Money has no face, but it has memory.
And in Dinaria, memory was a cage made of gold, debt, and secrets.
The most silent of all states.
Its towers were covered in black mirrors, their polished surfaces reflecting not the sun, but the dense fog that always lingered over the city. From the skies, Dinaria appeared pristine, untouched by the wars and storms that had shattered other states. But once a traveler descended to its streets, silence pressed down like lead upon the lungs.
Pablo had heard the stories since childhood. Dinaria was not like the other states—there were no festivals, no rumors of heroes, no chants echoing from its plazas. Dinaria was not remembered for its victories but for its ledgers, contracts, and the invisible strings it pulled behind every throne. For centuries, it had been the economic core of Norgalia, controlling international transactions, war credits, and the hidden reserves of the old Council.
It was said Dinaria never fell. When the world burned, it simply closed its doors, sealed its vaults, and waited.
And so it remained, suspended in silence, its heart beating under layers of polished stone.
When Pablo crossed its outer gates, there were no soldiers, no checkpoints. Just silence, echoing between the mirrored walls. He walked alone, with only the dust of the desert on his cloak.
At the center of the avenue, a single figure awaited him.
An old man, in a black suit without ornament. His beard was trimmed with meticulous precision, white as the marble at his feet. He leaned on a cane carved with the emblem of the ancient Central Bank—a circle split into seven fragments.
"Young Pablo…" the old man said, his voice both weary and sharp, "I knew the day would come when you'd arrive."
Pablo slowed his steps.
"And you are…?"
"My name is Eckhardt Vélemor. I was the last Director of the Chamber of Reserves of Norgalia. The man who signed the last circulation decree before the Fall. And… one of the traitors who financed the Republic."
Pablo's hand instinctively moved closer to the hilt of the ceremonial dagger hidden under his cloak.
"Why are you still alive, Eckhardt, when most of the other traitors are long dead?"
The old man gave a bitter chuckle.
"Because I never moved soldiers, nor weapons, nor speeches. I moved coins. And coins don't scream, don't bleed, don't leave corpses in the streets. But they bury empires all the same."
The sound of his cane echoed as he turned, motioning for Pablo to follow. "Come. I'll show you the truth of Dinaria. What you do with it afterward… will decide if you're a king or merely another name on these ledgers."
⸻
The Descent into the Vaults
Eckhardt led Pablo through a corridor of glass that reflected their figures endlessly. Each step carried them deeper underground, where the air grew colder, heavier. The silence here was suffocating, broken only by the metallic rhythm of the cane and Pablo's measured breathing.
Finally, the corridor opened into a chamber vast as a cathedral.
A vault.
But unlike any vault Pablo had ever seen.
Thousands of shelves towered into the dark, each stacked with bars of gold stamped with the emblems of ancient kings—and beside them, stacks sealed with the sigil of the Republic. Entire walls were lined with coins from extinct nations, each coin a fragment of history polished into silence.
And deeper still, behind layers of reinforced walls, Eckhardt revealed a hidden chamber. Its doors opened with a whisper, not a clang, as if even metal had learned to stay quiet in Dinaria.
Inside lay not wealth, but records.
Rows upon rows of documents, recordings, testimonies. Each bound in leather, sealed with wax, labeled with dates and signatures of men who had sold their souls in exchange for favor.
"This," Eckhardt said, extending a hand over the shelves, "is the true wealth of Dinaria. Not the gold. Not the reserves. Secrets. Here lies the price of every decision corrupted, every state betrayed, every people mortgaged away like cattle. Every time someone claimed justice ruled this land—Dinaria kept the receipt."
Pablo's jaw tightened as he ran his fingers along the spines of the documents. Some bore names he recognized—statesmen, generals, even a few Pilares. Others were strangers, but the weight of their crimes lingered in the air.
"And why do you show me this?" Pablo asked quietly.
"Because I'm old," Eckhardt said with a sigh. "Too old to carry the burden anymore. I've spent decades suffocating in this silence, knowing I enabled monsters with my signature. I want someone else to decide—burn it all, or reveal it. But do not let it rot in the dark. I cannot die with these ghosts still chained to me."
⸻
The Box of Cábala
Pablo walked further into the vault alone. He passed shelves marked "Subsidies of War," "Credits to the Pilares," "Emergency Loans – Rebellion Years." Each file smelled of dust, of time, of rotting truths.
Until he stopped.
At the end of a row, a glass case glimmered under a pale beam of light.
Its inscription read:
"Secret Fund of Project Cábala — Authorized by Julius, Pilar of Vitality."
The name hit him like cold iron. Julius. The most jovial, the most beloved of the Seven. The one whose laughter had painted the murals, whose open hands had welcomed children into festivals. The one Pablo wanted most to believe in.
Inside the case were contracts. Not ordinary contracts—these were written in the sharp, clinical language of financiers. But as Pablo read, his stomach clenched.
Entire villages mortgaged as "resources." Human lives converted into figures on ledgers. Experiments in which "debt" was attached to the very bodies of citizens, shackling them until death. People reduced to collateral, life exchanged for emeralds and signatures.
Pablo's vision blurred with rage.
His fist came down on the glass with a crack. Then another. Until shards rained down around him, glittering like broken stars. He seized the contracts, tearing them apart with trembling hands.
The silence swallowed his breaths, ragged and sharp.
Behind him, Eckhardt's voice echoed softly. "So… will you reveal it all to the people?"
Pablo turned, his eyes burning.
"No."
Eckhardt frowned.
"No?"
"No," Pablo repeated firmly, "I will not build my reign upon relics of crimes disguised as progress. Dinaria as it was must die. If I reveal every secret, people will drown in vengeance. If I bury them, silence will swallow the truth again. So I will do neither. I will build something new—on justice, not on this carcass of deceit."
⸻
The Reshaping of Dinaria
For three days, Pablo worked within Dinaria. He called what remained of the citizen councils, the scattered guilds, the survivors who still clung to fragments of dignity beneath the fog.
He declared the old Central Bank dissolved. Its building would no longer serve as the temple of secrets but would be reborn as the Public Archive of Dinaria, open to every citizen. The records would not vanish, but neither would they remain chained. People would decide, together, what truths they were ready to face.
The banks themselves would be restructured. No longer run by shadows behind mirrors, but by a new council chosen directly by Dinaria's citizens. A council sworn not only to the king, but to the people themselves, bound by public oath and monitored under the eye of open assemblies.
Eckhardt watched it unfold in silence, leaning on his cane as if the weight of his own sins grew heavier with every reform.
"You are different from them," he murmured to Pablo on the second evening. "The Pilares, the monarchs, even the rebels… they all sought to own Dinaria, to control its silence. But you—" He paused, shaking his head. "You seek to break the silence itself. I fear what that will unleash. But perhaps… perhaps it is necessary."
Pablo gave no reply. His eyes remained fixed on the vaults as flames devoured a section of archives he had ordered destroyed—the darkest, most inhumane of all. Ash drifted into the fog, carrying centuries of rot away.
⸻
The Statue
On his final day in Dinaria, Pablo wandered deeper into the vaults. Past sealed doors and abandoned rooms, he discovered a chamber untouched by dust.
At its center stood a statue. Incomplete.
It depicted a young man draped in a simple cloak, gazing upward as though searching for something beyond reach. He bore no crown, no sword, no emblem of authority. Only weariness in his stance, carved into stone.
At the statue's base, an inscription had been chiseled:
"If coin is blood, let yours purchase not silence, but justice."
Pablo stood there for a long time, his shadow stretching under the pale lantern light. He traced the inscription with his fingertips, feeling its roughness against his skin.
He said nothing.
But when he finally turned to leave, his steps were heavier than when he had arrived.
⸻
Epilogue of Dinaria
Outside, the mirrored towers reflected him—one figure walking alone through the silent city. But as the reforms began to ripple outward, the silence felt… different. Not suffocating, but anticipatory.
The people of Dinaria did not cheer, nor did they resist. They simply watched. Watched the young man who dared to reopen vaults, who carried ashes of truth in his cloak, who declared that money would no longer buy silence but accountability.
Eckhardt remained behind in the city, his cane tapping like a metronome in the fog. Perhaps he would die there, among the ledgers and ghosts. Perhaps that was fitting.
Pablo, however, carried the weight forward.
Another state reclaimed. Another truth unearthed. Another burden added to his shoulders.
The road to coronation stretched further still, and with each step, his shadow grew heavier.