The molten shard finally cools. Maera reaches for the tongs—then stops. Her hand hovers, trembling just above the surface. “No,” she murmurs. “It’s… finished.”
The card forms not from ash or power, but from silence. The flames dim. The breath-like hiss fades. What remains on the cedar table is a card unlike any I’ve ever seen.
Its face is black, a black that embodies evil, edged with thin veins of red that pulse like they carry a heartbeat. The back is marked with the Armstrong crest. Except, there’s something twisting the symbol—seven rings overlapping the crest, each one etched with strange, unfamiliar glyphs.
Maera steps back. Everyone does. Except for my father. Almost locked in a trance staring at the card.
I reach out, slowly, and pick it up. The moment my fingers touch the edge, it’s like a thousand voices shoot through my veins.
A single word appears on the card’s face, burned into it from the inside:
THE CARD OF SIN
Beneath it, more words begin to etch themselves, curling like smoke across the surface:
Power not shared, but claimed.
A hunger not healed, but fed.
This card bears the weight of seven.
Each sin—yours to wield, and yours to pay.
The card pulses once. I swear I hear a low sound—like breath drawn through teeth.
No one speaks. Then Maera whispers, hoarse, almost afraid:
“What have you brought upon us?”
My fingers tighten around it. Fearful of what this card holds. I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what it means. But I know one thing for certain. This isn’t just a card. This is something much more.
My father pulls me aside. Not harshly—but quick enough to keep eyes from following. Almost like he didn’t want the rest of the family to see. He grabs the Armstrong deck from atop the table, still wrapped in its golden cord, and motions for me to follow him.
We moved into the back room. He closes the door behind us. Doesn’t lock it. Doesn’t speak. Just sets the deck down and gestures for me to sit. I do.
The silence stretches for a moment too long. He stands across from me, eyes fixed not on the card of sin… but on me. On his son. On the one who just broke a legacy without meaning to.
He doesn’t look angry. Just curious. Worried, maybe. But curious above all. Curious as to what this power shall bring. What good could possibly come from a card named Sin?
Before I can say anything, I hear a crash from somewhere deeper in the house. Wood creaking. A thud.
“Must be something fallen from the storm,” I thought to myself, though I can’t be sure.
My father doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t move. Instead, he picks up the Armstrong deck—the one that belonged to our family for generations—and presses it into my hands.
He gives me a kind look. And then he says, quietly, clearly:
“Whatever this power may hold... whatever it may bring you... I know that my Maxime is strong enough to use it for a good reason.”
My father's hand still rests lightly on my shoulder. The words he spoke echo in my head, soft and full of hope.
But outside, something begins to shift.
The wind screams against the walls—high, sharp, unnatural. Not the howl of desert gusts, not even the fury of a sandstorm. It’s... deeper. Like the earth itself is crying out in warning.
The lights in the room flicker. The walls shudder. A low, rumbling groan passes beneath the floorboards.
Then the second crash comes.
Not just wood splintering this time—stone crumbling. Something massive slams into the outside of the house. I hear distant screams. Shouts cut short.
My father rushes to the window and yanks back the curtain. His breath catches in his throat.
I move beside him, slowly, hesitantly.
And I see it.
A shape, half-shrouded in the red-black storm. Towering. Crawling. Slithering. Limbs that aren’t limbs, more like massive roots, or segmented columns of stone, writhing as it moves. Its skin is the color of sunbaked rock, cracked and pulsing with veins of molten gold. It has no eyes—only a gaping vertical maw split across the center of its face, lined with grinding ridges instead of teeth.
It drags the storm behind it.
Not just a creature.
A plague.
The storm plague.
My heart locks in my chest. I’ve heard whispers of things like this—tales spoken only in the dark corners of Eldenridge. Creatures that come when the land is wrong. That feeds on cities.
It’s moving toward us.
“Maxime,” my father says, turning to me, voice hoarse. “The card. You have to try it.”
I nod—barely.
Hands trembling, I draw the Card of Sin from my coat and raise it. It pulses. Almost eager. I grip it tighter, and whisper the only word I can think of:
“Help.”
The card flashes.
The wind stops.
The world tilts.
And then—a voice in my head, gluttonous and amused:
“You call to Sin… and so Sin answers.”
My chest tightens. My hands burn. The card glows white-hot in my grip—until suddenly, it snaps in half, not broken, but opened like a mouth.
It speaks again:
“First of the seven... Gluttony.”
I don’t have time to scream.
My body bends inward like it’s collapsing, and then expands outward in a spasm of pain. I fall to my knees as heat floods through my stomach, my spine, my throat.
And then I feel it—hunger. Like I haven’t eaten in weeks. Months. Centuries.
My eyes lock on the Armstrong deck. Still on the table. Still sealed in its golden cord.
I can’t stop myself.
I lunge.
My fingers rip the cord. My hands open the deck.
And I devour it.
One card. Two. Five. Ten.
I consume them—paper and power and legacy—swallowed whole like air. They burn down my throat, one by one, and the hunger only deepens.
My father calls my name.
I don’t hear him.
I’m standing now. My chest, hollow. My arms are long and pale. My frame has twisted—not bloated, but lean and unnatural, like my skin is stretched too thin over something far too hungry. My ribs shift when I breathe. My eyes no longer feel like my own.
And the card reforms in my hand.
It now reads:
GLUTTONY
Below it, a new line:
What feeds you is never enough.
I turn.
The storm plague looms at the edge of the street, blotting out what’s left of the town. Its roots claw at rooftops. Its body cracks the land as it moves. No mouth. No eyes. Just a hunger that mirrors mine.
We stare at each other—me and the plague.
And for a moment... the storm stops.
And thats the last thing I remember seeing through my own eyes.
A tendril crashes through my home, tearing it apart the second my son transforms.
Then everything changes.
The moment the house shattered, I should've run. Should've shouted. Shoud've protected my sonMy son—my boy—stands just past the broken threshold of our home, his back to me, the wind clawing at what’s left of his white shirt. It hangs loose now, caught on bones that stretch too long. His frame looks human—mostly. But there’s something else curled inside him. Something that’s not Maxime.
And the plague sees it.
The creature stops as if sniffing the air, sensing what’s changed. Then, with a sudden roar that splits the sky, it turns toward the saloon across the road—toward him.
And it charges.
Its limbs are not limbs—they’re tendrils of earth, massive and curling, like the spines of a buried god. One crashes through the street and tears through the walls of the saloon, shattering it like kindling. Wood splinters rain across the rooftops.
Another limb crashes down where Maxime stood.
But he’s not there.
He’s already moving—too fast. A blur of hunger.
I watch as he lifts his hand—just a hand, pale and thin—and points at one of the plague’s roots.
And the root... vanishes.
No explosion. No sound. No smoke.
It just ceases to exist.
The plague recoils, twitching violently. It bellows—a sound not of pain, but of confusion, like a beast that’s never known fear.
Maxime raises his hand again.
Another limb vanishes.
Gone.
The thing howls now, slamming its many arms into the street, destroying homes, clawing at the ground like it’s trying to dig reality itself away just to reach him.
He walks forward with no expression. Only hunger.
The Card of Sin floats behind him, spinning slowly, now etched with a single word glowing red:
GLUTTONY.
He opens his mouth—and I swear to the gods I see more teeth than should be there.
He speaks a word I can’t hear, and a piece of the plague’s torso crumbles into dust, the rest pulling back in panic. The air around my son is heavy. Thick. Starving. It clings to my skin like it wants to feed from me too.
This isn’t magic.
This isn’t nature.
This is a curse that chose him.
And he’s wielding it like it was always meant to be his.
I feel it then—the fear. Not of the monster.
Of him.
Of what my son has become.
Of what this card has asked of him—and what he’s willing to give.
The plague lets out a deafening cry and strikes again. But Maxime’s body shifts—bends around the blow, impossible angles, weightless. He reaches toward the final limb with a hand that now ends in long black fingers. Hungry fingers.
And the limb is gone.
The creature shrieks—truly shrieks now, like something dying for the first time. It stumbles back, smaller, broken. It turns.
But I see it.
One final root. One tendril, no bigger than a tree branch, slithering low along the ground.
Toward me.
I try to step back.
Too late.
It wraps around my ankle and pulls.
Maxime doesn’t see. He’s still staring at the beast, advancing, step by step.
I hit the floor hard, my head cracking against stone. My vision blurs.
I try to scream his name.
But the wind is gone.
The light is gone.
And then—
Everything is black.
A link has been formed.
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