The odor of charred wood continued to linger in the air, days after the fire had been put out.

  Cael stood in front of the scorched remains of his father's workshop, the sun glinting off wisps of burned metal strewn on the ground like delicate leaves. His brown hair blowing gently in the breeze. The forge, once the warm, shining heart of their modest home, was a silent and crumbling husk. Where his father's tools had been arranged in orderly rows, there were nothing but soot-darkened outlines, ghosts of a life carefully lived.

  His mother, Mya, was a few paces behind him, arms wrapped tightly across her chest. She'd not spoken since they arrived. Nor had Cael.

  They'd visited the market, that's all.

  Just a simple errand. Bread, lamp oil, a bit of smoked fish. They should have come home to the scent of iron and the gentle clink of his father working over a coin press. Instead, they came home to guardsmen standing in the street, neighbors whispering, and a smoking ruin where their home had stood.

  They didn't recover his father's body for hours, buried beneath the rubble of the coinvault.

  Murdered.

  The word didn't fit. His father wasn't a dangerous or secretive man. He forged coins. Good ones, spells bound into copper or bronze, sometimes silver, always careful. A man of quiet hands and long silences. What could he possibly have done to deserve this?

  Cael kneeled beside the ruins of the coin press and brushed ash from a small metal box. It was scorched but intact, the edges slightly warped. Inside, nestled among folds of fire-darkened velvet, one silver coin rested.

  Not one of his father's routine castings.

  This coin had a soft glow, even in the dark, with weird runes that seemed to pulse beneath the surface. He didn't recognize the metalwork. It was too intricate, too fine.

  He reached out and picked it up cautiously.

  And the moment his fingers touched the edge, the coin grew warm.

  A whisper, half voice, half breath, came in the back of his mind.

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  "Hello, son."

  Cael stumbled back, heart racing. The voice was unmistakable. He hadn't heard it in two days. Not since…

  "You've got a long way to go," the voice continued, low and steady. "And we don't have much time."

  The silver coin glinted dully in his hand. He had no clue what kind of magic this was. But it was his father's voice. And someone had killed him for a reason.

  Cael turned the coin over in his hand, half-wishing the voice would return, half-dreading it. But the coin was silent now,its warmth vanished, its luster dulled to the gleam of a common silver coin.

  He rose slowly to his feet, brushing ash from his pants, and went back out into the light morning rain. Mya was standing where he'd left her, staring beyond the wreckage with distant eyes.

  He held out the coin to her, his voice gentle. "It spoke to me."

  She startled, as though pulled from a distant daydream, and looked down at his hand. Her breath hitched.

  "That coin…" Her voice cracked. She reached out her hand, fingertips hovering just above it, but didn't touch it. "That's the one he told me to give to you… if something happened."

  Cael's jaw clenched. "You knew?"

  "I didn't know this would come of it." She jerked her head, as if she were shaking off the thought. "But he told me, weeks ago, he'd been working on something special. Told me it wasn't ready to be seen, not even by the Mayor's men. That it might cause trouble if the wrong people found out about it."

  Cael felt a cold twist in his gut. "So that's what they were searching for?"

  Mya's eyes softened. "I don't know, Cael. I only know your father was wary. More than usual. He stayed up later, locked the coinvault, whispered to himself when he thought we weren’t listening."

  She finally let her fingers brush the coin, gently, as if it would burn her. "This was supposed to help you. He said… it would be the only way you'd know it all.".

  Cael turned the coin over in his hand again, staring at the now cold metal.

  "It was his voice. Not a recording, or some trick. He knew I was there. He spoke to me like he was… still here."

  Mya stepped forward and hugged him, her arms firm and trembling. "Then listen to him, Cael. And be careful.".

  He rested his chin on her shoulder, searing eyes focused. "I have to know who did this."

  "You will," she whispered, her voice steady now. "But not for vengeance. That was never your father. He believed in purpose."

  Cael nodded into her shoulder, holding her tighter.

  When he finally pulled back, he slipped the coin into a pouch at his side and looked at the blackened husk of their home one last time.

  “Then I’ll start by learning what he was trying to teach me.”