The coins burned hotter in their palms the longer they stood there.
Miles could feel it seeping up his arm, into his veins — a poison made of guilt, of memory.
The pedestal before them pulsed like a living thing, waiting for an offering.
Kayla was first.
She stumbled forward, clutching her coin against her chest like a live grenade.
Her face — so confident hours ago — was now cracked and shivering.
The hooded figure tilted its blank head.
Kayla dropped to her knees before the scale, pressing the coin to it.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then her coin sank into the metal like butter.
The scale twitched.
Images of Kayla's past flared across the mirrors — theft, betrayal, a girl sobbing behind a locked door.
The left side of the scale dipped lower.
Kayla cried out — something unseen tearing from her — but the balance evened.
Barely.
The figure lowered its hand.
Kayla gasped in relief and stumbled away, clutching her seared hand.
Miles caught her before she fell.
"You're alive," he muttered.
"...for now," she whispered.
Levi stepped up next.
He hesitated.
His coin gleamed redder by the second.
And in that hesitation — Miles saw something shift behind Levi's eyes.
Fear.
And something worse:
Intention.
Levi didn't press the coin to the scale.
Instead, he threw it.
High and wide — aiming for the mirrors.
The second it left his hand, the room exploded in howling noise.
The mirrors cracked.
The scale bucked.
The hooded figure's head snapped toward Levi with a motion that was inhuman.
Miles grabbed Kayla and ducked, shielding them both.
But Levi didn't run.
He charged the pedestal, roaring like a man who'd already accepted death.
He never made it.
The figure moved.
One second, it stood behind the scale.
The next — it was inside Levi.
A sickening crack echoed.
Levi's body froze mid-lunge, eyes bulging, mouth open in a silent scream.
Then he crumbled — flesh folding inward like paper, bones turning to ash — until nothing remained but the coin he'd tried to throw.
It rolled lazily to a stop at Miles' boots.
Silence slammed into the room.
The hooded figure returned to its post behind the scale, as if nothing had happened.
Kayla sobbed into her sleeve.
Miles bent down slowly, picked up Levi's coin — still warm — and tucked it into his pocket.
He'd find a way to use it.
Even in here, the game could be bent. If you were willing to pay enough.
Now it was only him.
His past.
His turn.
He stepped to the scale.
Miles Rennick had debts.
Old ones.
New ones.
Ones he'd never even admitted to himself.
He closed his eyes and pressed the coin to the metal.
The mirrors screamed.