"They carve their messages into silver not for secrecy, but for certainty. When the coin is left behind, it is never by accident."
— The Vagrant Ledger, banned volume, author unknown
The light was still golden when I turned onto the path towards our house - the kind of honey-coloured late afternoon that made everything glow in a healthy shade. It should have felt comforting.
But something felt off.
Not wrong, exactly, just... different. Like when Frau Klein remodelled the entire daycare overnight and everything just felt so unfamiliar - recognisable, yes, but unfamiliar.
I passed by the workshop first, the door halfway open as usual. The smell of beeswax and dried wood shavings hung in the air, complimenting the smokey flavours from the chimney. Father's smithing tools were neatly arranged and hooked onto the wall, untouched as he hadn't been home all week.
I stepped over the doorstep out of habit. Sometimes he left little demos of what he was working on for me to see, or some sort of interesting scraps on the bench: oddly-shaped nails and shavings curled like ribbons. But today, my eyes caught something else.
A piece of folded paper.
And a coin.
It sat dead centre on the workbench, clearly placed there by someone on purpose. The paper was folded into a tiny triangle, and was held in place by a strange coin - dull silver and marked with an eye. Not a regular eye, mind you. The lines curled in, spiralling like a grain of stalk mid-twist.
I reached out to touch the coin, which shimmered faintly in light. And, when I reached out to touch it, it was warm.
Not the kind of warmth things get from the sun, but a different kind. Like a hot breath that never got colder. And something prickled behind my ears and in my chest.
I knew this wasn't father's, and I'd never seen mother with something like this before, but... now that i think about it. Richard was clutching something that looked just like this at daycare. The coin must be his.
The letter could have been for me, but there was nothing signifying whose it was. I slowly unfurled the triangle back into the square of a note and looked for a sender or addressee.
The writing was odd. Not foreign, exactly, but written with stiff edges, sort of like webs. I didn't read it properly, reading for a name rather than the message contents, but I couldn't help but read that last line.
Stop being so cautious. Cautious eyes search, and you were meant to stop searching.
My fingers froze around the paper, breath locked in my throat.
The warmth of the coin was still on my fingers, and it hadn't gone away. In fact, if anything, it had warmed up a bit more, and, if I wasn't mistaken... it felt like the coin was draining something out of me. Was it Qi?
My breath was shallow by the time I made it to the back garden, where mother was stringing fennel bulbs on twine. She looked up, and smiled, but it faded fast when she saw my face.
Her eyes dropped to my hand.
"Theo," she said carefully, setting down the bulb. "Where did you get that?"
"In the workshop. It was just there. With this."
I held out the folded message.
She snatched the coin from me faster than I expected - like it was something sharp that I shouldn't be touching. Immediately, I felt my energy come back to me.
"Did you read it?" she asked.
"A little. I-"
"Did it glow?"
I hesitated. "A little."
She pursed her lips, before muttering something low, a twist of syllables. She flicked her fingers, and the air around the coin shimmered briefly - like it passed through a soap bubble of sorts. One that was warm and gave off the same feeling as that coin did.
Mother didn't have to say anything, because I could see it on her face.
She was afraid. Not pretending to be calm, not angry either, but afraid.
She knelt down until her eyes met mine. "Theo," she whispered concerningly, "if you ever find anything like this again - anything even close - you don't touch it. You run and come straight to me. No matter what. Understood?"
I gulped, a sense of dread washing over me. This was worse than when Teach shouted at me.
I nodded.
"Promise me."
"I- I promise."
She stood up, and the paper and coin disappeared in the blink of an eye. For some reason, I could still faintly sense them coming from the ring on her finger. She turned back to her gardening.
"Rich has one too." I suddenly blurted. "I saw him hold one of those coins at daycare, but I didn't ask him about it. He was avoiding me all day."
Mother's jaw tightened, her temples bulging.
"I need to speak to Richard," she said, immediately turning towards the gate. "Right now."
"Mama... is he in trouble?"
She didn't answer. She just walked faster than I'd ever seen her move, again muttering something under her breath as she passed the threshold. Now the entire house was warm, encased in a bubble of sorts.
"Theo, stay inside and don't come out until I tell you to."
I obeyed.
*Elisabeth POV*
I broke into a run as soon as the gate was behind me. It had been a while since I last moved so fast, I hadn't used movement techniques since we were escaping the sect, trying to lay low in Eulenhof and not expose myself as a cultivator. Only Richard's parents, and of course my family, knew - the rest of the village, all mortals, wouldn't have suspected a thing.
Theo had touched the coin. More than touched - it had responded to him. And the note - it was clearly a threat of sorts.
I should have reinforced the outer boundary. I should have warned Theo, even at the risk of making him afraid. But no one had seen Verdant coinwork in two decades - it was supposed to be a ghost story they'd tell to scare new initiates in the inner sect.
And now one had turned up. Not in the capital, and not at a sect summit.
But instead, in Theo's hand. And potentially even Richard's.
Was I too late? Was he already marked? They never send silver unless they're sure.
I passed by the outer row of trees and took the side path behind the baker's - a shortcut to the Pepys household, barely visible unless you knew it was there. As I got nearer and nearer to the house, the coin pulsed faintly through the ring, speeding up as if reacting to something.
They know. Richard definitely has one too.
But why Richard? He wasn't trained, and he wasn't a threat. Not yet. He was smart, yes, to the point where I'd question if he really was four-years-old, but he wasn't a threat.
Unless... they wanted to recruit him.
I slowed down once I was at the doorstep, casting a spell to clean up my figure so that I wouldn't look like a crazy woman after what the wind did to my hair. Then, I knocked on the door three times, paused, and then knocked twice once more when I got no response.
It wasn't his parents who answered the door - it was Richard.
He looked confused for half a second, and then looked wary.
"Good afternoon?" he asked, looking like he knew more than he was supposed to.
"Where is it?"
"What?"
"The coin," I snapped. "The one they left for you. Where is it?"
All the colour drained from his cheeks. That was answer enough. I shot him a death stare, enhancing my aura with Qi-infused killing intent - enough to scare a child into submission, but not enough to knock him out.
"I- I didn't show anyone. Even after I got the second one-"
The second one.
Richard backed up a step, quaking in his boots. "I didn't know what it was! I thought it was a prank or- or something old. I didn't mean-"
I raised a hand and silenced him with Qi. He would have stopped talking regardless, but I had to make sure he stopped speaking.
"Richard. This isn't a game. And I know you're clever enough to know that. That coin wasn't a prank. It was a message. And whoever sent it is watching. Take me to the coins. Right now."
He led me over to his room, where he pulled out a plank from the floorboards, revealing a secret compartment filled with scraps of paper with scribbles all over them and a couple nails. Interesting, why would he be hiding these? There, in the centre of it all, were two letters and two coins, one copper and one silver. Both had the symbol of the Verdant Eye.
"How long have you had these?" I asked much sterner this time.
Richard looked down, and I released the silence spell I cast on him. His voice was hoarse.
"Since the posters went up. The silver one showed up first. Then a week later, the copper. Same symbol. Different notes."
I knelt and picked up the copper one first, brushing my thumb over the design. The eye shimmered faintly, the same uncanny warmth pulsing through it as before. It was active. Immediately I take the silver coin into my other hand and begin to seal both in my spatial ring.
The moment my fingers closed around it, the ring on my hand pulsed. I hissed, letting go instinctively.
Too late.
The spell embedded in the coin flared - a flicker of smoky green light, almost imperceptible to mortal eyes, surged out and vanished. A flare. A trigger.
"No-" I turned, grabbing Richard by the shoulders. "Did you read them? Any of them?"
He looked guilty again. "Just the first lines. I thought they were riddles."
I wanted to scream. Instead, I closed my eyes, suppressing my spiralling Qi.
"How many people saw you with them?"
"No one," he whispered. "I swear. I didn't even show Theo. Not really. I just... I thought they were from a game. Or one of the visiting traders."
I examined the floorboard compartment again. The notes were scattered but... somewhat organised. One of them was even marked up with corrections, as if he was trying to decipher the script.
"You were studying them?"
"I-" Richard blinked. "Kind of. I just wanted to figure them out."
Of course he did.
I took the now inactivated coins and notes, sealed both inside a containment charm, and stood up. Then, I ignited his notes with a burst of Qi.
"Listen to me, Richard. From now on, if anything strange appears in your house, your mailbox, or even your dreams, you tell me. Immediately. Don't read it, don't touch it, don't hide it. Understand?"
He nodded quickly.
"No riddles. No games. Not this time. Do you hear me?"
His voice was faint. "Yes, ma'am."
"Whoever sent these messages would have sensed the trigger."
I touched the ring again, sealing the entire house in a silencing ward. Then I turned to Richard and crouched to meet his eyes.
"There's more going on than you know," I said. "And you're in the middle of it now. That's not your fault - but you don't get to pretend it's not happening."
A flicker of something crossed his face - not fear, but something sharper. Excitement?
"Why me?"
I paused.
"I don't know," I said honestly. "But I intend to find out."
He swallowed, hard.
I reached out and placed my hand over his. "For now, stay close to Theo. Don't talk about the coins. And if you feel watched, if you hear whispers, if you dream of eyes."
He flinched.
"You wake me. No matter what hour."
He gulped and nodded again.
I rose to leave, sealing the hidden compartment behind me. My mind was already racing, trying to figure out when they managed to slip into the village.
The Verdant Eye was watching. That much was clear.
But the real question wasn't whether they were watching Richard.
It was whether Richard had already looked back.