I Found Myself in the Quiet After the Game

I used to think winning was measured in gold crowns and roaring battle horns.

But late at night, alone in my Chicago apartment, I stopped playing.

The games didn’t fail me—they just stopped speaking.

I remember pressing ‘spin’ for hours, waiting for a win that never came. The algorithms were flawless. The RNGs fair. Yet no crown ever landed on my head.

Not because I lacked strategy.

But because I’d forgotten what it meant to be human.

In the Kingdom Games, they sell you fantasy: a knight’s armor, a castle’s echo, a throne of endless rewards.

But I’m not a knight anymore.

I’m the one who sits by the window at 2 a.m., watching gray-blue light ripple across empty reels—no bets placed, no bonus claimed.

My mother taught me: ‘True wealth isn’t taken—it’s felt.’

So now I play only when my soul asks for it.

Not to win.

To remember how silence sounds like home.