After months of training under Master Inara, I had come to understand balance — how to control power without losing peace. My body healed faster, my heart was calmer, and I began to see patterns in life itself.
But Master Aarion said, "Wisdom and strength are two pillars of survival. The third is control over power that cannot be seen — the power of influence."
He told me my next teacher was one who could read destiny through numbers, control kingdoms with strategy, and move the world without lifting a sword.
That's how I met Master Darius Vale, the Master of Gold and Shadows.
He lived near the southern ridge of Aarvak Island, where tall cliffs overlooked the endless sea. His house wasn't like the others—it was made of black stone and glass, full of strange symbols and devices that glowed faintly with light.
When I stepped inside, he was sitting at a wide wooden table scattered with old scrolls, coins, and screens showing strange moving charts. He looked very different from other masters — dressed in a dark blue coat lined with silver buttons, his hair jet black and tied neatly. He wore small, round glasses on his sharp nose and had eyes the colour of polished bronze, which seemed to look straight into people's thoughts.
For a long moment, he didn't speak. He just studied me. Then, without looking up from his papers, he said, "You have the eyes of a child and the silence of someone who has already seen the truth. Perfect."
I didn't know what that meant.
He finally stood up, tall and commanding, yet elegant like a businessman on his throne. "I am Darius Vale, once called The Architect of Fortune. In one life, I built empires. In another, I destroyed them. Power fascinates me — not the kind drawn from muscle or magic, but the kind that flows quietly between numbers, trust, and dreams."
Aarion, who had brought me there, smiled faintly. "Darius was once the richest man alive," he explained. "But his power did not end with wealth. Nations followed his voice; wars were avoided or begun at his word. Yet he left everything the day he uncovered the truth—that greed spreads faster than wisdom."
Master Darius chuckled coldly. "Gold is not evil, Mukul. It's a test. It shows who you are when no one watches." Then he looked me in the eye and said, "I will teach you how the world truly works."
And so began my lessons under the fourth master.
He taught me the oldest form of mathematics—the mathematics of fate. He made me count not just currency but choices.
"Every decision," he said one morning, "is an investment. Spend your emotions like you spend your coins — with care. Waste none."
His room always smelled of old parchment and mechanical oil. There were coins from lost civilisations, gemstones cut into impossible shapes, ancient tablets describing the first trade systems of humanity, and floating digital screens that calculated probabilities beyond my understanding.
From him, I learnt ancient techniques of wealth and trade — how the old kings of the Indus and Egyptian dynasties used stone weights, spiritual talismans, and moon cycles to predict harvests and trade routes. He made me understand the power of trust — that in ancient markets, gold was not the real wealth; reputation was.
Then came the modern side.
He introduced me to stocks, finance curves, data analytics, and algorithmic trading — but in his own mythical way. Using glowing sand and floating screens, he showed me how to read patterns in chaos, how to predict outcomes by studying emotions, and how entire civilisations rise and fall not by war, but by imbalance of value.
"There is a difference between money and worth," he told me once, writing glowing scripts in the air. "The fool chases the first. The wise builds the second."
He gave me strange exercises — to play with stones and coins of different weights, guessing the pattern of balance without touching them. Another time, he blindfolded me and made me listen to the falling of coins on stone, teaching me to sense value with sound and instinct.
One day, he handed me an antique ruby and a lump of clay, asking, "Which has greater value?"
"The ruby," I answered quickly.
He smiled. "No. The clay. Because from it, I can build something new."
Through his lessons, I began to understand what he truly taught—not numbers or wealth, but strategy. To see the invisible links between people, actions, and the future.
He also introduced me to the game of risk — gambling, but with a purpose. Using cards and stones carved with strange symbols, he trained my awareness, my patience, and my ability to make choices under pressure. "A gambler who knows when not to play," he said, "already wins before the cards fall."
Once, when I grew curious, I asked, "Master Darius, if you could control so much, why are you here, on this hidden island?"
He paused, adjusting his glasses. "Because control without conscience is destruction," he said slowly. "I learnt everything the world had to offer—the flow of money, the logic of minds, the strings of fate—and yet I couldn't stop myself from using them wrongly. I came here to unlearn my greed, to teach what I should have practised."
There was a strange sadness in his smile that day.
He taught me one final lesson that stayed with me forever. We stood by the cliff, where the silver waves crashed softly below. He gave me a small golden coin, engraved with seven stars.
"When you face choices in life," he said, "toss this coin. Heads for heart, tails for reason. But don't look at what falls. Listen to what you wish to fall. That wish…" — he tapped my chest — "will tell you your truth."
That was the day I realised his true power wasn't wealth or intelligence—it was clarity. The ability to see through illusions of success and failure and remain steady.
When I left his chamber that evening, the silver moonlight reflected off the coin in my hand. I understood that he wasn't the Master of Gold for being rich — he was the master because he knew what gold could and couldn't buy.
And that was how I met Darius Vale—the Master of Gold and Shadows, the man who taught me that true power isn't in holding wealth, but in knowing when to let it go.