"My prince! My prince, wake up!"
Kael dreamt of neon haze and broken hands; of poker chips scattered across velvet tables, liquor staining cracked linoleum, and sweat clinging to the air. Somewhere in that blur of memory and motion, he remembered losing so catastrophically, so utterly, that it forced him to run.
Screams, distant and hollow, bled through the remnants of sleep, and for a brief, harrowing moment, he thought he was still there, trapped in that warehouse with a pistol inches from his skull.
"Prince Kael, the wall is breached!"
His eyes snapped open to find a man clad in rust-stained armor shaking him by the shoulders. The metal plates rattled with every movement, worn and mismatched like salvaged pieces from some forgotten battlefield reenactment.
Kael blinked, his thoughts slow to form. "Who the hell is Kael?" he rasped.
The man froze mid-shake, his expression shifting in a way Kael couldn't decipher. What he did notice was how absurd he looked. The armor, dented and disjointed, looked like it came from a budget costume rental.
He laughed under his breath. "What are you wearing, Comic-Con knight edition?"
A shout rang out from somewhere to the left. Both men turned instinctively, and smoke began to coil through the air, thick and acrid. Figures moved within it, silhouettes of armed men, their outlines too solid for actors.
"We'll cover your escape, but you must go now," the man said, gripping Kael's shoulder harder.
"Wait, what is this? Are we in a film set? Am I being pranked?"
"Move, Prince Kael. Now."
Kael stumbled upright. The armor weighed on him heavily, as though it belonged to someone else. His knees nearly buckled under its unfamiliar mass. A sword protruded from the ground nearby, its hilt stained with a red liquid that gleamed wet in the low light which suspiciously looked like blood.
The earth vibrated beneath him. Somewhere in the distance, something growled.
Instinct overruled confusion. He jerked away from the man, his footing uneven, his right arm sluggish.
Then four glowing cards burst into the air without warning. They hovered in a precise arc in front of him. Their edges glowed red, the symbols on their faces shifting faintly with a pulse. They remained suspended as if unaffected by gravity.
Kael froze.
Cards?
"Okay... I did not drink that much," he muttered.
Behind him, a low growl rumbled.
"Prince Kael," came another voice from atop the stone wall. "It is coming. Get away from him."
Kael turned and swallowed his shout as something is definitely coming towards him.
The creature was a grotesque distortion of form. Its jaws split sideways like a broken mask, revealing too many teeth. It had no discernible face, only a pair of black orbs, which seemed to be its eyes.
The soldier rushed forward to intercept, blade shaking.
"Run, my prince."
"Me?" He pointed at himself. "Seriously?"
"RUN NOW!" He shouted as the monster took up its pace.
The beast surged forward, a blur of claws and muscle. Steel clashed against its hide with a sickening grind, followed by a cry of impact. Kael did not wait to see who fell. He turned and bolted, legs pumping through instinct alone.
Where the hell am I?
The courtyard dissolved into chaos. Soldiers clashed with monsters. Kael sprinted across the mud-slick ground, dodging corpses and barrels, stumbling over a discarded helmet. No coherent thought remained, only movement.
Another beast, this one with scythe-like arms, burst through a gate ahead destroying the only hope he had of escaping this hellish dream.
"Nope," Kael snapped, spinning on his heel.
He slipped as his hand struck one of the hovering cards.
The Ace.
[Card Activated: BLOODLINE BOOST - PASSIVE]
(Agility + Strength Enhanced.)
The card ignited in gold light and shot into his chest.
His body recalibrated in an instant. The weight vanished from his limbs, replaced by a startling lightness that bordered on surreal. He surged forward, vaulted a crate with effortless grace, and landed without a sound.
The same wolf-creature lunged again, claws slashing through air. Kael rolled, struck a wall, and came to his feet in one seamless motion. He blinked as there was no pain. He glanced back at the arc of cards.
Did that do something?
He ducked behind a cart, panting. The Ace card had gone gray, now three remained glowing red.
A distant howl echoed. He moved.
His heartbeat surged, driven by something deeper than fear. It felt primal. The mud slid from his boots, the air bent around him and the battlefield blurred with how fast he moved.
He wove between soldier and monsters fighting, dodging blades mid-air, and leaping barrels.
"Too real. Way too real."
A tail slammed into his ribs, and in an instant, everything fractured as his body was hurled backward through the cart.
Blood filled his throat as he coughed, pain exploding through his side and spreading outward like fire, so intense and focused that it drowned out everything else and forced him to acknowledge this was no dream.
He froze as it turned toward him—a hulking brute with two sickle-like claws twitching at its sides and a barbed tail the width of a man's torso, dragging behind it like a wrecking chain. The tail alone had bent his armor, curling back now like a scorpion ready to strike. Its gaze, twin pits of molten fury, locked onto him with a focus that made survival feel optional.
"RUN, YOUR HIGHNESS!"
A nearby soldier threw himself into the beast's path, but it was not enough; the creature's claws tore through armor and bone alike, and the man's scream was sharp and short-lived, cut off by the final crunch of collapsing ribs.
Kael did not know the man's name, nor did he understand why someone would die for him, but in that moment, his hand flew to the next card as the monster ran towards him.
[Card 2 Activated: Counter Reflex - PASSIVE]
Before conscious thought could form, his body reacted; he rolled sideways just as a claw struck the earth beside him, seized a broken spear in one hand, and drove it backward into the creature's abdomen without aim or technique.
The beast shrieked, its cry shrill and wounded, then staggered back, limbs flailing in panic. The broken spear jutted grotesquely from its abdomen, swaying with each desperate movement. With a ragged snarl, it turned and fled, dragging its injured frame across the blood-slick ground.
Kael collapsed again, gasping for air, his breathing shallow and uneven as he stared at the unfamiliar hands trembling in front of him.
He looked at the Ace and Two cards hovered dull and inert. Only Three and Four remained glowing.
A growl, deeper and more guttural than the last, echoed across the courtyard.
"Okay," he muttered. "If this next card doesn't summon a tank, teleport me, or throw a punch on my behalf, I'm gonna shit my pants."
He struck Card Three.
[Card 3 Activated: Awareness Pulse]
A luminous ring unfolded beside the card, rotating with mechanical precision as the numbers within ticked upward from one to sixty-four; upon reaching the final count, the ring vanished.
[Probability: 64% – SUCCESS]
A golden pulse radiated from his chest.
Kael's perception sharpened. He saw everything: a monster crouching behind a crate, another already mid-leap with its blade arcing toward him.
Time stretched.
He moved, seizing a discarded shield, raising it just in time.
The impact landed with a forceful clang, sending Kael crashing onto his back as the breath wrenched from his lungs. The shield he had barely managed to raise was torn from his grip, clattering across the ground out of reach.
It roared and raised its claws.
Kael reached for Card Four.
[Card 4 Activated: Reverse Snap]
[Probability: 80% – SUCCESS]
The beast struck, but the force of its own attack rebounded, reversing through space with unnatural precision until its claws tore across its own torso, shredding its body in an exact replica of the motion intended for him.
The creature collapsed.
Kael exhaled sharply, adrenaline still flooding his system. "Did I just uno-reverse a monster? Hell yes."
All four cards now hovered in muted gray.
Without warning, a new wave of pain erupted through his body as something pierced him from behind with brutal force.
He looked down slowly, struggling to focus, and saw the steel head of an arrow protruding from his shoulder, the metal glistening wetly as blood streamed down his arm in thick rivulets.
"What a shitty luck," he hissed, staggering sideways before collapsing to his knees.
A fifth card materialized, its glow deeper and more saturated than the rest, bearing a twisted crest shaped like a blooming flower crowned with thorns: the Jack of Flowers.
[Status: UNLOCKED]
[Condition Met: Near-Death Trigger]
His breath came in ragged bursts. Vision swam at the edges. The battlefield around him continued in bursts of color and steel. A nearby soldier fought to hold the line, but it was clear he would not last.
Kael's eyes dropped to the new card and quickly tapped on it.
A faint message blinked beside it:
[Face Card Detected – 50% Probability. Flip Coin to Attempt Summon.]
[Flip failed: Summon unavailable. Cooldown enforced. Deck locked for 5 minutes.]
His fingers hovered over the Lucky Coin now resting beneath the arc, and when he tapped it, the coin flipped through the air slowly, deliberately, as if measuring the weight of fate itself.
It landed on heads. He smiled through the pain.
The Jack ignited.
A pillar of fire tore open the space in front of him.
From the rift stepped a skeletal knight, towering and grim, dragging a rusted blade that etched the ground behind it while fire burned within its hollow eyes.
The battlefield seemed to shudder as the air thickened with heat. For one impossible second, everything stopped—blades mid-swing, breath held, blood suspended. Even the monsters surrounding him, snarling and in motion, froze where they stood, their gazes locked on the figure stepping through flame.
Kael, half-conscious and bleeding heavily, watched as the armored figure faced the advancing beast. His chest gave out beneath him, and he collapsed face-first into the dirt.
"If this is a dream," he whispered, breath barely audible, "I need to fucking wake up."