They found it in a box with no seams.
The Coin.
Buried beneath the dust of the Archive's forbidden west wing — a vault so forgotten it had no name — the box opened not with hands but with memory. Zara had remembered a riddle she hadn't known she knew, whispered once by a mad Librarian who claimed to catalog dreams. And then, with a word that tasted like rust and regret, the box had unsealed.
Inside: a single coin.
Too smooth. Too silent. No emblem. No etching. Just a glint of metal that shimmered wrong in the light — like it reflected events, not illumination.
Zara stared. "Is this it?"
"The Coin of Forgotten Crimes," Rahul whispered, voice a shade too low, as if saying it too loud might make it choose him. "One side shows you a truth. The other — someone else's cost."
Charles reached for it. "Wait," Rahul snapped. "Once touched, it remembers you. It binds."
They all hesitated.
Zara exhaled. "We didn't come this far to be afraid."
She picked up the coin.
It was cold at first.
Then warm. Alive. Beating.
Zara almost dropped it — the pulse was unmistakable. Like holding a heart between your fingers.
"What does it want?" she murmured.
"Not to be flipped," Rahul said. "But to be believed."
No one moved. Then Zara, resolute, held it between her thumb and forefinger.
And flipped it.
—
Zara
The world shifted.
Not around her.
Through her.
She stood in the ruins of Veltharion's sky temple — fire trailing through clouds, rubble etched with glyphs she hadn't yet learned. Smoke curled around broken stone spires. Screams echoed.
She walked through the carnage, untouched, unseen. Like a ghost wearing her own skin.
And then—
She saw Charles.
Bound. Kneeling.
A crowd surrounded him. Soldiers. Civilians. Children.
And her.
Standing above him, sword raised.
No tremble in her hand. No pain in her eyes. Only resolve.
Charles looked up. Bleeding. Smiling.
"You know what you have to do," he whispered.
And she—Zara—smiled back.
"I always did."
And drove the blade into his heart.
The crowd cheered.
Then the vision shattered.
She gasped, the coin hot in her hand.
Rahul caught her. "What did you see?"
Zara shook her head. "No. No, that's not—"
But she couldn't finish.
She opened her hand.
The coin was cool again.
Still.
Waiting.
—
Rahul
He didn't wait.
He grabbed the coin, flipped it.
The world spun—
He stood in the broken atrium of the Arcanum.
But it was wrong.
The walls wept ink.
The air was stitched together with threads of untime.
And on the ground, he lay dying.
Himself.
Bleeding out. Breathing ragged.
Zara stood over him. Crying.
She whispered, "I'm sorry."
He smiled.
"It's okay," he said. "If it saves him."
Then her blade found his throat.
And she wept as it happened.
Rahul screamed himself awake.
The coin clattered across the floor.
Zara picked it up, hand trembling. "Rahul—"
"I saw you kill me."
She stepped back. "What?"
"You cried the whole time."
Silence.
Then Charles knelt, gently retrieving the coin.
"Then it's my turn."
—
Charles
The vision didn't wait for the flip to land.
It devoured him.
He was somewhere underground.
No — beneath time.
Everything hummed. Pulsed. A cathedral built from dead futures.
Before him: the Machine.
Built from glass and bones and gears that ticked in reverse.
He knelt before it, blood dripping from his eyes.
Not tears.
Ink.
He spoke, but not with his voice.
"The others failed."
"I remember. I accept."
The Machine responded:
"Then you are ready."
Its gears spun — into a sigil he didn't recognize.
And branded itself onto his chest.
Pain lanced through every part of him.
He screamed.
—
Back in the Archive, Charles collapsed.
Zara rushed to him. "Charles! Say something!"
He gasped. His hand went to his chest.
Burning.
He pulled his shirt aside.
There — on his skin — glowed a fresh mark.
A sigil.
Not one he had ever drawn.
Not one he had chosen.
But one that had chosen him.
Rahul stared. "It's the symbol from the Machine."
Zara stepped back. "What does it mean?"
Charles looked up.
His voice was hollow.
"It means we were never supposed to see this."
And behind them, the Coin spoke again.
Not aloud.
But in each of their minds.
"Your future has already happened."
"Just not here."
"Your future has already happened. Just not here."
The voice of the Coin lingered like a thought no one remembered having.
Charles remained slumped against the archive pillar, clutching the burning sigil that pulsed just beneath his skin. It wasn't fading.
Zara took a slow step back. Her eyes had lost their edge — not out of mercy, but fear. Fear of him. Of herself. Of the Machine. Of the truth they hadn't been ready to see.
Rahul said nothing. He was staring past them — not at the walls, not at the coin, but at the seam in the world that had appeared when the visions ended.
A door made of nothing — a fracture in thought itself.
It blinked open.
And the Coin floated toward it.
"No!" Charles reached for it, but his body didn't respond fast enough.
Zara's blade was half-drawn. Rahul whispered a rune, fingers twitching in the old Arcanum pattern, but the spell backfired — the mirror glyph shimmered, then bled backward into his skin like ink into dry parchment.
The Coin passed through the fracture.
And then —
It split.
Not the Coin.
Them.
For an instant that stretched into meaning, all three of them saw themselves as others.
Rahul with his sister alive, but Zara gone.
Zara atop a throne made of broken prophecy, Charles's skull at her feet.
Charles… alone, kneeling before the Machine once more. Except this time, he was the Machine.
Then — it all snapped.
—
They stood in the Vault again.
But something was different.
The shelves had changed.
The books whispered with new titles. "If Rahul Had Stayed Dead." "The Betrayal of Zara Vane." "Charles, Son of Nothing."
Each volume a reality that hadn't happened — yet.
Zara turned slowly. "I think... I think the Coin didn't just show us what might happen."
Rahul nodded. "It made it possible."
Charles didn't speak.
He stared at the faint glow beneath his shirt — the sigil that pulsed in time with a memory he hadn't lived yet.
Footsteps.
Soft. Deliberate.
A man approached. Cloaked in robes of unraveling time, stitched from paradox silk. His face was mostly covered — except for his eyes, which shimmered like someone else's dream.
He held a coin in his palm.
Another one.
No — the same.
He tossed it to Charles. "You dropped this in a timeline you shouldn't have entered."
Charles caught it, eyes narrowing. "Who are you?"
"I'm the historian of crimes that haven't happened."
Zara: "So you're a liar."
"No," he said calmly. "I'm an archivist."
He gestured toward the altered shelves. "Each coin-flip adds a branch. Each branch becomes a possibility. Possibilities become currency. And this…" He tapped the coin now resting again in Charles's hand. "…is the most valuable currency in existence."
Rahul scoffed. "Why? It shows a lie."
"No. It shows a truth you couldn't survive. Which makes it more real than anything else."
He leaned close to Charles.
"You've seen the Machine. It branded you. Do you know why?"
Charles shook his head slowly.
"Because you're the only one who won't betray it. Not yet. That's why it marked you. You're still… editable."
Zara stepped forward, sword half-lowered. "Then what do we do? If the Coin can change us—"
"It can also be used," the man said. "As a key. To places where memory is currency, and belief — law."
He handed Zara a parchment. It was blank.
"Write down what you refuse to believe," he said. "And the Coin will take you to where that belief has already failed."
Zara blinked. "That's nonsense."
"Then you'll be safest there," the man replied with a wan smile.
—
Later.
They sat in the Archive's eastern echo-chamber. Quiet. Flickering lamplight. The parchment remained untouched.
Charles spoke first. "We should destroy the Coin."
Zara: "We can't. It's alive."
Rahul: "And watching."
Charles looked up. "Do you feel it too?"
"Yes," Zara whispered. "Like we're being… followed."
Outside, the moon cracked in the sky. Not physically — just in reflection. A ripple. A split. As if a memory of the moon had broken, and now the real one couldn't decide which version to believe.
The Coin pulsed.
Charles looked at the parchment.
He wrote:
"I do not believe Zara will betray me."
The parchment vanished.
And with it — Zara.
Rahul leapt up. "ZARA!"
She was gone. As if erased from space, not just presence.
The Coin spun again.
Charles caught it.
"No. No more flips."
He turned to Rahul. "We're going after her."
"Where? How?"
Charles raised the Coin.
"Wherever it took her — it took her because I refused to believe something. So maybe belief is the door."
He whispered:
"I believe Zara lives."
Nothing happened.
He tried again. "I believe she lives."
The parchment reappeared.
Blank.
And then it wrote itself.
"She does. But not as you remember."
A door opened.
Literal.
Made of mirrored fire.
Charles stepped through.
Rahul followed.
The Coin, at last, quieted.
—
Zara awoke alone.
She was in a throne room made of undone prophecy. The walls were echoes. The throne — a single, massive Coin.
On it sat… herself.
But not her.
This Zara wore red. Crimson ink-stained armor. Her eyes were hollow mirrors. Her mouth bore no smile.
"Hello," Red Zara said. "I've been waiting for you."
Zara stood. "What is this?"
Red Zara tilted her head.
"You don't understand yet. The Coin isn't about betrayal. It's about perspective. It doesn't show lies. It shows the truest truth someone else sees."
Zara shook her head. "You're a lie."
"No. I'm the version of you that never stopped surviving. Even when you had to carve your way through Charles. And Rahul. And your own future."
Zara gritted her teeth. "Why am I here?"
Red Zara stepped forward.
"You flipped the Coin. You believed something impossible. And now the world is testing whether you were right."
"What do I do?"
Red Zara's hand opened.
Another Coin rested in her palm.
"This one doesn't flip," she said. "This one decides."
Charles and Rahul burst into the chamber.
Zara turned — relief on her face.
But Red Zara smiled. "Too late."
The Coin in her hand dissolved.
The throne behind her cracked.
"You should have believed faster."
The world shattered.
And reassembled.
In a library made of nothing but half-told stories.
They were back.
All of them.
But none of them were the same.
Charles checked his chest. The sigil was gone.
Rahul checked his journal. All entries were blank — except one.
"I saw Zara kill me."
Zara looked at her sword.
It was etched now with two words: He Believed.
The Coin hovered in the air.
Final line etched into its surface:
"Your future has already happened — just not here."
And beneath it:
"Would you like to see it again?"