PART I — Moonlight on Cobbled Stone Protector’s Enclave had a certain hush on moonlit evenings, the kind that makes a city feel like it’s catching its breath between heartbeats. Lanterns flickered along the cobbled ways like nervous fireflies, but it was Selûne’s pale beam—cool and constant—that washed the stones in truth. Elunara Dawnspear moved with the serenity of someone trained to hear holiness in silence. The silver trim of her armor glinted faintly as she passed the Hall of Justice, where columns rose like judgmental fingers pointing at unrepentant stars. Her errand was simple: ferry a blessing-scroll from the Moonstone Mask to the small shrine of Selûne tucked behind the Driftwood Tavern. A walk barely long enough to stretch her legs… or so she hoped. The first omen arrived in the shape of a Drow nearly sprinting into her. A bundle of parchment clutched to his chest, hair frayed, eyes wide with that particular brand of panic that belongs exclusively to diviners. He froze mid-step, as though running into a wall only he could see. “Forgive me,” Elunara said automatically. “Paladin,” he whispered, scandalized. “Savras didn’t warn me about a paladin. He said ‘moonlight, noise, and a fourth wheel.’” Elunara blinked. “A fourth—?” But Finn Gatherwell was already sidling past, muttering to himself, “Prophecies need disclaimers.” He vanished into a side street, leaving behind the faint smell of herbs, ink, and dread. Elunara sighed. Selûne, ever cryptic, provided no commentary. A shout boomed behind her: “MOVE OR GET MOVED! SLAPPY INBOUND!” The crowd parted—violently—as Slappy Blackscales barreled forward like a bipedal siege ram. A goblin rib still clung stubbornly to one of her greaves. “You are bleeding,” Elunara observed. “Not mine!” Slappy beamed. “Mostly goblin. One crate. Crate lived. Goblins didn’t. You know how it goes.” Elunara did not, in fact, know how crates survived battles better than goblins, but she let the mystery be. Slappy thumped her maul against her shoulder. “You look like you’re judging something. Want me to hit it?” “No,” Elunara said. “Are you sure?” “…Yes.” Slappy trudged toward the Driftwood. “If something needs hitting, save it for me.” The Dragonborn’s voice faded into the tavern’s din. Elunara allowed herself one peaceful breath— —and then felt a presence behind her. A steady one. A quiet one. A presence built like an anvil with opinions. Tharic Ironshaper approached with the deliberate weight of a dwarf who’d spent a lifetime learning when to walk softly and when to make the earth quake under his boots. His hammer hung at his side; his cracked shield—the one he’d been found wrapped in as an infant—rested across his back like a stubborn memory. “Evenin’, Dawnspear,” he rumbled, voice warm as forge-glow. “Didn’t mean to come creepin’ up on you like a night-stalker. Streets are restless.” “They usually are,” Elunara replied. “What brings you out this late? Business?” He lifted a wrapped bundle. “A delivery for the Hall of Justice. A breastplate reforged. Whoever’s runnin’ night watch keeps gettin’ stabbed in the same place. I’m startin’ to suspect they’re leanin’ into it.” Elunara managed a small smile. “You could simply pray for them.” “Aye, and I do.” Tharic glanced toward the moon. “But Yondalla prefers her children alive enough to appreciate Her work.” Before Elunara could respond, Finn reappeared in a blur, reeking faintly of exploded mushrooms and apprehension. “There you all are! Bad news! Very bad news! The prophecy loop restarted!” Slappy’s head popped out of the Driftwood door. “Did someone say ‘loop’? Loops are usually why I’m banned from places.” Finn pointed. “You—noise. You—moonlight.” He pointed to Elunara. Then slowly rotated toward Tharic. “And you… the fourth wheel.” Tharic frowned. “Wheel of what?” Finn swallowed. “Savras said: When four paths meet on the cobbled stone, a choice shall shape what breaks and what is mended.” Slappy: “Cool. Is the choice punching?” Finn: “No! Absolutely not! Maybe! Probably not!” Elunara sighed. “Finn. What exactly is happening?” Finn gathered himself. “There’s a ripple. A misalignment. A tiny… hiccup in probability. Something is going to go wrong. Horribly wrong. Right now. In about…” He looked up. Something small flickered in the moonlight above the street. A glimmer. A twist. A distortion. Then a coin began falling—not straight, but sideways, as though reality itself couldn’t make up its mind which way was down. Tharic looked up. “Well, that’s not how coins behave.” Finn shrieked. Slappy cracked her knuckles. “I can hit it.” “No!” Finn yelped. The coin struck the stone—and sang. Not with metal. Not with magic. With voices. Hundreds. Whispering. Elunara’s hand flew to her spear. “Selûne guard us.” Tharic stepped forward, shield raising. “Yondalla, stand with your strayed son.” Slappy rolled her shoulders. “If anyone starts chanting in a creepy way, I’m hitting them.” Finn looked stricken. “This isn’t supposed to be here. This isn’t supposed to exist. This is the start of it. This is the—” Something answered from the alley. The whispering coin went quiet. The entire street went silent. Then a voice—soft, airy, ancient—breathed: Choose. Elunara exchanged a glance with Tharic, both paladins feeling the same divine chill ripple through their bones. Slappy raised her maul. “Okay. I think we can hit this one.” Finn swallowed. “You might actually be right this time.” Above, the moon dipped lower, widening its gaze across Protector’s Enclave. Four paths stood together under its light. Selûne watched. Yondalla listened. Savras hid his eyes. Tempus probably grinned. The night braced itself. Something old had awakened on the cobbled stone. --- PART II — The Coin and the Crack The coin did not lie still. It spun in place on the cobbles, not rolling or bouncing, but turning like a slow, deliberate thought. The moonlight caught its edges, and for a heartbeat Elunara could have sworn there were more than two faces to it—heads, tails, and something in between that had never seen a mint. Finn made a distressed noise that started as a whine and ended as a whispered prayer. “Savras preserve us. It’s a choice-coin.” Slappy frowned. “That sounds fake.” Finn flapped a hand at her. “Oh, absolutely. Completely fake. A rumor. A myth. A thing high diviners warn each other about in the same way you warn children about not jumping into cursed wells.” “And yet,” Tharic said, “there it sits.” The coin’s spin slowed. Elunara felt pressure build in her chest, as if someone had set another heart beating inside her, slightly out of time with the first. Her fingers twitched toward her holy symbol. “Explain,” she said. Finn swallowed. “Choice-coins. They’re… fragments. Slivers of older magics tied to possible futures. Savras doesn’t make them. He tolerates them the way one tolerates bright, very stupid cousins. They show you what might be if you turn left, but not right. If you stay your hand, but not draw the blade. And then they… entice.” “Entice?” Tharic echoed. “They make choosing feel easier,” Finn said. “Which is precisely the danger.” The voice that had whispered Choose brushed against their thoughts again, cool and insistent. Decide, little sparks, it murmured. Fate waits for no one. Across the square, a wagon rumbled into view, drawn by two tired horses and one tired driver. Barrels lashed to its bed clinked together with a distinctly alchemical rattle. “Zalen’s cart,” Slappy muttered. “He does potion-hauls for Flaskwright. Those barrels are all ‘do-not-kick-or-entire-district-explodes.’” Behind the wagon, a cluster of children darted in and out of the shadows, chasing each other’s shouted dares. One human boy—barefoot, fearless, doomed to longest lecture if caught—scrambled up onto the edge of a low fountain ledge for a better vantage. Finn sucked in a breath. His eyes unfocused, then widened. “No, no, no—” Two futures spilled into his mind at once, sharp as broken glass. In the first, Zalen’s cart struck a dislodged cobble at speed. One loosened barrel careened off, hit the fountain, ruptured. A wash of volatile alchemical brew surged across the square, catching a lantern, blossoming into a screaming ring of fire. Slappy dove through the flame, dragging two children to safety; Elunara shielded another beneath her own body; Tharic braced the worst of the blast with his battered shield, the crack down its face filling with light. They survived—but barely. The boy on the fountain… did not. In the second future, Slappy lunged early, shoving the wagon aside before it struck the stone. The barrels rocked but held. No explosion. No fire. But the sudden jolt snapped a harness strap; one horse broke free, bolted through the square, and slammed into a night-patrol of fresh recruits marching in tight formation. Armor, bone, and pride shattered in a heap. Three would never walk as they once had. There were more futures lurking behind those two—he could feel them, fractal and unkind. The coin’s whisper tightened, a band around his skull. There is always a cost. Choose how it falls. That is all. Finn staggered. Elunara caught his elbow. “What do you see?” she asked. He licked dry lips. “Two paths. Both cruel. One boy dead and the city saved loud. Or three guards broken and the night saved quiet. The coin wants us to pick which grief to carry.” Slappy snorted. “What if I choose to punch the coin instead?” Tharic Ironshaper had gone very still. His eyes were on the approaching cart, the playful children, the cracked cobble just visible in the wagon’s path. His hand rested on the strap of his shield, thumb tracing the long fracture he’d been found wrapped in as a babe. “Fate,” he muttered, “has a nasty habit of pretending it is the only game in town.” Elunara’s gaze flicked from child, to wagon, to Tharic. “We do not have time to debate metaphysics. We act, or we watch others burn.” “The coin says we must choose who gets hurt,” Finn whispered. “It always narrows. It hates ‘both’ and ‘neither.’” Elunara’s jaw clenched. “Then perhaps it needs to meet a paladin of Yondalla.” Tharic’s mouth twitched. “And one of Selûne.” Slappy hefted her maul. “And a Dragonborn with poor impulse control.” The wagon rolled closer. Lanternlight glimmered on the sloshing barrels. The barefoot boy leaned out just a little too far over the fountain. The cracked cobble waited like a held breath. The coin whispered, hungry: Choose. Elunara drew herself up, feeling Selûne’s gaze like a cool hand on her brow. “No,” she said, voice low. “We will not choose which innocents to harm. We will choose to fight all harm, as far as we can reach.” The coin pulsed with irritation. Impossible. One or the— Tharic’s boot came down hard. Not on the coin. Beside it. The vibration rang through the stone, into the shield on his back, into the story of his life. The old crack flared with soft dawnlight. “You’ve never met Yondalla’s stubborn children, have you?” he grunted. “We don’t take kindly to being told our limits by trinkets.” “Slappy!” Elunara barked. “Barrels. Gently. Now.” The Dragonborn took off like a launched boulder. “Gently is my middle name!” “It is absolutely not—” Finn began. “Finn,” Elunara snapped. “Children. Get them clear.” “Right! Yes! Herding! I can herd!” “And you?” Tharic asked her. Elunara smiled thinly. “I will argue with gravity.” They moved. Slappy met the cart a heartbeat before it hit the cracked stone. Her hands slapped onto the wooden frame, muscles bunching, boots sliding a fraction as she forced half a ton of wood and alchemical foolishness into a new trajectory. “WHOA THERE, YOU EXPENSIVE DEATH-KEGS!” she roared at the horses, who, to their credit, stopped mostly out of confusion. The barrels lurched, swayed… and settled. None broke loose. Finn conjured a flicker of Savras-given insight—a glimmer of where each child would be two seconds from now. He darted like a thought through their future positions, colliding with one, nudging another, tripping a third just enough that they tumbled backward into a safe heap rather than forward into disaster. “Back!” he wheezed. “Back, you tiny disasters-in-progress!” Elunara sprinted for the fountain. The barefoot boy wobbled on the ledge, arms windmilling. She leapt, catching him in mid-fall, twisting so they hit the cobbles with her back, not his. The world flared white with pain for an instant, then settled into a protesting ache. She cradled the boy close. “Easy. You are not meant to fly yet.” “Sorry,” he mumbled, wide-eyed. “Apologize to your mother,” she said. “She will be the one doing the shouting.” Tharic, for his part, did something the coin had not accounted for at all. He knelt. Not to pray, but to listen. His hand pressed flat to the cobbles, feeling the old, deep bones of the city. The cracked shield on his back hummed, light seeping from its fracture, running down his arm into the stone. “Yondalla,” he murmured, “if there is any truth to them finding me on a road for a reason, let it be more than just lifting things for a living.” The light spread from his fingers in a soft ripple. Where it passed, the cobbles shifted—just a breath, just enough—to smooth the worst of the unevenness in the cart’s path. The wagon rolled on. Not perfectly. A barrel thumped. A strap creaked. But nothing shattered. Nothing exploded. No horses bolted in panic. The choice-coin went utterly still. Finn straightened slowly, chest heaving. “We… we did it. We beat it. We saved everyone.” Elunara checked the boy’s limbs. Bruised, shaken, alive. “We saved everyone we could reach,” she said softly. “There will be other nights. Other choices. But this one, yes.” Slappy leaned on the cart, panting. “I was so gentle. Did you see how gentle I was? I should get a medal for restraint.” “You shouted at the barrels,” Zalen the driver said weakly. “Gently shouted,” Slappy insisted. The whispered voice from the coin returned, but it had lost its earlier smugness. You cheated, it said, petulant. Tharic snorted. “We refused your frame.” Elunara stepped toward the coin. “You offered a coward’s bargain. Do harm now so that harm later feels justified. We declined.” That is not how this works, the coin said. “It is now,” she replied. Finn eyed it warily. “What do we do with it? We can’t just leave it. Someone else might be… less creative.” Slappy perked up. “Can I eat it?” Four heads turned. “No,” Elunara said. “Absolutely not,” Finn added. Tharic considered. “Would that help?” Slappy opened her mouth experimentally. Elunara sighed and held up a hand. “Wait.” She knelt and, with two fingers, very gently touched the coin. Moonlight flowed with her, silver and soft. “Selûne,” she whispered, “see this bauble. Weigh its intent. If it is beyond mending, let it be made simple.” For a moment, nothing happened. Then the light wrapped the coin, thin as frost. The whispering faded. The sense of pressure eased. When she lifted her fingers, it was just a coin—tarnished, ordinary, slightly scuffed. It lay heads-up. Finn squinted. “Is it… safe?” Tharic tilted his shield, catching the moonlight. The crack along its face gleamed, then dimmed. “If it isn’t,” he said, “it will at least learn to be ashamed of itself.” Slappy scooped it up. “Finders keepers.” “Slappy—” Elunara began. “What?” Slappy tucked the coin into a pouch with exaggerated care. “I like the reminder. That sometimes you can tell fate it’s full of troll dung and shove it over.” Finn managed a tired grin. “Just… don’t flip it over any open lava pits.” “No promises,” Slappy said cheerfully. The danger passed with the wagon’s rattling departure. Children were retrieved, scolded, and herded home. Lanterns resumed their anxious flicker. The square exhaled, the way cities do when disaster comes sniffing and decides to pass on to another street. Elunara watched Tharic as he straightened, resting a hand on his shield. “You changed the stone,” she said. “Only a little,” he replied. “Not enough to insult the masons. But enough to remind it that not every rut ends in ruin.” “That is how you see people, too, I think,” she said. “Aye.” His beard twitched in the hint of a smile. “I suspect you do the same, in your own moon-touched way.” Finn cleared his throat. “For the record, Savras is… pleased. Or at least not throwing anything at me. He says: well-chosen non-choice.” “That sounds like a compliment,” Slappy said. “In Savras’ tongue,” Finn replied, “it’s practically a love letter.” They lingered only a little longer, four unlikely threads knotted together by a coin that had thought it could dictate sorrow. Then: Finn faded back into the alleys, chasing the next murmur of prophecy he pretended he didn’t want. Slappy stomped tavern-ward, boasting already about the time she “gently suplexed fate.” Tharic headed for the Hall of Justice with his parcel under one arm and the quiet satisfaction of a shield that had, just for a moment, been more than a relic. And Elunara resumed her walk to the little shrine behind the Driftwood, scroll under her arm, step lightened. Above them, the moon rode on, watching one more night in a city that refused to play fair with destiny. Later, in careful ink, the Soul Bearer wrote: On one moon-bright night, four souls were offered a cruel bargain by a coin that had forgotten mercy. They declined to choose who must fall. Instead, they chose to stand where the falling was, and be struck in its place. The Ledger keeps no record of those who never knew how near they came. But it remembers the cobbles… and the crack in a dwarf’s shield, now filled with light.