The House of Fate was alive. Elias could feel it—not just in the air, not just in the heavy silence, but in the way the room itself seemed to breathe, shifting with unseen laughter. Something old and knowing was watching them both.

  It wasn’t the Pawn Shops. It wasn’t Lies. It was trickery. A force is as ancient as existence itself. And Elias—Elias was losing.

  The first game had been simple. A roll of dice. A matter of chance—so it had seemed. Until Elias realized, too late, that the dice never stopped rolling. The moment he thought he had won, the moment his mind settled on an outcome, the dice shifted—just slightly, just subtly—just enough to convince him that he had been wrong. A trick of perception. A game that could never be won, because winning was never an option. Elias had lost before he even realized he was playing.

  The second game had been worse. A deck of cards. A simple rule. Find the one that matches. But the moment Elias reached for a card, it changed. The symbols flickered, shifted, blurred—always just out of reach, always just barely wrong. No matter how certain he was, the moment he touched a card, it was never what he thought it was. And that was when he understood. This wasn’t a game of skill. It was a game of control. Not over the cards. Over him.

  The moment he believed in an outcome, the moment he thought he understood the rules—the game rewrote itself around him. He lost. Again.

  Sera stood behind him, silent. She had been watching the whole time. She could see through every trick, every deception, every shift in the game’s rules. She had known from the beginning. She had said nothing. Not because she didn’t care. But because she wasn’t meant to be the one playing. They had been guided into this. Manipulated, naturally. And Elias—Elias was running out of time.

  The dealer smiled beneath his mask, shuffling the deck once more. “Shall we continue?”

  Elias clenched his jaw. He could feel Sera behind him, ready to step in, ready to break the game apart, to stop this before it went any further. But Elias—Elias was tired. Tired of running. Tired of losing. Tired of being toyed with by powerful beings at every turn. He was tired of being the one who never got to choose.

  So he did something reckless. Something stupid. Something Sera hadn’t expected. He bet everything.

  “My turn,” Elias said. His voice was steady. Too steady. Sera stiffened, her eyes snapping to him. “Elias—”

  Elias didn’t look at her. He was looking at the dealer. And the dealer— The dealer was grinning. “I wager everything,” Elias said.

  The moment Elias made the wager, the world held its breath.

  It wasn’t just the game that reacted. It was everything. The House of Fate. The air. The unseen forces that had been watching in silence. Even Sera. Even Valen. They felt it.

  Something ancient stirred.

  The game had accepted the bet. There was no turning back.

  Sera’s sharp inhale cut through the heavy silence. “Elias, you—”

  She stopped. Because she saw it in his eyes. The determination. The recklessness. The sheer, unshakable will.

  He was done playing by their rules.

  Elias wasn’t just trying to win. He was trying to take everything back.

  A slow, eerie smile curled beneath the dealer’s mask. “Now that,” the voice purred, “is a wager.”

  The shadows in the room shuddered. The floor beneath them creaked, not with age, but with something alive shifting beneath it. The very fabric of the House seemed to ripple as if the wager had sent a shockwave through reality itself.

  Valen, ever composed, had gone completely still. His dark eyes flickered with something unreadable. Not shock. Not fear. Recognition.

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  He understood exactly what had just happened.

  And he knew, just as well as Sera did, that there was no force in the world—no fate, no divine hand—that could interfere now.

  Elias was on his own.

  The dealer flicked his wrist. The deck of cards snapped into existence, suspended between his fingers like a living thing. The air around them crackled with something more than magic. Something fundamental.

  The final game had begun.

  Elias didn’t hesitate.

  He reached out—

  The world twisted.

  The moment his fingertips neared the deck, the space around him warped. His vision blurred. The cards flickered, shifting mid-air, warping through endless combinations of symbols, numbers, and illusions.

  The trickery had begun.

  The House was trying to drown him in doubt, to twist his mind before he could make a move.

  It was the dice all over again. It was the shifting cards. It was deception in its purest form.

  And for a moment—just a moment—it almost worked.

  Elias felt himself slip. He felt his senses distort, the world around him becoming unreal, fluid, ungraspable—

  Then—

  Something inside him snapped.

  A spark. A click. A revelation.

  He saw through it.

  Not just the trickery. The mechanism.

  The game had never been about chance. It had never been about skill. It was about control.

  Not over the cards.

  Over him.

  Elias exhaled slowly.

  The air around him shivered. The illusions wavered—just for an instant. But an instant was all he needed.

  He moved.

  The dealer’s masked face didn’t change. But his fingers twitched.

  Elias flipped the card.

  A perfect match.

  The House lurched. The shadows fractured.

  Sera let out a sharp breath. Relief.

  The dealer laughed. A real laugh. A delighted, genuine laugh.

  The deck vanished from his fingers. The table beneath them melted away.

  And then—

  The world broke apart.

  Not like a collapse.

  Like a curtain being pulled back.

  Like the very fabric of the game had peeled away, revealing something deeper, something waiting beneath it all along.

  The air changed—warm, salt-kissed, thick with the sound of waves.

  Elias blinked.

  They were standing on a beach.

  And sitting at the edge of the waves—

  Him.

  Dolos.

  He looked human.

  But something about him felt wrong. Unreal.

  His presence was effortless like he had always been there. His hair was tousled, dark, and sunlit at once, shifting between colors like the trick of a flame. His skin was bronzed, kissed by a light that didn’t quite match the sky above. His eyes—golden, sharp, endless—held a thousand unreadable stories, each more dangerous than the last.

  And his smile—lazy, easy, amused—was the kind of smile that could break empires.

  He was beautiful.

  But he was not safe.

  Elias’s pulse quickened. Sera tensed beside him.

  Dolos stretched, rolling his shoulders as if he had just woken from a long, pleasant nap. His robes shimmered, woven from something darker than twilight, lighter than mist.

  “Now,” he drawled, propping an elbow on his knee, grinning. “Wasn’t that fun?”

  Elias didn’t answer.

  His heart was still hammering in his chest, the aftershock of the wager still thrumming through his bones.

  Fun?

  Dolos had almost taken everything—his past, his present, his future—as a bet. He had gambled himself. And yet, Dolos acted like this was nothing more than a pleasant afternoon game.

  Sera was the first to move.

  Her posture was rigid and controlled. But Elias could feel the tension rolling off her. She wasn’t just wary—she was furious.

  Not that it mattered.

  Dolos was still lounging there, completely unconcerned. The waves kissed the shore just behind him, reflecting a sky that shouldn’t exist. It wasn’t day. It wasn’t night. It wasn’t anything Elias could name.

  The world they had stepped into didn’t follow rules.

  It laughed at them.

  Dolos tilted his head, golden eyes locking onto Elias. “Come on,” he coaxed, voice smooth, almost kind. “You can’t tell me you weren’t entertained.”

  Elias swallowed hard. He couldn't deny there was something about that moment that made his blood boil, he felt in control it was amazing “Yeah. I had almost lost but it was incredible.”

  Dolos laughed, sitting up straighter. “ HAHAHA!!. Good, good. You’re learning.”

  Sera’s voice was sharp. “Enough.”

  Dolos turned to her, and his expression shifted. With Something more like curiosity.

  Elias didn’t know what he had expected. But when Dolos spoke again, it wasn’t as jovial as before.

  “I didn’t rig the game, you know,” he said, almost thoughtful. “It was fair.”

  Sera’s jaw clenched. “Fair?”

  Dolos leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. “Did I cheat?”

  Dolos hadn’t cheated.

  Every trick, every shift, every illusion—according to him had been part of the game. He had never forced Elias to bet what he did. He had never altered the rules.

  Elias choose to loose himself in it.

  And that was what made the game terrifying.

  Sera crossed her arms not finding this amusing. “You stack the deck so that you always win.”

  Dolos grinned. “Now, now. If I always won, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?

  Both Sera and Elias knew he was bullshitting by this point

  Elias had won by luck and even wasn't sure if he could do that again

  Somehow, against all odds—he had seen through the trickery.

  And here dolos was trying to take credit for it, he watched them, with a knowing smile. “That little moment you had back there,” he mused. “That realization.”

  Elias’ stomach turned.

  Dolos smirked. “it felt good right? You could always feel that way if you just tell me, how you saw through the trickery?”

  Sera stepped forward, cutting through the conversation. “Enough of your games,” she snapped. “What do you want?”

  Dolos blinked. Then, slowly—he grinned.

  “Want?” he echoed, placing a hand over his chest as if wounded. “Now, that’s an interesting question.”

  Elias narrowed his eyes. “So answer it.”

  Dolos sighed dramatically. Then, in an instant, he was standing.

  He hadn’t moved.

  Hadn’t stepped forward.

  He was just there, suddenly too close, towering over them with an easy, predatory amusement.

  “You’re in my world,” he murmured, voice softer now. More dangerous. “That means you play by my rules.”

  Elias held his ground.

  Sera didn’t move.

  Dolos smiled. “And the game,”he said, “isn’t over yet.”

  One last game try and trick me the god of deception and trickery you only have a day to do so or you lose everything

  Bringing out a giganticlock from nowhere . The game has begun or so he thought