The night city blinked like a broken constellation. Rohan ran across the apartment roof, breath white in the cool air, backpack thumping against his spine. Three steps, jump, roll. He hit gravel on the next building, skidded, caught balance, and grinned despite himself.
"Two minutes ahead," he whispered into the tiny mic clipped to his collar.
Static, then a warm voice laced with nerves: "Don't be a hero. Just be fast."
"Vikram, I'm always fast."
"You're always loud," Vikram shot back from the alley, boots splashing through a puddle. "Left camera blind for eight seconds… now."
Rohan dropped to a crouch, hugged the parapet, and slid past a security cam tracing its lazy arc over the rooftop door. He had a plumber's key—a straight strip of metal that had opened more doors than luck ever did. The lock surrendered. He slipped down the stairwell, counting breaths. Seven steps. Landing. Seven steps. He'd mapped this building in his head for a week. The clients weren't greedy. They just wanted the old box rumored to be in a storage room on the second floor—part of an antique collector's messy hoard.
Easy money. In and out.
He reached the storage corridor. The air felt different here—older, dustier. He tugged a thin flashlight from his pocket and skimmed it across labels: "Porcelain—Damaged," "Brass Lamps," "Textiles," "Temple Fragments."
Temple Fragments.
He smirked. "Got a likely one," he murmured.
"Copy," Vikram said. "Two guards circling to east gate. You've got…I'd say six minutes before boredom becomes curiosity."
Rohan slid the door open. The room smelled like paper dying slowly. Boxes stacked to the ceiling like a fortress built by a patient god. He moved through, careful not to bump anything, and stopped at a waist-high crate with rope handles. The chalk mark across it had been smudged by time and fingers: FRAGMENT—RURAL SHRINE (UNCATALOGUED).
"Bingo."
He cut the tape. Under a layer of straw and old cloth, something small pressed cool against his fingertips. He dug, pushed aside a half-broken stone bead and a rusted bell, and lifted out a box—black wood banded with dull metal, clasp shaped like a teardrop.
His skin tightened.
"Vik," he said, and the name sounded too loud. "Found a box. Old. Weird clasp."
"Great. Five minutes. Don't open it there—"
Rohan had already flicked his knife under the clasp. It gave without protest, like it had been waiting for this moment more than he had. The lid lifted with the softest sigh.
On black cloth lay a coin the color of a midnight flame. Gold, but colder. He blinked, and for a second he thought he saw the figures etched along its edge move, clasping and unclasping hands in a slow rhythm that matched his pulse.
The corridor outside breathed. No—the air actually took a breath, cool wind pooling at the door and then rolling into the room like a wave. The flashlight dimmed. Rohan's grin fell.
"Vikram," he whispered. "It's… humming."
"What?"
Rohan reached a finger toward the coin.
"Do. Not. Touch."
But it wasn't disobedience. It was gravity. He barely brushed metal. A hot pinprick leaped up his arm and nest in his shoulder, then slid behind his heart and sat there like a sleeping cat.
Something opened.
A sound like a whispered laugh crawled out of the box and into his ear. Under it, another sound, like a sob bitten in half. Words braided together, too thin to catch.
He snapped the box shut, threw it in his pack, and moved.
"Coming out," he said, voice too calm. He climbed the steps two at a time, shoulders loud with the coin's silent presence. He hit the roof, sprinted, leapt—this time his foot slipped and for a breath he tasted empty air, then slammed onto gravel, palms burning.
"You okay?" Vikram asked, close now, watching from the alley's mouth.
"Yeah," Rohan lied. He dropped down the fire escape, knees complaining, shoes hitting metal rungs with impatient rhythm. He reached the ground, handed Vikram the pack, and only then realized his hand was shaking.
Vikram saw it. "You good?"
"Lightheaded. I'm fine." Rohan swallowed. "Let's get paid."
They cut through backstreets, neon and old posters peeling from walls, ghost dogs rummaging in garbage. A motorbike whined somewhere. Rohan kept touching his jacket above his heart, like a mosquito bite he couldn't stop scratching.
"It's not like you to be spooked by a shiny coin," Vikram teased.
"It wasn't the coin." Rohan tried to find the right words. "It was the… room. Like it turned and looked at me."
"Rooms don't look."
"Yeah, well." Rohan forced a laugh. "This one did."
They reached the old granary turned workshop—their fence's place. Shutter rolled up just enough to duck under. Inside, old wood, old machines, and a man with grease on his hands and a smile that always showed too many teeth.
"You brought me a story?" he asked, eyes on the pack.
"We brought you an object that can be turned into money," Vikram said. "A small one."
The man—everyone called him Uncle Ash—unzipped the bag, lifted the black box like he was picking up a sleeping snake, and set it on the table. His eyes changed when the lid rose.
"You opened it already," he said softly.
Rohan stiffened. "So?"
"So now it knows you."
They stared.
Uncle Ash took a handkerchief, folded it twice, and—using only the cloth—pinched the coin and held it against the light. Something in the metal caught color where no color should be. He put it back, closed the lid.
"I'll hold it overnight," he said. "Buyers with the right kind of taste will pay extra. Come back tomorrow. Don't talk about it. Don't carry it. Don't dream of it."
Rohan's mouth felt dry. "Dream—"
"Go."
They went.
On the street, Rohan inhaled and the city air tasted different—too sweet. His phone buzzed. Unknown number.
He answered. Silence. Then a voice, thin as spider silk.
"It wasn't paid."
Rohan stopped walking. Vikram took two more steps, then turned, grin fading as he saw Rohan's face empty out.
"What?" Vikram asked.
Rohan swallowed. "Spam call." He forced a smile. "Let's crash. Big day tomorrow."
But when he tried to sleep, the dark of his room felt crowded. The ceiling wasn't a ceiling. The fan wasn't spinning. He closed his eyes, and in that instant, his bed tilted like a boat and slid into a memory he'd never lived—a clearing, a ruin, a box, a coin like a piece of captured moon.
He heard crying. Not from far away. From behind his heart.
Some vows can't be buried.
He woke with his hand over his chest and the taste of smoke in his mouth.
Outside, at the granary, Uncle Ash sat by the coin in its box, a lantern burning low. He had seen many things, sold many things, told himself every object was only an object.
At two in the morning, the lantern went out by itself.
At two-oh-one, the coin was no longer in the box.
Uncle Ash wasn't in the chair either.
But there were footprints circling the table, tighter and tighter, until the last prints stood on top of each other—like someone had been swallowed whole by the air.
The coin, of course, had merely gone home.
Back to the person who had touched it first.
Back to the one it now knew.