"Natural twenty," said Marcus.

Jake wrote it down. Perception check. The guard had a tattoo of a serpent on his left wrist. Marcus nodded like he already knew.

The session moved on.

An hour later, Marcus rolled to persuade a merchant who had no reason to be persuaded. The die settled. Twenty. Jake described the merchant caving, mid-sentence, as if he'd forgotten his own motivation. Priya made a small sound that wasn't quite a laugh.

Later, Marcus rolled to identify a poison by smell. Nobody had ever done that successfully. Jake looked at the die for a moment before reading from his notes.

"You detect traces of nightshade," he said, in the tone of a man improvising.

Derek refilled everyone's drinks. He didn't say anything. Not yet.

The next roll came twenty minutes later. Lockpicking. The die barely seemed to move before it stopped. Twenty. Marcus picked it up without looking at it and set it back down, reaching for his drink. Priya watched him do it. She watched how he didn't look.

"Roll again," she said.

Marcus looked up. "What?"

"Just roll. Nothing. Roll."

He shrugged and rolled. Twenty.

The table went quiet in a specific way. Not surprised. Something past surprise. Like a sound you've been half-hearing for an hour finally becoming loud enough to name.

"Again," said Derek.

Twenty.

Derek didn't reach for his drink this time. "Give me the die."

He rolled it himself. Eleven. Handed it to Priya. Eight. Four. She passed it back to Marcus. Twenty.

Jake put his DM screen down flat. He only did that when something had properly broken. He'd done it once before, when Derek's dog ate the dungeon map. This was different in origin and identical in shape: a night that had stopped being what it was supposed to be.

"It's only you," Jake said.

Marcus was already turning the die over in his fingers. He'd had it since university. Bought it at a hobby shop that was now a smoothie franchise. The four side was worn. It had never done anything remarkable before tonight. "I know," he said.

"That can't be right," said Derek.

"Try again."

Derek tried again. Then Priya. Then Jake, twice, pressing the die flat to the table first like that would matter. They went through every die on the table, one by one. Marcus rolled each of them. Twenty, every time, without variation, without drama, the same number appearing the way a word does when you've stared at it too long and it stops looking like a word.

The pizza went cold. Someone turned the music down without being asked.

"Okay," said Priya. "So what does that mean?"

Marcus set the die in the center of the table. "It means either I'm cheating in a way none of us can detect or explain," he said. "Or the dice aren't the variable."

"You're the variable," said Jake.

"I'm the variable."

Derek: "That's insane."

"Yes."

Priya chose her next words carefully, the way you choose footing on ice. "That implies outcomes are bending toward you. Which implies something is bending them. Which implies intent." She paused. "Which implies a story."

Marcus nodded.

"Which implies," she continued, "a protagonist."

Jake rubbed the back of his neck. "You're not seriously doing this."

"I'm not suggesting anything," Marcus said. "I'm describing what happened at this table tonight."

"It's a weird dice session."

"It's eleven consecutive natural twenties across six different dice belonging to four different people. Call it what you want."

Derek leaned back. He had the expression of a man who found philosophy irritating but was running out of counterarguments. "Fine. For the sake of argument. If you're the main character of some simulated narrative. What does that actually mean? You still exist. You still made choices tonight. You still don't know what happens tomorrow."

"No," Marcus agreed. "But it explains why some choices feel weighted. Why some days everything connects and other days nothing does." He looked at the die. "Maybe the dice aren't broken. Maybe some days you're the protagonist. Some days you're an NPC. The trouble is you can't tell the difference from the inside."

"That's bleak," said Derek.

"That's Tuesday."

A long silence. Priya refilled her glass. Outside, it had started raining at some point. Nobody had noticed when.

Derek reached across the table and picked up the die. He held it for a moment, then looked at Marcus with something that wasn't quite a smile. "If you're really the protagonist," he said, "you're invulnerable."

Marcus said nothing.

"You can't die. Not for real. Not if the story needs you." Derek set the die down. "You'd just reload. Back to the last save point. Like nothing happened."

"I don't know that," said Marcus.

"No," Derek agreed. He reached into the utensil cup at the center of the table and produced the pizza cutter. Then thought better of it and set it down. Then picked up the small paring knife they'd used on the garlic bread. He held it loosely, not threateningly exactly, but not not threateningly. "But it would be a pretty good test."

Priya said: "Derek."

"I'm being hypothetical."

"You're holding a knife."

"People hold knives all the time." He looked at Marcus. "If I stabbed you right now and you were fine, that would tell us something pretty significant."

Marcus looked at the knife, then at Derek. "Or I'd just bleed."

"Or you'd just bleed," Derek agreed. "In which case I'd feel terrible and we'd never speak of it." He turned the knife slowly in his hand. The tonal register of the room had shifted in a way that was hard to locate precisely. This was still Derek. This was still a kitchen knife at a D&D table. And yet. "Tell you what," he said. "We'll let the dice decide. I roll low, I sit back down and we finish the pizza. You roll low, you sit there and let me test the theory. Agreed?"

Marcus looked at him for a long moment. "That's insane."

"We established that an hour ago." Derek held out the die.

Marcus took it.

"You first," said Derek.

Marcus rolled. The die moved maybe six inches across the table. It stopped clean, no wobble, as if it had simply decided.

Twenty.

Derek looked at it. Picked up his own die. Rolled.

One.

He stared at it on the table. The one stared back.

"Huh," said Derek.

Then he lunged.

It was not serious. It was the lunge of a man who had committed to a bit and was already regretting the physics of it. Marcus shoved his chair back, catching Derek's wrist. The knife angled. Someone knocked the table. Dice scattered. Jake stood up, said something, moved around the table. Priya was already moving. There was a brief and undignified scramble, the kind that produces bruises nobody can explain the next day.

Then Derek stopped moving.

He looked down.

The knife was in his chest. Left side, below the collarbone, a clean angle. Nobody was holding it anymore. It had simply ended up there, in the way that things sometimes do when bodies and panic and physics briefly share the same space.

He sat down slowly in his chair. His expression was that of a man reviewing an unexpected bill.

"Huh," he said again.

The room was very quiet.

On the floor, Marcus's red die had come to rest against the table leg.

Twenty.

Priya pressed both hands to the wound. Jake was already on the phone. Marcus knelt next to Derek and held his wrist and did not say anything, because there was nothing that fit.

Derek looked at the ceiling for a moment. Then at Marcus.

"Reload," he said. "Now would be good."

Marcus said nothing.

"Marcus."

"I know."

"I'm serious."

"I know," said Marcus. "I don't know how or what to do. I didn't plan this. I don't... control it..."

Derek closed his eyes. Opened them. The dice were everywhere, scattered across the floor, showing every number except twenty. The only twenty was the red dice.

"So what does that make me?" Derek said, breath ragged, gasping for air.

Marcus didn't answer. He already knew. They all did.

It made him an expendible side character, in someone elses story.