The mountain was not far from the town. Everyone knew it was there. It was a jagged piece of granite that looked like a broken tooth against the skyline. Everyone knew that if you climbed to the top, you could find the Golden Sovereign and ask for one thing. Most people asked for money. Some asked for health. A few asked for the return of a dead child. The town was built around the mountain, a community of people waiting for their turn to climb.

Arthur asked for a reason to keep going. He was a man of forty who had spent twenty years working in a textile mill. His life was a series of grey days and grey nights, a loop of waking up, working, eating, and sleeping. He didn't hate his life, but he didn't love it either. He was simply existing in a state of permanent neutrality.

He climbed the mountain every Tuesday. The path was rocky and boring. There were no monsters, no magic, just the wind and the sound of his own breathing. He liked the climb because it was the only time he felt his heart beating. He liked the way the air grew colder and thinner, the way the town below became a small, insignificant smudge of grey.

At the top, the Sovereign was just a man in a gold suit, sitting on a gold chair, looking bored. He didn't have a crown or a scepter. He just had a ledger and a gold coin.

"What do you want?" the Sovereign asked. His voice was flat, devoid of any emotion. "A reason," Arthur replied. The Sovereign handed him the gold coin. "This is the reason. It's a coin. It's valuable because we all agree it is. There is no inherent meaning in the gold, only the meaning we project onto it. That's the only reason there is in the entire universe."

Arthur looked at the coin. He looked at the town below. He realized that the climb was the only part of his week that felt real. The effort, the pain in his legs, the cold wind—that was the meaning. The coin was just a piece of metal. He threw the coin off the cliff and started the walk back down. He didn't find a miracle, but he found a routine. And in a world of grey, a routine was enough to keep a man from disappearing.

--- Objective Tensor Code: [OTMES_v2: M4=7.0, N1=0.6, K1=0.9, TI=18.2, theta=270°]