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"If the King's lap is warm, it is only because another man has been burned."
— Popular saying in the Godless Mile
I asked myself: Why change to a new currency?
In the end, it came down to three problems — and one contradiction.
1. Forgery through alchemy.
With alchemy's rise, kings became beggars. Why toil in mines for gold when a clever man could piss silver, bleed copper, or turn stone into gold? The very idea of wealth was undone. What was once rare became common. What was once stable became volatile.
2. Weight without worth.
Coins were heavy, yet their value rested only on fragile belief — belief that could vanish overnight.
3. No memory.
A coin bore no proof of where it had traveled or whose hand it had passed through. It carried value, but no history.
And then, the contradictions.
The first lay in Aetherium ink.
It was not cheap, nor everlasting. Runes inscribed with it withered with time, and illusions crafted with it could be exposed. Skilled fraudsters could even rearrange textures to conceal or falsify a rune — but such schemes were rare and never about coin alone. Aetherium was not something a pauper scraped together; it was reserved for those of rank, whether noble or black-market elite. And at that level, it was never about money — they already possessed wealth and power. Even nobles, with their wards and magic circles, could detect fluctuations of arcane concentration nearby.
The second contradiction lay in alchemy itself.
It was not mysticism, not divine wonder. It was craft, knowledge, and exploitation — predictable in its principles, but dangerous in its consequences. (But alchemy is usually temporary?)
Flashback
The grove held the day's light, amber and bright. The trees' branches curved violently, but still, on the hills, you could see the people.
His students crouched in a ring, their sticks scratching quicksilver lines into the soil. Each rune pulsed faintly, a heartbeat of raw intent.
Above them, Daemon sprawled on a low branch, one leg swinging. When Lysa finally looked up and said, "Teacher, aren't you supposed to scold us? Or at least correct us?" he opened a single eye.
"Why?"
The single word carried like a challenge. No one answered.
"Anyway," he went on, voice a lazy drawl, "you all failed — because you assumed a single rune could mean anything in a real conversation."
He dropped from the branch with a sound like a soft drumbeat. Dust curled around his boots as he circled their makeshift sigils.
"How many filaments can you put in one rune? Enough to write spy? Sure. But a sentence is not a word. In practice, a spy-rune needs conditions: target, tether, proof. Lysa —" he met her eyes, sharp as flint — "you added a Focus root. Clever. But without a true name or a belonging, you'd spy only on the evidence, not the man.
"Ethan, your concealing rune — practical. I'll give you that. And Derrick…" a faint smile crossed his face, "…the Weft mark for perception is an eye, not whatever that was."
Derrick scuffed his crooked sigil away with his heel, muttering.
Daemon leaned against the trunk, hair lifting in the evening wind. "Alchemy is no myth — just a fable for the masses. Every material carries a Weft-Signature, a thread of reality already written. A Thunderbird's feather isn't 'magical'; its signature is electricity. A Healer's Moss: cell replication. A Gorgon's eye: flesh to stone."
He let the examples settle before counting on his fingers.
"Isolation. The Art of Extraction. You don't simply grind a Thunderbird feather. You distill it with rare acids, expose it to tuned magical frequencies, maybe carve a focused Weft-rune — until you separate the electricity_generation() function itself.
"Compilation. The Art of Binding. Raw functions are unstable. You bind them to a medium — purified water, alcohol, even blood. Filaments shape the effect: a pinch of crushed crystal to target wounds, a drop of venom to corrupt.
"Execution. The potion is a physical script. Drink it, and your body becomes the runtime. "ingest → target injury → activation"
The circle tightened, silent until Derrick asked, "Is it… irreversible?"
Lysa snorted. "No, dummy. There's always a counter-potion."
Daemon's smile was small, approving. "Exactly. No ingredient is pure. Everything has a limit for mana absorption. Humans too — we store just enough to execute our own functions." He turned back to Lysa. "Go on. Name it."
"Soul?"
"Better to say… life."
The word hung heavy in the dusk.
Ethan folded his arms. "So if we can't live forever, the potion runs out—just like a rune."
"Right. Runes are written on Aetherium, which holds magical charge indefinitely. But every use pulls at it, degrades it. Alchemy trades permanence for safety: it won't rot the body, but its power fades."
A wind swept through, and the runes the children had carved flickered once before crumbling to dust. Daemon tilted his head back, eyes catching the last light — half teacher, half storm — while the children stood in the hush, their futures already bending toward his words.
Flashback end
Night pressed against the car; a dull gleam of lantern light flickered across the glass. Charmevolé shifted in his seat; the leather creaked like a warning.
"Daemon," he said quietly, "I have a feeling we're going in blind. You already see it, don't you? The masses — ignorant, easy to steer. This new currency is just another leash. I doubt we can keep this up for long."
Daemon watched the passing dark, unreadable. The currency isn't the problem, he thought. It's the Compendium. The ledger itself — that was the prize. The fools thought the notes were valuable, but the true worth lived inside that book.
I'll steal it and trade it. The Compendium is the real coin.
Across from him, Charmevolé's eyes glinted with the same calculation. Two scammers in one carriage, each hearing the echo of the other's plan.
The scheme was elegant because it was almost immaterial. The new "currency" wasn't metal or paper; it was forged from the same impossible substance as the Compendium itself — something that could not be copied and carried a permanent Weft-Signature.
Aetherium Ink.
The whispered gold standard. The only substance able to hold a magical signature forever. Not merely a material — the foundation of commerce itself. Without it, no contract could be trusted, no promise bound.
Causal Debt. Conceptual Value.
Every contract was more than writing. It was a four-dimensional rune, a living bond stitched to the Weft-Mark of a person's promise or oath. The nation's central Compendium housed and verified every one.
Currency.
No jingling coins. No stamped silver. Trade moved through Contract Notes — Signed Pledges — physical documents backed by the Compendium. A promise so perfectly bound that it was as unbreakable as gold.
Registry Houses.
Banks in name only. Great stone halls where Contract Notes slept in sealed ledgers. To "cash out" was to shift a Causal Debt from one soul to another — a transfer of living obligation.
And the grand irony, sharp as a blade: the most powerful men in this godless world were not the greatest mages, but the ones with the deepest vaults of Aetherium, the richest Weft-Signatures, the quiet keys to the contract-running Compendium. They had severed themselves from the very notion of burden.
Daemon let the thought settle like a weight in his chest. Outside, the road unspooled in dull colors; inside, two thieves sat in silence, each imagining the same impossible theft.
Lo and behold, they saw a mighty train racing down the hill — as if falling from the heavens.
Charmevolé shifted gear and stepped on the gas.
THE CROWN TABLE
Blackstone Hall stretched before you: a cathedral of iron, gold, and shadow. Seven high-backed chairs of fractured gold circled a black marble table, veins like storm lightning frozen in stone. Above, a chandelier of a thousand jagged spears jutted downward, their tips catching lamplight like frozen lightning — an obsidian crown of death suspended in air.
The floor was a shallow basin of polished black obsidian, fed by hidden copper veins that dripped water with absolute silence. A single step made no splash; the surface remained a flawless mirror. The reflection multiplied the chandelier into infinite spikes, so every movement felt like walking across a floating sea of blades. Peripheral lamps skimmed the water, fracturing light into dagger-sharp shards that danced underfoot.
Etched runes beneath the basin pulsed faintly, nudging reflections, twisting them with subtle, disorienting motion — as if the chamber were alive, watching, judging, testing your nerve. The only other sound was the slow, relentless grind of the Clockwork Altar, brass gears turning with maddening inevitability.
Each step was a gamble: misplace your weight and the illusion could betray you. Every shadow doubled, every reflection threatened, and yet the room demanded movement. Blackstone Hall was not a room — it was a crucible, a ballet of steel, water, and light. To walk here was to walk on danger itself, and only the confident survived the spell of mirrors and spears.
Virel Anbar, Grand Inquisitor of the Godless Mile, stood first: ash-skinned, his layered merchant silks glinting brass rings in the firelight. The rune at the tip of his ledger-staff pulsed with quiet menace.
Tamsin Korr, Iron Lady of the Iron Reach, lounged in an all-black gown that clung like forged steel, a molten torque bright on her throat, coily dark hair bound in a hundred talisman knots.
Professor Elric Mornvale, Master Registrar of the Ossuary Crown, wore sweeping white robes trimmed in gold filigree. An obsidian quill rested behind one ear, and across his chest hung a chain of antique university seals — bronze, silver, even a disc of pure Aetherium.
Seraphine Duskharbor, Provost of Lantern Quay, draped in a navy cloak strung with sea-glass beads, toyed with a smuggler's compass at her hip. Her eyes, deep-water blue, flicked like knives between rivals.
Jonath Kael, Warden of Blackmere, smelled faintly of peat smoke, his marsh-leather coat still damp from the night tide; a tide-rune spear leaned against his chair.
Along the shadowed wall stood the outer circle of influence: the beggars' jewel Baronness Lys Veyra, green-eyed and tan-skinned, black hair waterfalling in jeweled braids so ornate they would shame a lesser beauty; the iron-masked Chain Master of the Dungeon Hollow; the silver-bearded Lord of the South Coast; and the distant Grand Artisan of Farland, whose cloak was sewn with miniature clockwork birds that whirred when he breathed.
The bronze doors slammed open.
"Mayor Panther Grey," the herald barked.
Panther strode in, coat unbuttoned, bright brown hair catching the torchlight like amber sparks. He didn't bow. He didn't slow.
Seven councilors turned as one — robes, chains, sea-glass beads, all stiff as carved idols. Panther looked them over, lips quirking.
"Gods," he said, voice dry, "listen to those grand titles. Crowned Table, Jade Emperor of the Quay, Warden of Blackmere… do you practice saying them in the mirror, or just hope no one laughs?"
A ripple of offense hissed around the chamber.
"Mayor," Virel Anbar of the Godless Mile drawled, "you forget you stand before the most powerful state in the realm."
Panther's grin sharpened. "State? Yes. Powerful? No. We make the most grain, sure. But weapons? Military? Nothing. You keep buying soldiers from outside and pray they stay loyal. And magic?" He jabbed a finger at Professor Elric. "One university. One. For a state this size, that's a joke."
The professor's white-and-gold robes stiffened. "Excuse me, Mayor, but our examination failure rate is—"
"—too damn high," Panther cut in. "So fix it. Drop tuition before sunset."
Elric blinked. "That's—impossible."
Panther stepped closer, eyes cold. "Before. Sunset."
A beat. The professor swallowed. "Yes… my lord."
Panther pivoted to the jeweled Baronness of the Beggar's Kiss. "Your streets hold the highest poverty on the continent."
She smiled, a slow blade. "And the highest crime rate. We export thieves like other cities export wine."
"Illegal trading with foreign states is down thirty percent," Panther shot back. "No victory if you can't bring customers. Fix it. Pull people in, not just out."
Her smile tightened, but she gave a single elegant nod.
He turned on Virel. "Godless Mile — renovate. Two months. Rewrite your licensing and lifestyle codes while you're at it. If you can't, step aside."
"You demand much for a mayor," Virel said, voice thin.
"My time's short," Panther replied. "The king himself is coming. Unlike the royal inspector, I can't bribe a king."
That silenced even the echo of the hall.
Panther reached inside his coat and slid a folded newspaper across the marble toward Tamsin Korr, the Iron Lady of the Reach.
She flicked it open. "What's this?"
"Are you blind?" Panther said. "Read."
Her eyes scanned the headline, jaw tightening. "Humanoid… monsters? Fourteen dead?"
"It will crush public trust in the new currency," Panther said.
Tamsin's pale lips curved. "Then we force it through. Fear makes obedience."
"Good thing I'm not leaving you in charge."
She looked up, a steel smile. "Then who better than me? The currency will be minted in my domain. I have control, Grey. Understand?"
Panther held her gaze a long moment, then inclined his head. "Yes."
He frowned, sudden and hard. "Council dismissed."
The chamber emptied under his stare; the echo of his words — short, sharp, undeniable — still rang in the marble bones of the hall.