CHAPTER 60: THE DARK PAST

The chip spun in my fingers, gleaming under the lamplight, and for a moment the clamor of the casino faded.

I wasn’t in the velvet-draped hall anymore.

I was back in the gutters.

Back where the air reeked of piss, smoke, and desperation, and the only music came from coins clattering on broken wood.

I hadn’t started out as a gambler.

No, at first, I was just another hungry kid who learned that the world didn’t care if you starved. I’d sit in the shadows of the alleys, knees drawn up, watching men laugh and curse over their games.

They called it gambling, but really it was just wolves circling scraps of meat.

Some bet coin, some bet knives, some bet the clothes off their backs. More than once, I saw someone bet their last coin and lose it, only to get beaten bloody for not paying up.

That was the first lesson: The game isn’t about winning. It’s about not losing.

I remember the first time I sat at a crate with dice in my hands.

I was thirteen, maybe. I’d already gone a week with barely a crust to eat, and my ribs felt like they might crack if I breathed too deep.

Some older boys spotted me hanging around and thought it’d be funny to drag me into their game.

"Got coin, rat?" one of them sneered.

I didn’t. Of course I didn’t. But I had something better — my eyes.

I’d been watching them play for weeks. Watching the way their lips twitched when they rolled high, the way their hands shifted when they were bluffing. I knew their habits better than they did.

So I bet with the only thing I owned. My shoes.

If I lost, I’d walk barefoot on the cobbles. If I won, I’d eat.

The dice rattled in my palm, hot with sweat. I prayed, not to any god, but to luck itself. Luck was the only god we street rats had.

I rolled low.

They laughed. One of them reached for my shoes.

But instead of panicking, I leaned back and smiled.

"Double or nothing."

That threw them off. Nobody who had nothing asked for more. They thought I was stupid. They thought I didn’t know better.

That was the second lesson: When you act like you’re not afraid, people start to doubt themselves.

I lost again. Then again. By the third round, my shoes, my ragged coat, even the string I tied my hair back with were on the line.

But by then I’d learned their rhythms.

I stopped caring about the dice. I started watching them instead.

How one of them always tapped his thumb against the table before rolling. How another sucked his teeth when he was nervous. How their laughter was loudest when they were lying.

By the fifth round, I had my coat back. By the seventh, my shoes. By the tenth, I had their coins too.

They left me with a black eye that night, but I walked away richer than I’d ever been.

After that, I never stopped.

Dice, cards, stones — it didn’t matter.

The games changed, but people didn’t. People always wanted to win too badly. They always leaned in too close, or smiled too wide, or spoke too fast.

And me? I watched. I remembered. I learned how to hold still, how to make my face a wall. How to breathe like I didn’t care, even when the last of my coin was on the table.

I learned how to lose just enough to keep them hungry. How to let them taste victory, so they’d bet more than they could afford.

I learned how to win without showing teeth, because a smile could get you stabbed.

Once, a man accused me of cheating. He pulled a knife across the table, steel flashing in the lamplight.

I didn’t flinch. I only slid my last coin across the wood and said, "All in. Bet your knife against it."

He stared. Then laughed and rolled.

I walked away with a knife that night. My first weapon. Not because I was lucky, but because he thought I was.

That was the third lesson: Luck is just another mask. Wear it well enough, and people will believe in it more than they believe in themselves.

By the time I was sixteen, gambling wasn’t just a way to eat. It was survival. It was war with dice instead of blades.

I could walk into a den with empty pockets and walk out with a week’s worth of meals. I could sit across from men twice my size and make them fold before the cards were even dealt.

Because I didn’t play the game.

I played them.

***

The chip danced between my fingers, catching the lamplight like a sliver of fire. The crowd thought it was luck, thought the painted grin on my mask was just bravado.

But luck is a lie.

Luck runs out. Hunger doesn’t.

I’d carved my instincts in the gutter, where every glance, every twitch, every hesitation meant the difference between eating and starving. I’d learned patience under broken roofs, with empty pockets and knives at my throat.

And now? Now I wore that hunger like armor.

The woman in silk thought her silence could smother me. Thought her eyes could cut deeper than mine. Thought the game belonged to her.

But the truth was simple.

It’s never the game that matters. Cards, dice, stones — they’re just props.

The real game is the person across the table. The rhythm of their breathing. The falter in their smile. The lies they think they can hide.

And I don’t play games.

I play people.

That’s why they always lose.

Not because the cards turn against them.

But because I was already in their head the moment I sat down.

Still that starving boy in the alley.

Still smiling behind the mask.

Still turning wolves into sheep.

And I will continue to do so, as Loki, as the Jester.