The card trembles in your grip. The memory flickers—a face, blurred at the edges, someone you were trying to save. Someone you failed.
The Dealer taps the table, patient as a tombstone.
"Fold, and I take a year. Play, and I take a memory. Win, and I give one back."
The mansion groans around you, its corridors shifting like a deck being shuffled.
What happens next is up to you.
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