"I told him that wearing this mask would make him Sabo—granting him power, but also demanding a price. The real Sabo wouldn’t abandon his dignity. You’ll have to forgive the spectacle," Sabo said, kicking the corpse aside and smiling at Burton, though the smile sent a chill through him; Burton had never expected this turn.

  "Surprised? The real Sabo is a monster, a dwarf," Sabo said, seemingly unfazed by Burton’s astonished gaze—or perhaps he had grown too accustomed to such looks in his life. He extended his stubby arms, the misshapen flesh and fragile bones twisting his torso, his internal organs cramped in the tiny frame. He panted slightly from the recent swing of his sword, his thick fingers struggling to grasp the blood-soaked playing cards. He looked grotesquely bloated yet entirely indifferent.

  "I hope you weren’t offended by my double. After all, as the master of the Green Sharks, a dwarf’s body isn’t very useful for ruling a gang of desperados. It’s hard to intimidate subordinates, let alone when I’m also a Viking… A Viking dwarf is ridiculous, right?" Sabo said flatly, as though recounting a story that wasn’t his own, despite its obvious sadness.

  "Ridiculous? I’d say it’s quite… great," Burton said sincerely. "To lead a group of desperados in such a body? That’s impressive."

  Sabo showed no pleasure at Burton’s praise. Instead, he said calmly, "What about you, Mr. Burton Holmes? I’m curious why you were so confident in defeating him. If Lady Luck had favored him even slightly, your head would have exploded. This isn’t something that can be achieved merely with luck or fearlessness."

  It was a gamble on the edge of death, a dance with the reaper that only pure madness could master.

  "His eyes. His eyes gave it away," Burton said, pointing to his own gray-blue pupils, which glowed brightly and reflected the bloody gambling table.

  "That guy was too desperate to win—so desperate he was almost mad. As a leader, he should have commanded awe, but his bravado was weak. I’ve studied acting; he wasn’t a good actor, and certainly not a good gambler. Real gamblers never retreat. The chips in their hands are their entire world."

  Burton had seen through the double long ago, but he had assumed it was just a minor leader not worth worrying about. Clearly, the arrival of the real Sabo had complicated matters.

  "You seem to love gambling, but I’ve never seen you in a casino," Sabo said, seemingly without hostility, as he shuffled the cards. The music in the hall continued, and people were lost in the warm revelry. No one had noticed the double’s death.

  "Gambling is a wonderful thing. It can reverse situations—even a single coin might win you an entire kingdom," Burton replied, gently rubbing the shiny Butcher Coin in his fingers.

  "But a friend once told me that luck is finite. The luck a person has in their life is fixed. Maybe you were supposed to be killed by a carriage today, but you were lucky enough to trip and avoid death.

  "Like a soldier on the battlefield who dodges countless bullets just because of luck—until the day his luck runs out, and a fatal bullet takes his life. My friend was the best gambler I’ve ever known, but he rarely gambled, saying he was saving his luck."

  Sabo nodded. He had heard such stories before, but they felt different coming from Burton today.

  "What happened to your friend? Did he win an entire kingdom?"

  "No. In a battle, he used up all his luck. A piece of shrapnel pierced the only gap in his armor and tore through his artery. The strongest armor he wore became his tomb," Burton said slowly, his expression unchanged, as though this were just a forgotten memory.

  "I love gambling too, but what I love is the feeling of walking between life and death, escaping with my spoils just before the reaper’s blade falls," Sabo said, licking his dry lips with a crimson tongue, as if his mouth held blood, his jagged teeth like a shark’s. Eve sat by silently, afraid to speak; everything tonight had exceeded the world she knew.

  "You know, it’s hard for a monster like me to feel alive in everyday life. Everyone sees me as a bad omen; no one cares about me. But on the edge of death, it’s different. You brush past the reaper, maybe even touch his black robe, and you survive. The thrill is incredible—my blood boils, and my dead heart starts beating again!" Sabo said excitedly, slapping the table with his clumsy hands like a grotesque giant infant, exuding a strange eeriness.

  "So, did you lose those?" Burton asked.

  "Do you mean this?" Sabo said, stopping his table-slapping and extending his hands—the hands of a maimed man.

  Both hands had missing fingers, their knuckles broken off, leaving only two or three fingers. Yet they were still nimble; the dazzling card shuffling came from these maimed fingers.

  "Yes. No gambler never loses. But luckily, my opponents were ‘good people’—they left me my thumbs and middle fingers so I could still hold a sword… It doesn’t matter. I always win back what I lose in the end."

  Using his few remaining fingers, he picked up the rapier—a slender, lightweight sword with no decorations, not even a crossguard, just a blade and hilt. With this design, the rapier’s weight was greatly reduced, allowing Sabo to wield it with deadly speed using just a few fingers.

  "It’s a good day. Want to play another round?"

  "But I already won."

  "That was my double."

  "But he was still Sabo, wasn’t he?"

  The conversation was icy, neither man willing to yield. Between the rapier and the gun, all bets were laid on the blood-stained gambling table.

  Sabo was silent for a moment, then said, "About what happened the other day—it was a man called the Mentor. He ordered us to do it, to cover those people’s escape from pursuit."

  "Who is this Mentor?"

  "I don’t know. I only know he has many identities, all of them high-ranking positions, whether in Inverweig or other countries."

  "What about those people?"

  "That’s the second question, Mr. Holmes," Sabo said, a sinister smile emerging from beneath his half-mask as he spread the cards neatly in front of Burton, the blood on them not yet dry, giving off an otherworldly aura. "So, want to play another round?"

  ...

  It was a deathly silence. Despite the warm air and exciting music, the atmosphere on the platform was as cold as an ice cellar.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Sabo had redeemed his dignity, but that was all. To get more information, Burton would have to join the gamble again. Burton’s eyes dropped; he was thinking. This was clearly different from before—this time, he was facing the real Sabo, a true gambler.

  "Isn’t this enough?" Eve said in a small voice. The Phoenix family’s princess had only known the darkness of the world through her family’s records of war; she felt an unease she had never known before.

  But Burton ignored her. Like Eve, Burton was also uneasy, but his unease was different. Burton was truly concerned with the whole picture of the matter.

  The mysterious cargo from the North had involved Boro, Sabo, and someone deeper in the darkness. Most importantly, there were the things Burton had seen in his second sight: mutated bodies, towering beacons, all the strange and grim things crawling out of distant memories, trying to drag him back to that rainy night.

  He needed to know the truth.

  "What’s the wager?" Burton asked, his voice steady and forceful as iron beneath the brass mask.

  Then, beneath the bull mask, Sabo smiled genuinely. He clapped his hands, his laughter harsh and manic, like the last revelry before the apocalypse. He leaped down from his chair and staggered to the edge of the platform, looking down on the grand feast like a king.

  "Ladies and gentlemen!" he roared. The dancing crowd stopped and looked up at the dwarfish man on the platform. He was very different from the Sabo they remembered, but they didn’t care. At this feast, only masks mattered; whoever wore the bull mask was the master.

  Sabo was overjoyed. Pleasure felt magnified when one was as good as dead. He roared:

  "Let the dance begin!"

  At the sound, the orchestra’s tune changed instantly. Unlike the usual noble and beautiful melodies, this one was filled with strangeness and mourning. The musicians played their strings with abandon, as if sawing through living flesh, the music sounding like human wailing.

  Servants appeared from nowhere. Their trays no longer held gold and jewelry but were filled with hallucinogens. The guests casually picked them up, then exposed the insides of their wrists, which should have been smooth but were now covered in needle marks. They skillfully injected the drugs, and the gates of heaven opened for the corrupted mortals.

  It was a revelry before the apocalypse, where all ethics and morals were abandoned, and the dark side of humanity was unleashed. Eve stared at it all, and for the girl, this was the start of a nightmare. The smell of blood hung in the air, and then the blood seemed to stir, trying to join the depraved revelry.

  "Calm down, Detective. This is just the beginning," a cold hand took hers, the feeling like breaking through frozen ice, waking Eve from her daze.

  "Stay sober. You don’t want to end up like them, do you?" Burton’s voice said. Eve woke from her trance, then began breathing heavily, sweat soaking her mask.

  "What… was that?" Eve asked fearfully, referring to the strange feeling that had made the world seem to shatter before her eyes and reform into something bizarre.

  "Hallucinogens. There must be a lot of them in the air. The effect isn’t too strong yet," Burton said, picking up the sharp dagger sheathed under Eve’s dress and placing it in her hand. Holding a weapon might help the girl feel safer.

  "So this is what the dance is really like? A giant Feast of Bliss."

  Burton’s gray-blue pupils remained clear; he hadn’t been affected by the hallucinogens in the air at all.

  "Yes. Only the wealthy come here. Wealth can’t satisfy them anymore," Sabo said, stepping down from the edge of the platform and returning to the gambling table. He took out a coin from his maimed hand and placed it in the center between them.

  "Win once, and I’ll answer a question," Sabo said, extending his right hand and raising his index finger.

  "And if I lose?"

  "You answer a question for me."

  "I didn’t expect you to take such an interest in me," Burton said, surprised. He had thought someone like Sabo would demand Burton cut off his fingers.

  "After all, you’re Boro’s iron thorn, Mr. Holmes. In a way, I became Sabo, the leader of the Green Sharks, because of you. You could say you’re my benefactor," Sabo said, his eyes not lying. To some extent, his success was entirely due to Burton.

  "To be honest, that’s a bit surprising," Burton said, hardly able to believe it.

  "Naturally. The Easterners have a word for this; they call it ‘karma.’ I was also present at the Red River Massacre six years ago. But as you can see, it’s hard for someone of my stature to attract attention, so I survived. Thank you for reordering the Lower District—without that, I wouldn’t have had the chance to rise," Sabo said.

  It had been a long time ago, but even now, mentioning it made Burton smell blood. He froze, his face like ice.

  Eve was stunned. She remembered the last time she had heard "iron thorn"—from Inspector Price. And deeper still was the Red River Massacre. At that moment, it all came back to her.

  "The foreigner hired by Boro. The bodies you threw into the Thames that day built Boro’s present. And after that, you vanished mysteriously. Only a few survivors know your name, but they live in constant fear, feeling you might appear around any corner to take these lives that should have died," Eve said.

  It was an old story, and Burton seemed to have deliberately forgotten it, never mentioning it or responding.

  "So, what do you want to play, Sabo?" Burton said, still calm, as if he had no emotions, like a mechanical being.

  "How about a coin toss?"

  No one would have expected Sabo to suggest such a game. Playing with the coin in his remaining fingers, he then said, "You’re not very good at cards, right? A veteran vs. a rookie is too unfair. You like pure luck, so let’s do this. And… you can handle it, yes?"

  As he spoke, he flicked the coin to Eve. It spun rapidly before the girl’s eyes and finally slowed to a stop. The metal surface was mottled, reflecting light, looking very old. The engravings on it had become blurred from years of handling, but one could faintly make out an axe and a shield.