The instant I glimpsed the box’s contents, I began to laugh—even brighter than before, louder, more unhinged, the sound filling the balcony space with enough manic energy to make several stray bystanders actually jump at the sheer hysteria radiating from my general direction.
It was the laughter of someone who’d just found the missing piece they hadn’t known they were searching for—and realized, with giddy certainty, that the universe had made a terrible mistake by letting it fall into their hands.
Willow, on the other hand, looked downright terrified of the object in front of her—which was saying something, considering she was a succubus who’d probably seen things that would make mortal minds dissolve into gibbering puddles.
Her wine-dark skin had gone a shade paler, her emerald eyes blown wide with something approaching genuine fear. Her fingers trembled where they hovered over the box’s edge, as though its contents might spontaneously develop teeth, lunge forward, and bite her out of spite.
"That’s—that can’t be—there’s no way—" she stammered, words tripping over themselves in their desperate escape from her mouth. "Loona, do you have any idea what that is? What it could do if you—if someone—oh gods, this is impossible, this shouldn’t even exist outside of—" She looked up at me with genuine concern flooding her features. "Please tell me you’re not planning to actually use that thing."
"It’s perfect!" I exclaimed, ignoring her terror with the cheerful disregard of someone who’d decided caution was for people with functioning survival instincts. "This is exactly what I need for the final phase of my plan. Absolutely perfect. Better than perfect, actually—this is perfect’s overachieving cousin who shows up to family gatherings and makes everyone feel inadequate."
I snapped the box shut with decisive finality, the sound echoing far more ominously than it had any right to. Even as the latch clicked into place, my thoughts were already racing ahead, assembling contingencies and sequences with the kind of mental speed that usually preceded either brilliant success or spectacular disaster—and honestly, at this point in my life, I’d learned to appreciate both outcomes equally.
"Willow," I said, turning back to her with sudden focus, "I need you to find me a blindfold. Quickly, preferably before my brain decides this plan has too many variables and starts second-guessing itself."
She blinked, clearly puzzled by the request, then tilted her head in that particular way that always meant she was trying—valiantly—to connect dots that stubbornly refused to acknowledge one another’s existence.
The confusion was genuine, almost endearing, her gaze flicking briefly to the box and then back to me as though hoping one of us might provide an explanatory diagram.
"A... blindfold?" she repeated slowly, as though testing whether the word meant what she thought it meant. "For what purpose, exactly? Are we adding sensory deprivation to tonight’s festivities? Because I have to say, the evening’s already been quite eventful without—"
"Just get it," I interrupted gently. "Trust me. Or don’t trust me and get it anyway out of morbid curiosity about what fresh chaos I’m orchestrating. Either motivation works."
She slipped off to oblige, disappearing into the crowd with practiced ease, and I used the brief solitude to take several deep breaths and remind myself that yes, this plan was absolutely insane, and yes, I was going to do it anyway because sanity was overrated and I’d already committed to being the kind of person who made terrible decisions look stylish.
Moments later, Willow returned carrying a blindfold that looked... suspicious. Deeply suspicious, the kind of object that arrived preloaded with implications you didn’t want answers to.
The fabric was stained with fluids I’d rather not identify—some clear, some emphatically not, all of them strongly suggesting this particular accessory had lived a long, enthusiastic life in contexts that had absolutely nothing to do with wholesome party games or innocent bouts of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.
It dangled from her fingers like evidence from a crime scene, swaying slightly with each step, and I realized with mounting horror that I could actually smell
I raised a brow slowly, deliberately, my expression doing all the heavy lifting of a very long, very pointed commentary on her sourcing methods and personal standards.
Willow met it without flinching, lifting one elegant brow in return, her emerald eyes gleaming with open challenge.
"You said quickly," she pointed out with infuriating logic. "You didn’t specify clean. If you wanted pristine linens fresh from a noble’s trousseau, you should’ve been more specific in your request parameters."
I took it with a smirk anyway, because beggars couldn’t be choosers and also because the look on her face suggested she was waiting for me to complain so she could mock me. I refused her that satisfaction on principle. Some battles were won not by resistance, but by denying the other party the emotional payoff they so clearly craved.
"Fair point," I conceded, holding the blindfold at arm’s length. "Though next time maybe aim for ’questionable’ rather than ’biohazard’ on the cleanliness spectrum."
"Where’s the fun in that?" she shot back without missing a beat.
I didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, I tucked the blindfold into my pocket with surgical care, employing two fingers and a palpable sense of self-preservation—grabbed the box with its impossibly valuable contents, and stalked off toward Jazmin’s empty private quarters with the determined stride of someone about to do something either breathtakingly brilliant or catastrophically stupid.
The curtained entrance brushed aside witha flourish as I stepped through, sealing me off from the noise and spectacle beyond. I settled onto the bed, placing the box carefully in front of me, the blindfold laid out beside it with deliberate separation. I took one steadying breath, rolled my shoulders, and let the moment settle.
Then I got to work.
What followed was hours of ruthless, unforgiving concentration—the kind that hollowed out my skull and wrung my thoughts dry until my brain felt less like an organ and more like a damp cloth being twisted for its last miserable drops.
The world narrowed to just me, the object, and the increasingly complex series of steps required to accomplish what I was attempting.
Time became meaningless. My back ached. My eyes burned. My fingers developed tremors from the sustained tension. But I kept going because stopping would mean admitting this might be impossible, and I’d built my entire personality around refusing to acknowledge impossibility as a valid concept.
And then—finally, mercifully—I’d done it.
I stumbled out of the room drenched in sweat, lungs dragging in air as though I’d just completed a marathon while burdened with weights and pursued by something with teeth. My muscles trembled with spent effort, my thoughts lagged a step behind reality, and I looked every bit like someone who’d wrestled with fate in a locked room and barely emerged victorious.
My hair had plastered itself to my forehead in damp, rebellious strands, my dress clinging to my skin in ways that were deeply uncomfortable, and I was fairly certain I smelled like concentrated effort distilled through a series of deeply questionable life choices.
Brutus was waiting on the couch, his eyes tracking my disheveled emergence with the kind of expression that suggested he had questions but wasn’t entirely sure he wanted them answered.
"What the hell were you doing in there?" he rumbled, his tone carrying just enough concern to be genuine beneath the mockery. "Actually, wait—don’t answer that. I’m not sure I want to know."
I set the box down on the low table with reverent care. Brutus huffed what might’ve been a smirk—hard to tell with his scarred face, but I’d learned to read the subtle shifts—before gesturing toward the box with a tilt of his head.
"So," he said slowly, "you gonna tell me what’s inside that thing?"
"Our path to victory," I said simply, because some truths lost their impact when explained aloud and also because the look of frustrated curiosity on his face was deeply satisfying.
Before he could press further, I felt the air behind us shift. Willow slipped out of the shadows with infuriating ease, quite literally materializing from the darkness like she’d been waiting there the entire time. Which, given her talents and temperament, she almost certainly had.
I startled despite myself, a brief, traitorous spike of surprise cutting through my fatigue, and immediately took solace in the fact that I managed not to actually jump or make any sort of undignified noise that could be held against me later.
I breathed a sigh of relief before turning to face her with as much composure as I could muster while still covered in sweat and smelling like I’d been marinading in my own bodily fluids.
"Just on time," I said, passing the box back to her with careful hands. "Return this exactly where you found it. Same position, same angle, same everything. If anyone notices it was moved, this whole plan collapses like a house of cards in a wind tunnel."
Willow nodded without a word—unusual for her, actually, suggesting she understood the gravity of what I was asking—and slipped off into the crowd with the box cradled against her chest like precious cargo.
I drifted back to the balcony railing, my boots clicking against the stone with rhythmic precision, then cast my gaze down into the pit below, where the central sand arena lay spread out beneath me like a miniature desert waiting for something dramatic to happen.
And then I froze.
Because there he was.
Oberen stood in the center of the sand pit flanked by his two Velvet guards—the impossible ones, the ones that shouldn’t exist in private ownership but clearly did because rules apparently didn’t apply when you had enough money to simply ignore them.
He was still dressed in that nauseating green suit draped with that white fur coat, thick and ostentatious, slung across his shoulders like a costume piece borrowed from a play about aristocracy written by someone who’d only ever heard nobles described secondhand.
It screamed wealth without taste, power without restraint, winter nobility filtered through the lens of a man who believed subtlety to be a vice practiced exclusively by the poor.
His white hair caught the golden glow and scattered it in sharp, prismatic flashes—undeniably striking, undeniably deliberate, and undeniably wasted on someone who wielded spectacle like a blunt instrument.
And his expression—gods, that expression—was calm to the point of insolence, confident without effort, entirely unbothered in a way that suggested he not only knew exactly where I was, but had been patiently waiting for the moment I caught up to that fact.
Our eyes met across the distance.
My heart seized for a beat—pure instinct asserting itself without invitation, the prey animal part of my brain recognizing a predator and briefly considering flight as a valid survival strategy—before my lips curved into a wicked smile that probably made me look slightly unhinged but honestly, at this point, that was merely part of my brand.
It was time.
Ever so slowly, like some choreographed sequence orchestrated by forces with a sense of dramatic timing, my crew began to reassemble along the second-floor balcony
They materialized from various corners of the casino carrying satchels of chips that clinked with the musical sound of compressed wealth, of probability bent violently in our favor, their faces flushed with victory and varying degrees of exhausted satisfaction.
Julius counted through each collection with alarming speed, sorting and stacking with a dexterity that bordered on obscene, lips moving silently as he tallied figures only he seemed capable of tracking at that pace.
He barely blinked, barely breathed, lost entirely in the sacred arithmetic of triumph. And when he finally stopped—when the last chip had been counted and the total settled into place—his eyes snapped up, wide and gleaming with pure, unfiltered delight.
"We’ve doubled our profits!" he exclaimed, his voice carrying enough volume that several nearby gamblers turned to stare. "Two hundred thousand crowns in total! Saints above, we actually did it!"
The crew erupted into cheers with wholehearted enthusiasm, voices overlapping in celebration, hands slapping shoulders and backs with affectionate force. A few of them actually bounced on their heels, laughing and whooping like children who’d just been told they were going to a carnival where everything was free and made of candy.
I laughed with them—couldn’t help it, the sound bubbling up warm and genuine—before I let my expression settle into something more serious, the kind of face that communicated we weren’t done yet, that victory was close but not secured.
"It’s time," I said quietly. "Oberen’s waiting downstairs. This is it—the final confrontation, the moment everything we’ve built tonight either pays off spectacularly or collapses in our faces. So." I paused, meeting each person’s eyes in turn. "Everyone ready to see how this story ends?"
The crew nodded in unison, their celebration fading into focused determination, already turning toward the stairs that would lead us down to the first floor.
But before anyone could take another step, I whistled—sharp and high, the sound cutting through the ambient noise like a blade—and motioned at Brutus with one finger, beckoning him closer with the kind of gesture that communicated "come here immediately, this is important, don’t make me repeat myself."
Brutus’s brow furrowed with confusion, but he lumbered over anyway, his massive frame cutting through the gathered crew until he stood directly in front of me.
"What now?" he rumbled, his tone suggesting he was already resigned to whatever chaos I was about to unleash.
I leaned in close, standing on my toes slightly to reach his ear, then whispered the instructions that made his expression shift from confusion, to surprise, to something that might’ve been reluctant approval if you squinted hard enough.
When I pulled back, his eyes had widened a fraction—not much, but enough that I knew he understood both what I was asking and why it mattered.
Brutus was quiet for a moment, his jaw working slowly as he turned the request over in his mind, weighing risk against necessity before he gave a single, decisive nod. "Yeah," he said at last. "I can do it." He paused, his gaze locking onto mine. "But how long do I have?"
"However long it takes me to get through the first game," I replied, already turning away. "So don’t dawdle. And Brutus?" I glanced back over my shoulder. "Thanks for the help."
He answered with a low grunt that passed for acknowledgment. "Just leave it to me," he said, peeling off from the group and heading in the opposite direction with purposeful strides.
The crew parted to let him through, several of them shooting questioning glances my way that I ignored with the practiced ease of someone who’d learned that explaining plans beforehand ruined the dramatic impact of their execution.
Together, we descended toward the first floor like an army marching to war—albeit an army that included a theatrical noble, a violent orc, a devious femboy, two chaos gremlins in the form of Willow and Nara, and ten men who’d signed up for this with varying degrees of informed consent.
There was a rhythm to our movement, a shared inevitability, boots striking stone in near-unison as we advanced toward whatever waited below.
The moment my foot crossed the threshold into the central pit, the air itself seemed to shift. It thickened, charged with an almost tangible pressure, as though the arena had drawn a slow breath and was now holding it—watching, waiting, eager to see what happened next.
All around me, casino attendants were moving with frantic efficiency, taking entire tables, slot machines, and roulette wheels into the shadowed alcoves that lined the perimeter, clearing the space with the practiced coordination of people who’d rehearsed this exact transformation more times than they cared to count.
Within minutes, the space was unrecognizable. What had been a riot of lights, noise, and desperate chance was stripped bare, reduced to nothing but an empty arena.
At the center of it all stood Oberen.
His hands were clasped neatly behind his back, posture flawless, the very picture of regal composure.
When he finally spoke, his voice carried effortlessly across the arena, smooth and controlled. It was the voice of a man who’d spent years perfecting the art of sounding reasonable—the kind of tone that made even threats feel like polite suggestions.
"Loona," he began, my name sounding wrong in his mouth—too familiar, too casual, like we were old friends reminiscing over shared drinks instead of enemies standing on the brink of mutually assured ruin. "I must confess, I’m impressed. Genuinely impressed. When you first arrived at my establishment tonight, I thought you were just another desperate fool with delusions of grandeur, another small-time schemer who’d overestimated their abilities and would be bankrupt within the hour."
He smiled then, the expression carrying just enough warmth to be unsettling. "But you’ve exceeded expectations quite dramatically. Infiltrating Byron’s operation, turning his own people against him, orchestrating his downfall—all while simultaneously running a coordinated gambling operation across my casino that’s cost several of my wealthiest patrons significant sums. That takes skill. Intelligence. Audacity."
He paused, letting the words hang in the air. "It also takes significant disrespect for my authority, my property, and my patience. So I find myself in an interesting position—torn between admiring your capabilities and wanting to crush you for daring to challenge me so directly."
He began walking then, circling slowly, his footsteps leaving prints in the sand that disappeared almost immediately as the grains shifted and settled.
"But here’s what I appreciate about you. You understand theater. You understand that sometimes conflicts need to be resolved not through violence or legal maneuvering, but through spectacle—through performances that give everyone involved the satisfaction of seeing skill tested against skill, will tested against will."
His smile widened. "So let’s settle this with a game, shall we?"