Old Karl didn't continue.
After saying "they are thieves," he closed up like a door suddenly shut, locking all sound inside. He put his glasses back on, picked up his pipe, and sat back in his chair, staring at the ancient book on the counter as if it were something he had read countless times but could never quite understand.
Aiden waited a long time.
"And then?" he asked.
"There's no 'and then.'" Karl's voice was rough as sandpaper. "Some things, knowing too much isn't good."
"Your wife—"
"Don't mention her." Karl cut him off, his tone suddenly hard, like iron frozen solid. Aiden saw his hand trembling; ash from his pipe scattered on the counter in gray specks.
Silence.
Outside, the light was fading. No lamps were lit in the shop, and the outlines of the two figures grew indistinct in the dusk. Aiden sat in his chair, his fingers unconsciously rubbing the fabric of his trousers. Questions crowded in his mind, each one a thorn stuck behind his tongue, but he didn't know whether to voice them.
Finally, he asked a different question.
"Can you show me something else?"
Karl looked up. "What do you mean?"
"That book." Aiden pointed at the ancient book on the counter. "Your wife had the same ability as me, didn't she? Then she must have left something behind. Something that could show me more."
Karl looked at him, his gaze unreadable in the dim light. After a long moment, he stood and walked to the small room at the back of the shop, the one he never let anyone enter. The door opened a crack, and Aiden saw an oil lamp lit inside, Karl's shadow wavering on the wall like a hunched bird.
A few minutes later, Karl came back.
His hand was clenched around something, his fist tight, his knuckles white. He sat down before Aiden and slowly opened his fingers.
A silver coin.
It landed on the counter with a dull thud, not like metal, more like a stone dropped on wood. Aiden looked down. The coin was larger than ordinary currency, its surface blackened, its original color barely visible. Deep scratches marked its edges, as if someone had scraped it with a knife.
"What is this?" Aiden asked.
"A silver coin," Karl said. "Minted three hundred years ago, the year of Karl Drak's 'heroic deeds.'"
Aiden's fingers froze in midair.
"Your wife's?"
"The last thing she ever touched." Karl's voice was flat, as if stating something that had nothing to do with him. "She touched this coin and saw what was inside it. The next day, the Church came."
"What did she see?"
Karl didn't answer. He only pushed the coin a little toward Aiden. The movement was slow, as if pushing a piece of red‑hot iron.
Aiden reached out.
The moment his fingertip touched the coin's surface, a chill crawled up his fingers to his wrist, like winter water poured down his sleeve. The coin's surface was rough, its scratches like dried‑up riverbeds under his fingerprints.
Then the world vanished.
It wasn't like before, where he "saw images"—this time, reality was torn open, and he was pulled inside.
He stood in a room.
Not the bookshop, not any street in the old district. It was a large room with stone walls, black slate floors, the air thick with the smell of burning. In the center stood a long table covered with a white cloth; on the cloth lay an open box.
Inside the box was a crown.
Not the silver‑white crown from Aldric's coronation—this one was gold, crudely made, its gems cheap glass, the work of some small, hurried workshop. But its shape was strange, different from how a crown should look; it seemed more like a… mold?
Aiden stepped closer.
The scene shifted. Like a film reel fast‑forwarded, the light in the room flickered through countless day‑night cycles; the tablecloth changed again and again; the crown was taken out and put back. Then a man entered the room.
His face was blurred, as if seen through water‑streaked glass, but Aiden could make out his clothes—the white robe of a priest of the Holy Light, its collar embroidered with gold thread, the mark of a high priest.
The man took the crown from its box, turned it over, and carved a line of characters into the inside with a small knife. Aiden couldn't read the words, but he saw the man's expression when he finished—very calm, like someone completing a task he had done many times.
The scene jumped again.
This time, Aiden saw a mint. The light of the furnace lit the whole room; a blacksmith hammered at a piece of red‑hot metal. The metal slowly took shape, becoming a silver coin.
The smith placed it on his workbench and pressed a steel die onto its surface, imprinting a design.
The design was a profile.
A king.
Aiden recognized the outline—the king's portrait on every Wang‑calendar silver coin. Wang‑calendar silver coins were the most common currency in Tricolor Flag City, stamped with the profile of "the Unifier Aldric." Every textbook said that was Aldric's own face.
But the face the smith was pressing was different.
Aiden leaned closer, trying to make out the features—high brow, hollow temples, an irregular hooked nose. This face bore no resemblance to the "majestic, dignified" description in the textbooks. It was gaunt, sickly, almost distorted.
The smith turned the coin over and stamped the crown design on the reverse.
Then another man entered the workshop.
It was the high priest.
He pulled another steel die from his sleeve and handed it to the smith. "Use this," he said. The smith took it, glanced at it, and his expression changed. His lips moved, as if he wanted to say something, but in the end, he said nothing. He fitted the new die into the press, reheated the coin he had just struck, and stamped it with the new design.
The new design was another face.
The textbook face.
A chill ran up Aiden's spine. He watched the smith put the finished coins one by one into a cloth bag; the high priest stood by, waiting quietly. Outside the workshop, bells rang—church bells.
The vision began to blur. Its edges curled and dissolved like paper soaked in water. But before the last image faded, Aiden heard the high priest say one more thing.
"Three hundred years ago, we rewrote history. Three hundred years from now, no one will remember what it really looked like. It doesn't matter who is on the coin—what matters is what people believe."
Darkness.
Aiden's eyes snapped open. He was still sitting in the bookstore chair, his finger still on the silver coin. His back was drenched in cold sweat, his shirt sticking to his skin, sending a shiver through him.
"What did you see?" Karl's voice came from the darkness.
Aiden opened his mouth; his throat was dry as sandpaper. "The man on the coin," he said. "It's not Aldric."
"I know."
"It's someone else. A different face. A face that was—"
"That face was the real one." Karl said. "Aldric isn't a person. It's a name. A name the Church invented. They needed someone to represent 'the Unifier,' so they made a person. Made a face for him, made a history, made a legend."
"But the real king—"
"The real king has no name." Karl's voice was very soft. "He was defeated, erased, his name not even left behind. The only thing that remains is these faces pressed into the reverse side of silver coins. On the ones that were never restruck."
Aiden looked down at the coin. In the dim light, he could barely make out its design. But he knew that beneath the altered surface, another face lay buried. A real face. A buried face.
"This isn't just one statue," Aiden said. His voice was calm, but his mind was racing, like an engine suddenly ignited. "It's not just one hero who was rewritten. It's all of history—the textbooks, the coins, the statues, the crowns—everything has been changed. One false hero might be a coincidence. But a false king on the currency—that's—"
"Systematic," Karl finished for him. "It's not one person rewritten. It's the whole history rewritten."
Aiden's fingers tightened on his knees.
He suddenly remembered his days at the orphanage. The nuns would tell them the story of "the Unifier" every day—how he had come from the heavens, led humanity out of darkness, founded the Church of the Holy Light. Those stories were repeated so many times that every word seemed carved in stone, never to change.
But now he knew.
Those words carved in stone had been carved later. The original words had been chiseled away, smoothed over, and new words carved in their place. And the fragments that had been chiseled off had been thrown somewhere no one would ever find them, slowly turning to dust.
"Why did they do it?" Aiden asked.
Karl didn't answer.
"If all they needed was a hero, one would have been enough. Why rewrite all of history? Why change the face on the coins? Why change Aldric's coronation story? Why—"
"Because they were covering something up." Karl said. "Not a person. Not an event. An era."
Aiden froze.
"That book you saw yesterday," Karl pointed at the ancient book on the counter, "its contents weren't made up. That was real history. Before Aldric, before this kingdom, before the Church of the Holy Light, there was an era they wiped out completely. An era that had its own civilization, its own history, its own… everything."
"What was in that book?"
"Only part of the coronation ceremony was in the book." Karl said. "The rest of it entered your mind when you touched it. You're the only one who can see it."
Aiden thought of the hall he had seen yesterday, the silver‑skinned figures, the words "Remember us."
"Those silver people," he asked. "What were they?"
Karl was silent for a long time.
"I don't know," he finally said. "No one knows. The Church wiped that era too clean. So clean that even its name didn't survive. Your wife—" he paused, "she once said that those silver people might be the key. If we could find out who they were, we might understand why the Church erased an entire age."
"Did she find the answer?"
Karl didn't answer. He only picked up the silver coin from the counter and clenched it in his hand, like holding a burnt bone.
Outside, the sky was fully dark. The church bells rang again, eight times this time. Aiden listened to them and suddenly felt they didn't sound like they were telling the time—they sounded like they were counting.
Counting something buried.
"Mr. Karl." Aiden stood up. His legs were weak, but he stood straight. "I want to know the truth. All of it."
Karl raised his head and looked at him. In the darkness, the old man's eyes were unnaturally bright.
"You will," he said. "But they will know too."
He turned his head to look out the window. In the distance, the spire of the Holy Light Cathedral pierced the night sky; the eternal flame at its peak swayed in the wind, like an eye that never closed.
"You touched that coin," Karl's voice was very low, as if rising from underground. "You're already in this story. They'll find you sooner or later."
Aiden followed his gaze to the window.
The flame still swayed.
And he realized, from this day forward, he could not live as he had before. He could no longer be like the dust in the old district's alleys, settling silently in corners, waiting to be swept away.
He had seen what he was not meant to see.
And this world did not allow anyone to see the truth.