Subject: Anomaly, Red Capital Mint Source: Note from a junior treasury scribe.

He came back. The deserter, Malus. He walked past the iron sentinels as if they were mist and entered the Grand Mint, a spectre of rust in our house of gold. He didn't speak until the Mint Master himself stood before him.

"You have a debt," the Master boomed.

Malus reached into a pouch. He did not produce gold, or a gem, but a single, smooth, dark stone worn featureless by the sea. He placed it on the grand ledger. "Paid," was all he said.

The Master scoffed at the worthless rock, but before he could call the guards, Malus was gone. A phantom.

They couldn't discard the stone—it had been part of a transaction. To do so would be to admit a flaw in their perfect system. So they placed it in the deepest vault. A single, worthless, weightless coin in a sea of treasure. And the entire ledger is now, somehow, out of balance. The Hex of it haunts the mind of every teller who looks upon the accounts:

If a system of absolute value accepts a thing of absolute worthlessness, is the system still absolute? Which has more power: the gold that must be constantly guarded and counted, or the stone that asks for nothing, promises nothing, and will outlast the vault that contains it?

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