The first time he performed the forbidden wealth ritual, the air above the baccarat table would not move.
It was 3:33 a.m. The gamblers had gone home, leaving warm cups of tea and uneven towers of chips behind. Red bulbs gave off a dull glow. Incense smoke drifted sideways instead of rising, pressing against the low ceiling as if something held it there.
He stood alone in the underground den, listening to the ventilation fan click and hum. It skipped once, then went still.
When he was ten, he walked home beside his father after a night like this. His father said nothing. The silence filled the stairwell, the hallway, the small flat.
He had promised himself he would never return to that kind of quiet.
He wanted the numbers to answer.
The Ritual Broker’s Warning
He met the broker behind the coffee shop upstairs. The alley smelled of oil and damp cardboard.
The man accepted sealed red envelopes and brushed ash from his sleeves.
“Five will carry wealth,” the broker said.
“And the cost?”
“Balance.”
The instructions were exact. Five black bowls. Raw pork. Rice wine. Joss paper ash. One drop of his blood in each bowl. North. South. East. West. One beneath the baccarat table.
Seventh night of Ghost Month. 3:33 a.m. No rain.
“Offerings must increase,” the broker said. “Never reduce. Never measure what returns.”
He nodded, already calculating what that would mean.
Performing the Forbidden Wealth Ritual
He checked each direction twice before placing the bowls.
North. South. East. West.
The last bowl slid beneath the baccarat table. The felt was damp under his fingers, as though someone had spilled water and wiped it away poorly.
He pricked his finger. Blood gathered slowly, thick and dark, before falling into the first bowl. Four more drops followed.
“Carry wealth to me,” he said. “Take what I owe.”
The ventilation fan stopped.
Silence pressed against his ears. It felt like that long walk home years ago—heavy, unfinished.
The room seemed to shift inward, as if something had stepped inside and closed the door behind it.
He did not look back.
When the fan resumed, the air felt heavier than before.
The First Flow of Wealth
The change did not arrive with noise.
A regular lost seven hands in a row and laughed too loudly. A careful player hesitated and chose wrong. Dice rolled doubles more often than they should.
Not impossible. Just wrong.
Players returned faster after losses. They leaned over the table with restless confidence, certain luck would turn.
The vault door groaned each night when he opened it. The hinge strained under new weight.
Once, while locking up, he noticed a shadow bending along the edge of the table, stretching against the felt. He adjusted the bulb above it. The shadow shortened. He told himself that was all.
At home, his daughter held up a drawing.
“Later,” he said, eyes on his phone.
She lowered the paper without a word.
Cracks in the Forbidden Wealth Ritual
By the second month, success felt ordinary.
He changed the pork supplier. The meat looked the same once cut. Grease shimmered under the red bulbs. Nothing stirred.
In the third month, he added water to the rice wine. The liquid thinned, but the bowls remained still. The fan ran as usual.
In the fourth month, he left one bowl empty.
He stood there longer that night, waiting for some sign—cold air, movement, a sound behind him.
Nothing answered.
The gamblers kept losing. The vault kept swelling.
In the fifth month, he told himself the ritual had been superstition layered over probability. He stopped the offerings entirely.
At 3:33 a.m., he stood in the center of the room and waited. The fan ran steadily. The air felt ordinary.
For a week, the house continued to win.
He slept without dreams.
Signs of Balance
The money began to smell faintly of ash.
At first, he blamed the incense. But the scent clung even to fresh notes taken from the bank. It followed him home, lingering on his fingertips long after he washed them.
A dealer mentioned movement near the table after closing. Another quit without explanation. The surveillance camera froze during a large win, then resumed without error.
One morning, a stack of chips was gone. No one admitted touching them.
At breakfast, his daughter pushed a drawing toward him again.
Five tall shapes stood behind a small man at a table. Their hands were long. Their faces blank.
“They don’t blink,” she said quietly.
He felt a flicker of irritation—at the timing, at the way her voice cut through his thoughts.
“Enough,” he snapped.
She pulled the paper back. Her chair scraped softly against the floor as she left.
He almost called her name.
The house always needed tending first, he told himself.
He didn’t call her.
That night, when he knelt to check the space beneath the table, the floor felt colder than the room.
When Wealth Reverses
The losses began with a single hand no one questioned.
A new gambler won ten hands in a row. Then twelve. Chips stacked high in front of him, neat and deliberate. The dealer’s hands trembled. The air felt crowded, though no one stood close.
For one night, the streak broke. The house won again. Relief loosened his chest.
Then the losses returned, sharper, as if corrected.
At 3:33 a.m., he reopened the bowls and cut his finger deeper than before. His hands shook from lack of sleep.
Blood did not come at first.
When it did, it looked thin.
He placed the bowls back in position and waited.
The red bulbs dimmed one by one, lowering as though something moved beneath them.
The air pressed against his chest.
In the glass cabinet, five shapes stood behind him.
They did not match his reflection.
He tried to step away from the table.
His feet would not move.
Cold gathered at the back of his neck and slid down his spine. His arms grew heavy. The felt beneath his hands felt distant, unreal.
He thought of the stairwell. Of his father’s silence. Of his daughter’s drawing waiting on the table.
The room fell into the kind of quiet he had feared all his life.
The shapes drew closer.
He felt something lift from inside his chest—light, invisible, pulled backward.
For a breath, he felt hollow.
Then the weight returned.
It settled into his shoulders.
The bowls beneath the table trembled softly.
The red bulbs steadied.
The ventilation fan resumed its hum.
Across the table, the dealer blinked and dealt the next hand.
The house won.
He tried to speak.
No sound followed.
And when the dealer looked up, it was not at him, but through him.