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The air in Lost Vegas was a static field of pulverized regret, smelling of ozone and dead neon. Above, the skeletal lattice of the Luxor pyramid stood sentinel over the ruin, its infamous beam—the one that had torn open reality during the Great Reckoning—now a choked, dark scar against the oily, perpetual twilight.
Below the cracked asphalt, in the silent depths of a forgotten casino vault, the remnants of order gathered. They were the Discarded, and they had peeled themselves free from the tyranny of two dimensions to fight for a flawed, three-dimensional world they hadn’t asked for.
They were not flesh and blood, not entirely. The Ace of Diamonds was a spire of crystalline mathematics, its points too sharp for the world. The Jack of Clubs moved with the jerky, angular rhythm of a hastily rendered sprite, struggling against the fluidity of a physical run. They were perfect, elegant geometry, now smudged by shadow and the chaos of depth.
In the center of the vault stood The Suicide King.
He was the bridge. Where the others had been wrenched from their paper prisons, he had walked, a creature of calculated symmetry undone by mercy. His face, traditionally clean and whole, was now bisected by the angle of his own blade, but in this world, that stroke wasn’t self-inflicted—it was a scar from the rift itself, a permanent reminder of the in-between. His single visible eye, an obsidian slit in the white space of his face, focused on the vault door.
“They’re above us,” whispered the Queen of Spades, her dark cloak rippling as if still bound by the laws of a windless screen. “Seth’s marauders. The undead are hunting.”
Since the God of Chaos, Seth, had been loosed from the Metaverse, reality had become a cruel, lawless game. The King didn’t speak with a voice, but with a presence—a low, humming distortion in the air that rattled the remaining glass in the vault.
They seek the flush. The perfect symmetry.
He shifted his grip on the blade that had defined him for five millennia. It felt heavy in his new hand, solid and real, no longer just a flat symbol.
A booming sound echoed from the level above, followed by a wet, rattling scream. Seth’s abominations had found a way in.
The King stepped forward, the perfect, inverted heart symbol on his chest a beacon in the gloom. He had been a prisoner, a pattern on a card, but freedom was found not in escape, but in embracing the third dimension—the risk of the depth, the curve of the chaos.
“Joker,” the King commanded, the humming presence sharp and clear.
From the shadows, two figures emerged: the Joker, a chaotic swirl of mismatched color and impossibility. One wore a grin carved from madness; the other, a mask of total, terrifying emptiness.
“One and two, Your Majesty,” chirped the grinning Joker, bowing low enough to scrape its hat on the floor. “Ready to deal the ruin.”
The Suicide King nodded once, a gesture that was at once kingly and utterly deadly. He was not leading a line of soldiers; he was commanding a geometry of war. They moved towards the sound, the perfect, linear patterns of the Discarded rushing into the messy, swirling dark.
