Gideon Cross was born in Thornmire, one of the larger cities in Rikevist — a country that has never much bothered with the pretense of civilization. Power there belongs to whoever can hold it, and the men who hold it don't lose gracefully, because they've never had to. Gideon grew up understanding this the way other children learn which berries are poisonous. It was simply the nature of things.

He was never a fighter. He was a reader of people — of tells, of tensions, of the exact weight a room carries when someone powerful is losing and starting to mind. He learned cards young and loved them immediately. Not just the winning, though he liked that well enough. He loved the risk. The moment before the turn. The particular electricity of not knowing. It made him feel more alive than anything else he'd ever found, and he chased that feeling with the kind of dedication other men reserved for religion or war.

He was good. Good enough to make a living, good enough to know when to walk away, good enough to read most tables before he sat down. He dressed as well as his earnings allowed — a decent coat, a good hat, a few pieces of jewelry that caught the light. He had standards, even if his purse didn't always match them. He smiled easily and talked smoothly and people generally liked him, which was useful. In Rikevist, likable men last longer than good men.

He was twenty eight years old when he sat down at the wrong table.

He didn't know it was the wrong table. That was the thing. He read the room, he weighed the players, and he decided the odds were favorable. He was right about the odds. He won cleanly, fairly, without a single dishonest move. And then the man across from him — or someone acting on that man's behalf — decided that was unacceptable.

The last thing Gideon Cross remembers clearly is a hand. A Drow's hand, and on the back of it a tattoo in white ink. A coffin. Simple, deliberate. Then nothing.

He was dead for one hundred years. To the day.

Whatever brought him back did not do it halfway. He returned with everything intact — his skin, his muscle, his memories, his taste in coats. What changed was the surface of him. His complexion had gone the color of old ash. His hair came back white. His eyes, once dark, returned milky and pale, catching light in a way that living eyes don't. He looks like what he is, if you look long enough. Most people need a moment to place what's wrong. He's learned to smile before they figure it out.

He woke with no explanation and no obvious source. No altar, no bargain he could remember striking, no deity with an obvious claim on him. Just alive again, in a world that had moved on without him, on the exact anniversary of the night he died. When he finally pieced that last part together — counted back the dates, confirmed it twice — he laughed. Long and quiet and genuine. Then he poured a drink and wondered what game he'd been dropped into.

He hasn't stopped wondering. He just doesn't let it show.

Two years have passed since then. He found his feet, learned what had changed and what hadn't, and eventually made his way to Springreach and the Adventurers Guild. The guild pays well. The work is dangerous. That suits him fine — a second life he doesn't particularly feel he deserves is house money, and house money is meant to be played. He takes the jobs, collects the coin, and finds what pleasures are available. Cards when he can. Good whiskey when the cards aren't running. Conversation, company, the particular pleasure of a room that doesn't know what to make of him yet.

He is charming and self-interested and not especially burdened by guilt. He has standards — he despises a man who can't lose gracefully, finds excuses contemptible, and pays what he owes — but he doesn't pretend to be good. He is what Rikevist made him and what death left behind.

Somewhere in Thornmire, or wherever a century has carried them, there is a Drow with a white ink coffin on the back of their hand.

Gideon looks at hands. He doesn't talk about why.