A low feverish moan broke the midnight silence. In a cramped cottage on the outskirts of the village, a little girl hovered at her father's bedside. The single oil lamp flickered, painting wavery shadows on the mud-brick walls. Her father lay pale and sweat-drenched, a bloodstained bandage wrapped around his middle. His breaths came shallow and ragged, each one a battle.
Her father had come home just before nightfall, slumped over his horse's neck with that terrible wound. Bandits on the northern road had ambushed the evening patrol, and he had taken a blade to his side while defending the village gates. The village's doctor did what he could by flickering torchlight, rough stitches and herbal salve but the cut was too deep. Now the bleeding would not stop. He was all the family had her brave Papa, the town guardsman who chased away her nightmares with laughter and he was fading before her eyes.
She dabbed his forehead with a damp cloth the way her mother had shown her. Mother was out, desperately seeking the herbalist at this late hour. The girl's small hands trembled, but she tried to be brave. "Papa, hold on," she whispered, voice quavering. "Mama will be back soon."
Her father's eyes opened a crack... glassy, unfocused. He managed a weak smile for her sake. "My little sparrow," he rasped, using his pet name for her. He winced as a jolt of pain stole his breath. The girl bit her lip hard, fighting tears.
Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the wooden shutters. The night felt strangely alive, as if the darkness itself was watching. The girl sensed it too. A chill ran down her spine. Papa always said the nights after a battle were when strange folk roamed, drawn to the scent of blood and death. She'd heard the whispers in the village tales of a masked soul-collector who came when life hung by a thread. A man bound to Hell itself. A myth used to scare children... or so she'd hoped.
Suddenly, the lamp flame guttered. The shadows in the corner of the room deepened unnaturally. The girl's breath caught. There, out of the blackness, a figure emerged as if the shadows themselves had knitted together into the shape of a man.
A tall man draped in a tattered black cloak stood at the foot of her father's bed. His face was obscured by a smooth mask of tarnished silver. In the faint light, the mask reflected a ghostly image of her father's gaunt face and the girl's wide, terrified eyes. The intruder's presence sucked the warmth from the room.
The girl wanted to scream, but fear paralyzed her. She had seen death before, lost a baby brother to fever last winter but never had death come in person. She knew, somehow, this stranger was no ordinary man.
He inclined his head slightly, focusing on her father. The girl couldn't see the man's eyes behind the mask's empty sockets, but she felt a weigh, a heaviness of ancient sorrow perhaps, in the way he stood so silently. The cloak around him stirred though there was no breeze. It seemed almost alive, the frayed ends curling like hungry shadows along the floorboards.
Her father sensed something, too. With great effort, he turned his head on the pillow. His dull eyes widened at the sight of the masked figure looming in the gloom. "No… not yet…" he gasped, mustering a feeble plea.
The cloaked man spoke, his voice a low whisper that somehow filled the room. "Heads or tails?" he asked calmly.
The girl frowned through her fear, not understanding. Heads or tails? She looked to her father for guidance, but he only stared in confusion and mounting dread. The stranger's gloved hand slipped into a pocket and drew out a small, circular object.
In the dim light, the girl saw it was a coin, a large silver coin that gleamed with unearthly luster. The man held it between two fingers, showing it to her father. One face of the coin bore the embossed profile of a solemn, crowned figure, a head. The other side, just visible as the coin turned, showed a pattern of interlocking squares like a tiled floor, perhaps tails.
Her father's chest hitched as realization dawned on him. "Please…" he croaked, voice raw with fear and fading strength. "I... have a child… don't…"
But the masked man only repeated patiently, "Heads or tails? Choose."
Tears slipped down the girl's cheeks. She clutched her father's hand, her tiny fingers curling around his calloused ones. She didn't fully grasp what was happening, but she could feel the finality in the air, as cold and sharp as a winter's night.
Her father squeezed her hand weakly. He understood this was a wager, perhaps for his life, for his soul. With a shuddering breath, he forced the word out: "Heads."
The coin flashed in the lamplight as the stranger flipped it with a practiced motion. It spun in the air, a tiny disc of destiny deciding fate. The girl's heart pounded. For an instant, she dared hope if it landed heads, maybe Papa would stay.
Ting. The coin hit the wooden floor and tumbled. Once, twice… The girl's eyes followed it, unblinking. It clinked against the leg of the bed and finally settled flat. The room seemed to hold its breath.
The cloaked man's form shifted as he crouched to see. The girl craned her neck.
On the floor, the coin lay still, showing the face with interlocking tails.
Tails.
"No…" she whimpered.
An icy weight filled the girl's chest. She didn't understand this cruel game entirely, but some part of her knew: tails meant loss.
The masked man sighed almost imperceptibly. He plucked the coin from the floor and slipped it back into his pocket. Then he reached out a hand over her father's still-clasped hand.
"Papa?" the girl whispered, panic rising.
Her father turned his head to look at her one last time. A tear escaped his eye, but he tried to smile softly through his pain. "My sparrow… be brave," he breathed, each word costing him effort. As the cloaked stranger's hand passed gently over the dying man's face, her father's eyes slid shut and his grip on his daughter's hand went slack.
A faint, wispy glow rose from her father's body, his final breath or perhaps something more. The girl gasped. The cloaked man seemed to draw that glow toward him, and for a heartbeat the silver mask reflected not the lamplight but a pale inner luminescence. Then it was gone. Her father was gone.
Silence fell, heavy and absolute. The girl's vision blurred with tears. "Papa!" she sobbed, shaking his limp hand, though in her heart she knew he had already gone where she could not follow.
The stranger stood and stepped back from the bedside. His task done, he should have vanished as quietly as he came. But he lingered a moment, turning his masked face toward the crying child.
The girl looked up, cheeks wet, despair and fury welling inside her chest. How could he? He had taken her father away on the flip of a coin! Without thinking, she snatched up the nearest object an empty clay cup from the bedside and hurled it at the man.
The cup shattered against the silver mask with a crack. The girl froze, lungs clenched in fear of retaliation. The cloaked figure remained still, shards of clay sliding off his shoulder to the floor. He made no move to harm her. Instead, she thought she heard the faintest sigh from behind that expressionless mask.
For an instant, through her tears, the girl imagined she saw a dim light within the hollow eyeholes of the mask, a flicker of something like regret. The man in the cloak bent down slowly. The girl flinched, but he only picked up one intact shard of the broken cup from the floor.
"This world breaks everyone, little one," he said softly, almost too low to hear. His voice carried a weight beyond the simple words. He set the shard gently on the bedside table beside the cooling hand of her father. "I am sorry."
With that, the lamp flame sputtered and went out entirely. In the sudden darkness, the girl heard a rustle of fabric, like the wings of a great night bird. By the time she managed to relight the wick with trembling fingers, the stranger was gone. Only the faint scent of cold ash remained, and the memory of a silver coin gleaming in the dark.
The girl collapsed against her father's body, sobbing until she had no voice. She clung to his still arm and in that moment, through her heartbreak, she made a desperate promise to herself: she would never forget. Not the mask, not the coin, not the words "Heads or tails?" that tolled like a death knell in her ears.
In the days that followed, the villagers would speak in hushed tones of how death had visited that night. They would call him the Coinbearer. And as the little girl grew, the image of the masked man and his silver coin remained seared into her mind. What began as nightmares about that night turned into a burning obsession for answers. One day, somehow, she vowed she would find the Coinbearer again and learn why her father had to die for the price of a coin toss.