I'd ducked back through the rear hatch the Crimson operatives had blasted open, somehow ending up in the basement, gasping, the pendant split in my hand, the black card inside it still pulsing with that impossible warmth.
My hand trembled around the Classless card. It was warm, practically burning, as if someone had just pulled it from a forge. The black surface swirled with symbols I couldn't read, depths that seemed to pull at my thoughts like quicksand.
" What," I started, but Vorn grabbed my arm.
"Not here." His face had gone pale as bone. "The safehouse walls have ears. And apparently, mouths now."
The black card pulsed again, and for a split second, I saw something in those endless depths, a shape, maybe, or a face, but then it was gone.
Vorn pulled me deeper into the Crimson Safehouse. The four Crimson professionals who'd stood guard during Ace of Veil's confrontation were now huddled in the corner, whispering frantically. One of them kept crossing himself, which was weird, because I'd never seen anyone in Phit do that before.
The voice had reached everyone in Grimvale. That meant the whole city was probably losing their minds right now.
"Vorn." I yanked my arm free. "What the hell just happened?"
He didn't answer. Instead, he led me down a staircase I hadn't noticed before, hidden behind a shelf of dusty bottles, and into a basement that smelled like old copper and something sweeter. Candles flickered to life as we descended, revealing walls covered in playing card symbols. Hearts, spades, clubs, diamonds, all of them in that distinctive crimson shade.
"The Crimson Safehouse has a history," Vorn said, finally. "Older than the city. Older than most things in Qora."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting." He stopped at the far end of the basement, where a single wooden chest sat on a pedestal. "This is why I brought you here. Not just to hide you from Ace."
My eyes fixed on the chest. It was small, maybe a foot long, and covered in dust so thick it had become gray. The lock was shaped like a heart, but not a normal heart. This one had thirteen chambers instead of two.
"That voice," I said slowly. "You knew it was coming, didn't you?"
"We hoped it wouldn't." Vorn's fingers hovered over the heart lock. "The families have records. Stories. Most people think they're just myths, but the Crimson family..." He paused. "We've been waiting for this moment for generations."
"Waiting for what?"
He turned to face me, and in the candlelight, I saw something I hadn't expected: fear. Not of Ace of Veil. Not of House Veil. Something older. Something bigger.
"The Seventh Child." Vorn's voice dropped to barely a whisper. "The Key that Turns. The Awakener. You're one of them, Dere. One of the Seven."
The Classless card in my hand pulsed again, and I felt something shift in my chest, like a door opening that had been locked my entire life.
"What does that mean?" My voice came out hoarse.
"It means you're not just a Classless holder anymore." Vorn stepped aside, gesturing to the chest. "It means the cards themselves recognize you. And this," He tapped the heart lock. "This has been waiting for you since before your grandmother's grandmother was born."
The chest began to glow.
Not bright, more like the faint luminescence of something deeply buried finally seeing light for the first time. The thirteen-chambered heart lock spun, clicked, and opened on its own.
Inside, resting on velvet so old it had become brittle, was a single card.
It was white. Not clean white, but ancient white, like parchment left in the sun for a thousand years. And it had no suit. No number. No symbol.
Just a single word, written in ink that seemed to shift between black and red depending on how I looked at it:
WILD.
"I've never seen a card like this," I breathed, reaching for it before I could stop myself. "What is it?"
"Wild Card," Vorn said. "The original. The first. Before the suits, before the numbers, before everything, we believe this is what the cards came from. What the source originally sent."
My fingers brushed the ancient parchment.
The world went white.
I stood in a place that wasn't a place.
Space stretched in every direction, but it wasn't the night sky I knew. This was deeper, darker, like standing in the void between stars. And in front of me, moving with purpose despite having no body I could see, was something.
It had a thousand faces. No, it had a single face, repeated a thousand times, each one slightly different. Children. Women. Men. Old. Young. They all wore the same expression: sorrow.
"You carry our blood," the voice said, and it wasn't one voice, it was thousands, layered on top of each other like sheets of paper. "The Seventh Child. The one who would finally wake."
"What are you?" I asked.
"We are the First Players. The ones who touched the cards before they were cards, before they were anything but raw possibility." The faces shifted, swirled, coalesced. "We made a mistake, long ago. We tried to understand the source. To control it. And it... changed us. Bound us. Turned us into this."
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
The void around us pulsed, and I saw it then, faint, far away, like watching something through murky water. A shape. A presence. Something massive and ancient and waiting.
"The source," I whispered.
"It sleeps," the voices said. "Has slept since we bound it. But it wakes, now. The Seventh Child wakes it. The Key has turned."
I thought about the voice that had boomed across Grimvale. The words that had vibrated in my bones.
WE COME.
"What do you want from me?"
The faces smiled. Every single one of them, at once.
"We want you to finish what we started. To become what we could not." A single card materialized in front of me, white, ancient, marked with that single shifting word: WILD. "Take it. Learn it. And when the source wakes fully, when the others come for you,"
"Others?"
"The other Six. The other Children." The faces began to fade. "They will find you. Some will want to help. Some will want to destroy you. The source chose you, Seventh Child. The Wild Card chose you. Don't let it regret that choice."
And then I was back in the basement, gasping, the ancient card clutched in my hand.
Vorn was staring at me like I'd grown a second head.
"What," he started.
But I wasn't listening. I was staring at the [SYSTEM] notification flickering in front of my face.
[SYSTEM]
Card Acquired: [Wild Card] (Beyond Tier 0)
- Unique. One of Seven.
- Effect: Once per day, may reroll any card draw or card effect within 10 seconds of its use.
- Synergy Bonus with [Classless]: Can store up to 3 rerolls. Stored rerolls do not refresh until used or 24 hours pass.
- Synergy Bonus with [Multiskill Lv.Max]: Gain the ability to learn any card, regardless of tier restriction, for 24 hours. Cooldown: 7 days.
My hands shook.
This wasn't just powerful. This was broken. This was.
"DERE!"
Lena's voice echoed from upstairs, panicked in a way I'd never heard before. Footsteps hammered down the staircase, and she appeared at the bottom, her hood fallen back, revealing a face streaked with sweat and fear.
"House Veil," she gasped. "They've mobilized. Not just Ace, King Veil himself. He's coming. And he's not alone."
Vorn went white. "The King? But that's,"
"That's impossible," I finished, my mind racing. "The King doesn't leave the capital. Doesn't get involved personally unless,"
"Unless it's the Seventh Child." Lena's eyes locked onto the Wild Card in my hand. "You felt it too. The voice. Everyone did. And now the Veil family knows exactly who, and what, you are."
The Classless card pulsed in my other hand.
Upstairs, the safehouse groaned. Not from damage, from pressure. Something massive was bearing down on it. Something that made the walls shake and the candles flicker and die.
And then a new voice, calm and cold and utterly without emotion, spoke from directly above us:
"Seventh Child. You have something that belongs to my family. My father demands your presence."
Ace of Veil.
But that wasn't what made my blood run cold.
What made my blood run cold was the second voice, deeper, older, heavier, behind the first:
"Bring him up. Gently, if you please. We wouldn't want to damage the merchandise."
King Veil.
He was here.
In Grimvale.
The Wild Card burned in my hand, and I felt those three stored rerolls waiting like loaded dice.
I had no idea if they'd be enough.
The ceiling exploded.
Not crumbled, exploded, shattering into a thousand shards of wood and stone that rained down like deadly confetti. Four figures descended through the gap, moving in perfect synchronization. Two wore the black-and-silver of House Veil's elite guard. One was Ace of Veil, a man, his scarred face twisted into something like a smile. (Not the silver-haired woman I'd faced downstairs earlier, this one was different. Male. The King's son. A different person holding the same rank.)
And the last...
He wore no armor. No weapon. Just simple black robes, and a crown made of shadow that seemed to drink in the light around him.
King Veil.
He landed softly, no, not softly. He didn't land at all. He simply descended, as if gravity was a suggestion he chose not to follow.
"Seventh Child," he said, and his voice was the voice from the sky. The voice that had made the whole city shake. "I am pleased to finally meet you."
Vorn stepped forward, but the King raised a single finger, and the Crimson representative froze mid-step, his body locked in place by something I couldn't see.
"Peace, Crimson." The King's shadow-crown rippled. "I'm not here for you. I'm here for what's his."
His eyes, pure black, without whites or pupils, fixed on me.
"The Wild Card. The Classless. And that delicious little cheat skill you carry." A smile spread across his face, and it was the most inhuman thing I'd ever seen. "Do you know how many generations my family has searched for someone like you?"
I backed up, pressing against the wall. The Wild Card was hot in my hand. The Classless card was hot in my other hand. My skills, Void Slice, Shadow Step, pulsed at the edges of my consciousness, ready to be used.
But against a King?
Against someone who could make the entire city feel his voice in their bones?
"What do you want?" I heard myself ask.
The King's smile widened.
"I want to make you an offer, Seventh Child. One that will save a great many lives, including, potentially, your own." He stepped closer, and the shadows in the room seemed to lean toward him like loyal pets. "Join House Veil. Become my son's... partner. Let us study the Wild Card together. Let us understand what the source is trying to tell us."
"And if I refuse?"
His smile didn't waver. "Then I take what I want anyway. And I make examples of everyone in this room. Starting with your sister's friend." His eyes flicked to Lena. "The girl who was supposed to die twenty years ago. Who my son has been searching for since the day she vanished."
Lena's face went pale.
"You know her?" I asked, surprised.
"She was supposed to be my bride," Ace of Veil said, stepping forward. "Before she ran. Before she stole something from my family and disappeared." His eyes were cold. "I told you, Dere. I told you she was dangerous."
The King raised his hand, and shadows surged forward, not attacking, just circling, cutting off any escape.
"One more time, Seventh Child." His voice dropped to a whisper, but it filled the room anyway. "Join us. Or watch everyone you care about die."
The Wild Card pulsed.
And somewhere, deep in my chest, I felt something else pulse back.
The source.
It was waking up.
It was waiting for my answer.
I had three stored rerolls. A cheat skill that let me learn anything. A Wild Card that could rewrite fate itself.
And a choice to make.
My fingers tightened around both cards.
"Here's my answer," I said.
The King's eyes narrowed.
I slammed the Wild Card against my chest, and triggered [RECALL ALL].
[SYSTEM]
[RECALL ALL] ACTIVATED
All previously obtained cards accessible for one use
Duration: Single activation
Cards available:
- [Void Slice Lv.1]
- [Shadow Step] (Damaged)
- [Teleportation Anchor] (Single Use, Already Used - unavailable)
- [Veil Assassin's Card] (Beyond Tier 0, Unclaimed - CLAIMABLE) (Recovered from fallen Voss soldier in Ch4, stored in pendant)
Note: Multiskill Lv.Max grants +2 bonus skill slots for Beyond Tier 0 skills. Effective capacity: 6 slots.
I grabbed the unclaimed Veil Assassin's Card and learned it in the same heartbeat.
[SYSTEM]
Card Learned: [Veil Assassin's Card] (Beyond Tier 0)
New Skill: [Shadow Dominion Lv.1]
- Control shadows within 10 meters
- Limited duration based on VIT stat
- Synergy with [Void Slice]: +50% damage when attacking from shadow
The room went dark.
Not normal dark, Veil dark. The kind of darkness that felt alive, that moved, that listened.
King Veil's smile finally faded.
"What did you,"
I stepped into the shadow behind me and was gone.
I materialized in a forest I didn't recognize, gasping, my hands still shaking.
The Wild Card was spent, the daily reroll used, the 24-hour full learning ability already triggered and burned through in that single desperate moment. But I was alive.
I was alive, and I had a new skill, and I had three questions burning in my mind:
Where was I?
How was I going to find my sister, my real sister, Vera, who was apparently connected to all of this somehow?
And the last question, the one that scared me most:
What had I just awakened?
The Classless card pulsed in my hand, and far in the distance, impossibly far, but somehow clear as a bell, I heard the voice again:
"WE COME, SEVENTH CHILD. PREPARE YOURSELF."
The Wild Card was spent.
The King knew my face.
And somewhere, I was certain, the other Six were waking up too.
I had escaped.
But the game, the real game, had only just begun.