The coin sat in front of me on a white cloth, plain and dull—just a featureless disc of silver. No markings. No engravings. No signs of age or origin. Just cold, silent metal.
There's something unnerving about an object with no history. Most coins carry stories—etched symbols of nations, rulers, gods, dates. This one carried nothing. It was like it had never belonged to any place, any people. Like it had simply… appeared.
I didn't pour moonlight energy into it immediately. That would've been reckless.
First, I treated it like a puzzle.
I traced its outline in my notebook, sketching it from multiple angles, trying to catch some imperfection—an edge too smooth, a reflection too sharp—but there was nothing. I weighed it. Lighter than silver should be. I measured its temperature. Room temperature. I left it under direct flame—no discoloration. I soaked it in water, vinegar, saltwater. No corrosion. No smell. No change.
It was completely inert.
But it wasn't.
Not truly.
Sometimes, when I left the room and came back, the air around it felt subtly different. Thinner. Like it had inhaled something intangible while I was gone. Or perhaps exhaled it.
One night, I placed it under the moonlight for six hours straight. Sat on the roof like a man guarding treasure, eyes burning with lack of sleep. When the sun rose, it was unchanged.
I told myself I was being paranoid. But that wasn't true.
I was being cautious.
Eventually, I gave up on the scientific method and turned to instinct—the method I'd always trusted more.
I channeled moonlight energy into it. Slowly. Carefully.
The reaction was immediate.
A tingling sensation crawled up my fingers and across my arm. Like static, but deeper. More internal. Then something shifted in my awareness—like a ripple expanding outward from the coin, brushing against my consciousness.
For a brief second, I felt like I had a third arm. Not physical. Not even spiritual. But something else. A sensation just outside the edge of reality. A presence hovering at the border of my perception, tethered to my intent.
I gasped. It faded instantly.
I waited. Then I tried again.
This time, I focused more energy. Let it pool in my palm before feeding it into the coin. My skin chilled. The sensation returned. Stronger. Clearer. I reached forward without moving—and a pencil on the desk slid an inch.
My breath caught.
I tried again. The pencil tipped and rolled off the edge of the desk.
No wind. No tricks.
It was me.
The coin, infused with moonlight energy, granted me a kind of telekinetic reach—an invisible limb that responded to thought, stretching up to five meters. I could move small objects, lift lightweight items, even nudge things across a room with concentration.
I called it Ghost Hand.
It wasn't flashy. It wasn't explosive. But it was subtle. And subtlety was power. Especially in a world that still didn't believe in the supernatural.
In the following days, I tested other relics I had gathered from odd corners of the city. An iron ring with a cracked gemstone. A mirror shard that no longer reflected moonlight. A wooden talisman carved with faded symbols.
I tried the same method—injecting moonlight energy, slowly building up flow.
Nothing.
Not even a flicker of reaction.
Which only made the coin more mysterious.
Why did it work, when nothing else did?
Who made it?
Or worse—what gave it to me?
The man who sold me the coin had never named a price. He had simply begged me to take it. Paid me a thousand paiks just to accept it. I hadn't thought much about it then, chalking it up to desperation or madness.
But now I wasn't so sure.
I started carrying the coin with me at all times.
In my jacket pocket when I walked. In my pants when I worked. Sometimes, even beneath my pillow when I slept. I tried not to think about how easily I'd grown attached to it. How possessive I felt when I left it behind, even for a moment.
Power was addictive.
Even subtle power.
Life moved on.
Work in the mornings—tedious office reports and overly chatty coworkers. Shooting club in the evening—a hobby at first, now an obsession. I wasn't trying to be the best shot. I was trying to be ready. For something. Anything.
And at night, I meditated. Let the moonlight seep into me slowly, refining my energy, strengthening the flow. It was a technique I'd cobbled together from junk MTL novels and half-baked pseudoscience. But it worked. That's all that mattered.
At the club, I began forming casual ties with other regulars. I wasn't trying to make friends, but conversations happened.
There was one guy in particular—Rafi.
Slightly older, wiry, quiet. Always wore a single old leather shooting glove on his right hand. Had a scar across his neck that he never explained, and eyes that didn't blink much. You could tell, just from the way he held a rifle, that this wasn't sport for him.
This was survival.
He didn't talk much, but he watched. And slowly, he started offering tips.
"Lean into the wind. Don't fight it."
"Listen before you shoot. Sometimes your ears know more than your eyes."
He claimed he used to hunt with his uncle in the mountains before moving to the city. Never said why he left. Never talked about what he hunted.
I didn't pry. I listened.
Because Rafi was the kind of man who might outlive a catastrophe.
And I had a growing sense that eventually, something would go wrong.
Not yet. Not tomorrow. But someday.
And when that day came, I didn't want to be the only one who'd seen it coming.
Outside of that… life remained ordinary. No monsters. No omens. No divine messengers.
Just a plain silver coin that shouldn't exist.
And a hand that reached where no hand should reach.