The Eternal Coin, Part 2: – The Murderer’s Curse (Present Day, Romania → Ottoman Wars)

The man who had taken Mihai’s trolley was named Victor, a life marked by petty schemes and darker impulses. In his youth, an argument over a stolen item had escalated into something far worse: his younger brother had drowned in the icy currents of the Bega Canal, and Victor had watched without lifting a finger. Guilt had never touched him; only the sharp edge of fear and self-preservation guided his life, and he told his parents and the police he arrived too late to do anything.

That evening, after the supermarket debacle, Victor returned to his small apartment in Timisoara. The coin he extracted from the trolley after parking it lay in his pocket, cold and heavy for its size, against his palm, though he paid it no attention. He ate a ready meal and drank cheap wine mixed with cola, before eventually collapsing into his unmade bed, thinking about various schemes and trickery of the week, as was his habit.

But sleep did not come mildly.

When Victor’s eyes finally opened, he was no longer lying on a dirty, unmade bed in his dim apartment. Instead, he was face down in mud, the air thick with smoke and the coppery stench of blood. Around him, men’s screams shattered the night, mixed with the roar of hooves and the groans of dying men. Although he had had many nightmares before, none were of this nature or time period, nor did they feel so sharp.

He realised with growing terror that he was not merely watching this scene, he was in it! He was, in fact, one of the soldiers—a young, inexperienced and petrified auxiliary in the Ottoman army, part of a campaign ravaging the lands of Wallachia. His hands gripped a spear that felt as foreign as the armoured plate on his chest. The cries of the wounded and the panicked clatter of carts overloaded with the spoils of war assaulted his senses.

Victor’s instincts, honed in a life of selfish cunning, served him not here. He ran and slithered alongside other inexperienced comrades he had never met, striking wildly at peasants and defenders alike. Every life he took left an echo in his mind despite the speed of it all, a feeling that felt strangely familiar but unfamiliar enough to confuse him.

Days—or perhaps hours- time was unrecognisable—passed in a blur of battle, plague, and hunger. He was drenched by mud and blood, fever and terror ate at him, and whispers of death called his name in every shadow.

Then came the impalement.

In a small clearing, surrounded by the remnants of his unit, Victor was captured. The Wallachian defenders had taken him, and he felt the unimaginable pain of the stake driven through his body, the coarse wood pressing against his chest, his limbs, his very soul. His screams ripped from him, echoing across centuries, mingling with the wind and the screams of a world not yet his own. He turned to see who had shouted the command to drop him into the waiting stake, in his fading consciousness, and he saw his brother's face, but older, on the body of a hefty commander looking angrily at him, as his life slipped away.

And then… nothing.

The coin lay in his pocket, slick with mud from his dirty hands. After the soldiers pressed on in battle, a peasant, gaunt and weak, emerged from the smoke, scavenging the pockets of the bodies for anything of value. His eyes fell upon the small, round object, glinting faintly in the dying light. Without question, he pocketed it, unaware that the coin would demand more lives and more journeys before its story ended.

Victor was gone, his life a cautionary whisper to the ages. Yet the coin endured, patient and inexorable, seeking the next hand willing—or destined—to bear it.