Gold Ingot

'I've seen someone die from being hit by a train, but I've never seen someone die from their artistic life...'

"Is this what I imagined?" Martin asked, voice barely above a whisper.

"A quarter dozen bars of pure gold," replied Blue, his breath sweet with secrecy, "but-on one condition. You mustn't tell a soul."

Martin swore it. He clasped his fingers into a solemn seal, the tongs of his promise, an unbreakable pact known only to them. Then he took the gold-each ingot cold as buried time-tucked safe within a pouch cinched with a thread of green, and departed, heart buoyant, steps light.

He crossed the courtyard of Blue's dwelling and drifted into the fields beyond, that old stretch of earth where the wind always whispered secrets.

There-he saw them.

A beggar, mute, with his son: pale, slight, and silent like his father. They sat as stones might sit: weathered, beaten, still.

Martin's heart, flush with joy, melted. Without thinking, he untied the green string and drew out a single gold piece. It wasn't large. It wasn't beautiful. But it gleamed with a value beyond reckoning.

He offered it.

The beggar reached out. His hands trembled; his fingers spasmed. His lips, stiff as marble, parted as if to say, "Thank you," but the words never came. Instead, the man fell to his knees and tried to kiss Martin's boots.

Martin recoiled, bent down swiftly, caught the beggar's shoulders and raised him up. He dusted the man's tattered coat and spoke softly: "Pray to your God that He protect me-and my brother."

Yes, the oath-he remembered the oath to Blue. No one must know the source of the gold. And in that moment, Martin felt-not like a man-but like a King crowned in silence.

He turned once more to the beggar. The man's eyes shone like wet glass. He nodded, again and again, bowed low.

Is that his way of saying thanks? Martin wondered.

He left them there.

---

A week passed.

Martin returned to Blue's home, not to seek more gold-but merely to visit.

As he walked through the field, his eyes caught the glint of something red among the stones. He stopped. The stones were broken, splashed with paint like dried blood. He remembered: this was the place. The beggar, the child, the desperate silence. Here, he had given away his first coin.

A strange warmth rose inside him. That same dangerous ecstasy. The feeling of being chosen-elevated-destined for gold beyond imagining. A King! A little voice inside him crowed.

He moved on.

No brambles barred his path; no sound challenged his tread. He reached the yard.But something was wrong.

The grass had grown wild and tall-untamed, feral. The house loomed, windows yawning open, its skin crumbling.

"Strange," Martin muttered. "Blue always kept it clean."

At the door, he knocked twice-just as they'd agreed. A secret rhythm, known only to them.

Nothing.

He tried again. Louder. Still, no answer.

Then, without warning, his knuckles struck too hard-the door creaked open with a groan.

Unlocked? he thought.

He slipped in.

The hallway was silent as a tomb, but the air-it was foul. A cloying stench, sweet and wet, pressed against his skin. It grew worse with every step. Still calling Blue's name, Martin reached the bedroom door and pushed it open-

There, atop the mattress, lay not Blue.

But gold.

Mounds of it.

Not yellow-bright, but red. A dark, fevered crimson, like dried wine or old wounds. Hundreds- no, thousands- of coins, heaped like treasure stolen from the dead.

He stepped forward.

On the pillow rested two perfect gems-gleaming like eyes that had seen the void. But that wasn't what made him cry out. No ... It was the worms. Millions of them. Pale, writhing, obscene-they had burrowed through the coins, the gems, the mattress, the house.bAnd that was how Martin understood— The gold and the jewels, they had not been forged. They had been grown. From flesh. From life. And life had rotted.

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