Florence, 1500
The child stares at the coin.
It lies in his palm—gold, Florin, minted with the lily of Florence—and he turns it slowly as if decoding a message only he can read.
No one notices. The servants bustle. His nursemaid murmurs prayers in the corner. The father—Luca di Vero, a minor merchant banker—counts ledgers, unaware that his ten-year-old son is not a child at all.
Not truly.
Elias Vero had awakened in this body two weeks ago. He had not cried or screamed. He had listened, silently, while the midwife whispered of "a calm one, this boy." Calm because he had lived already, and died, and now returned.
He watched, remembered, and calculated.
---
"You're quiet, Elias."
The voice came from across the small study. Luca, a lean man with ink-stained fingers and sharp cheekbones, gave his son a curious look. "Do you not like your new coin?"
"I like it very much, Father," Elias replied, voice even. "But I wonder how many hands it passed through before mine."
Luca blinked. "You think strangely for a child."
Good. Keep thinking that, Elias thought. Outwardly, he only smiled.
---
Elias had spent the first days cataloguing what he was born into. Not nobility—good. That would attract attention. Not poverty—better. Just enough wealth to touch the banking world, not enough to be consumed by it.
Florence was ruled by the Medici again, though Piero was weak and Savonarola's ashes still stirred beneath the stones of the Piazza della Signoria. France had marched through, and Spain would soon rise. Europe was unstable, yet rich with opportunity.
And gold—gold was power.
---
At night, when others slept, Elias traced memories like a scholar leafing through old books:
He knew that within fifty years, ships would carry silver from the Americas and flood Europe's economy.
He knew the Medici would fall and rise again, and that their banking empire would spread as far as England.
He knew Florence would fade as Venice and Genoa rose, only for Antwerp and Amsterdam to later overtake them.
He knew to wait.
He would not invent steam engines or prevent wars. That would be foolish. History could break if pressured too hard.
But he could position himself, quietly, like a stone in a stream that redirected the current without being noticed.
---
In public, he was a strange, polite boy—too thoughtful, but harmless.
In private, he had already begun writing his first ledger.
It was not kept in a book. It was written in memory.
The gold coin was just the beginning.