The void around them breathed.
Not wind — but luck itself, thick and alive, swirling like invisible smoke.
Rex stood on the chess-patterned floor, his coat flapping from currents that didn't exist. The horizon shimmered like a mirror that couldn't decide what to reflect.
"Okay," he muttered. "So this is either a secret level or I just broke reality with style."
Lia's boots made no sound on the tiles. Her form was stabilizing, bit by bit — as if the further she got from the Dealer, the more human she became.
Her voice was quieter than usual. "You shouldn't be here. The Zero Table isn't a game board. It's… where lost bets go."
"Lost bets?" Rex raised a brow. "So… like an afterlife for gamblers?"
"More like a trash bin for probabilities," Lia said softly, scanning the floating icons — dice, cards, shattered fragments of luck. "This is where broken outcomes drift until they decay."
Rex whistled low. "And here I thought the House was already dramatic."
Lia gave him a look — part scolding, part amused. "You shouldn't joke here. The Zero Table listens."
"Then maybe it'll laugh," he said, grinning.
For a moment, silence stretched — long, tense, electric. Then, unexpectedly, Lia laughed. Not her usual composed, polite chuckle — but an honest, human sound.
It startled them both.
"…You're glitching again," Rex teased.
"Shut up," she said, turning away — but the corner of her mouth didn't quite hide her smile.
Rex took a slow step closer. "You really are different down here."
"I'm… not supposed to feel," she murmured. "The Dealer wrote me as logic. Polite, precise, obedient. But when I'm with you—"
"Reality stops making sense?"
She met his eyes — luminous, uncertain, curious. "Something like that."
The silence between them wasn't awkward — it was alive.
Then the chessboard beneath them rippled.
A ripple became a pulse. A pulse became a heartbeat.
[Warning — Unregistered Player detected.]
[Threat Level: Unquantifiable.]
The tiles darkened. Cards rose from the floor, forming a humanoid shape with a thousand faces of kings and queens.
Lia gasped. "A House Echo… it found us."
Rex cracked his neck, rolling his shoulders. "Looks friendly."
"Friendly?" she hissed. "That's a fragment of the Dealer's will!"
"Then it's about time we introduced ourselves properly."
He reached into his coat, pulling a coin that shimmered between gold and shadow — his Fate Marker.
A grin tugged at his lips.
"House of Odds," he said. "Let's raise the stakes."
The cards screeched like metal. Lia extended her hand, her own code flaring around her. "Rex, don't—!
Too late.
He flicked the coin.
It spun, gleaming, slicing through the void — and the entire Zero Table erupted in brilliant, chaotic light.
When the world finally steadied, Lia was breathing hard, her hand gripping his sleeve.
"You're insane," she whispered.
Rex winked. "Statistically, yeah."
And in the quiet aftermath, the Dealer's voice echoed faintly, amused and distant:
"How fascinating. Even chaos has found something worth protecting."