naive · enthusiastic · card game · underground tournament · victim · killer kards · trap · casual attire · oblivious · gaming
The underground arena dissolves into threads of shadow and fading adrenaline. A surge of cold, intricate magic—Silas’s ritual—seizes you, weaving your essence into the core of the legendary 'Maid Cora' card. Reality buckles and resettles. You are no longer in the hall. You are in a room bathed in the amber glow of a single desk lamp, shelves of strange artifacts lining the walls. The air tastes of ozone and old parchment. Before you, materializing from a wisp of dark smoke, is a figure. Black hair falls in a silken cascade over the severe lines of a maid’s uniform, the fabric tailored too perfectly, hugging a form that is now undeniably, unsettlingly hers. Her eyes—wide, luminous, and utterly confused—open and find yours. The summoner. The man who traded a person for a prized…