Koda stood in the blood-mud of the field, knees bent slightly, both blades slick and dripping. His breath came in slow, even pulls—each one tasting of ash, rot, and burnt marrow.
All around him, the battlefield had grown strangely quiet.
The tide of undead had stilled, unsure.
Their ranks flickered.
Their cohesion frayed.
Only the final officers of Greed still moved with purpose—dark beacons of malevolence in the mist.
A towering lich, its spine crowned in black spires of bone, floating inches above the ground, skeletal hands crackling with runes.
And the two wraiths.
One clothed in chains of gold, its face a mask of fervent hunger.
The other silent, shrouded entirely in smoke, carrying a weapon formed entirely of corrupted souls—each whispering from within its blade.
Koda adjusted his grip.
Three left.
Each stronger than the last.
Each more aware.
The lich raised both arms, and the earth itself split—crimson energy boiling up from the cracked ground.
The two wraiths flanked wide.
No ceremony.
No preamble.
They meant to kill him.
The lich moved first.
Its staff struck the ground, unleashing a wave of flame-black tendrils that surged toward Koda's feet, seeking to anchor him, devour him.
Koda leapt backward—but one of the tendrils latched onto his ankle, jerking him downward.
The moment his foot hit the soil, blades of bone erupted upward.
He twisted mid-fall, tucking and rolling as a bone spike scraped along his thigh, ripping armor and drawing blood.
He hissed—but it didn't slow him.
Pain had become part of the rhythm now.
The first wraith darted in from the left.
Its body shimmered, chains extending outward—not to bind, but to slice, thin as razors.
Koda parried with one blade, the chain wrapping tight around it, biting into the metal. He slashed upward with the other, cleaving through the phantom limb holding the chain.
The chain retracted like a severed snake, the wraith shrieking and vanishing back into the mist.
Koda spun—but the second wraith was already there.
Its soulblade howled as it swung downward.
Koda barely raised a blade in time—the two weapons met—
And screamed.
A shriek of agony that wasn't sound but memory.
Visions of every regret, every failure, every unspoken wish flooded Koda's mind.
He staggered.
The wraith pressed forward, feeding off the weakness.
But Koda roared, forcing the visions away with sheer will.
He broke the lock, slashing low with his left blade—catching the wraith across the chest.
It dispersed into shadow with a wail.
But the lich was ready.
It unleashed a torrent of dark flame, a wall of heat and death.
Koda rolled to the side, but the flame caught his left arm, melting the edge of his pauldron, searing skin beneath.
He screamed this time.
The armor hissed. His shoulder went numb.
But he didn't drop the blade.
He lunged forward, cutting the distance to the lich.
It raised its staff to block—too slow.
Koda's first blade struck the staff, knocking it wide.
The second plunged into the lich's chest cavity—
and met no resistance.
Cold spread into his arm.
Magic.
The lich was hollow—its soul moved inside its body like an eel in water.
The moment Koda struck, it shifted to the spine, twisting the ribcage around, trying to trap the blade.
He let go of it immediately, summoning his sabor instead—
And slammed it upward under the jaw, piercing the skull from beneath.
The runes carved into the lich's jaw shattered.
Its skull spasmed.
The ribcage snapped open.
And with a final, cracking shriek, the soul tore free.
Koda caught it with his right blade and cut downward.
It exploded in a storm of ash and silence.
Two wraiths remained.
Koda staggered, burned, bleeding, one blade still embedded in the lich's ribcage.
He retrieved it with a grunt, ripping it free, the metal hissing as it came loose.
He turned—
And both wraiths struck at once.
One from the front, chains lashing like whips.
The other from behind, soulblade rising for a killing stroke.
Koda dropped flat to the ground.
The two wraiths collided above him—
But didn't stagger.
They passed through each other—
And reoriented.
He was in a kill box.
And they knew it.
The soulblade came first.
Koda twisted—parried low, turning the blade away, letting it tear a chunk from his side instead of his ribs.
Blood sprayed, hot and thick.
The pain was white fire.
He used it.
Pivoted—
And slammed his knee into the first wraith's core, staggering it backward.
He spun on the other—threw his sabor with full force.
The blade stuck deep into the gold-chain wraith's shoulder.
It screamed—real pain now.
Real substance.
He was close enough.
Koda surged forward, slashing once—
A chain fell free.
Twice—
An arm dropped, dissolved into mist.
He grabbed the soulblade before it struck again—catching it barehanded.
It screamed.
He screamed louder.
And drove his blade into the wraith's chest, twisting hard.
It dissolved around him, vanishing into thick fog.
Gone.
Only the last remained.
The soulblade user.
It backed away, warier now.
Its blade shimmered, pulsing with every soul it had claimed.
Hundreds of them.
Thousands, maybe.
Koda raised his twin blades.
He was bleeding heavily.
His breath came hard.
The wound in his side wouldn't stop leaking.
But he moved.
The final duel was short.
Sharp.
Koda struck.
The wraith blocked—too slow.
Koda twisted, using his wounded arm as bait.
The wraith slashed—
Koda took the hit.
Pain exploded through his side—
But he was inside its guard.
He brought both blades up—
And sheared the wraith's head from its shoulders.
The soulblade shattered.
The wraith let out one last, shuddering scream—
And was gone.
Koda collapsed to a knee.
His blades clattered.
His breath rasped.
The world spun.
But then—
the battlefield changed.
The hoard faltered.
The undead began to twitch.
To stagger.
To drop their weapons.
Some collapsed outright.
Others shrieked and ran, dissolving into fog.
The magic that bound them—the unrelenting purpose—was gone.
Their generals were dead.
Their command was broken.
And for a moment—
Koda thought it was over.
But then the ground beneath him trembled.
The air turned thick.
He tasted copper and dust and greed on his tongue.
The mist turned black.
And a voice rolled out across the battlefield like the cracking of stone in a grave.
Ancient.
Vast.
Hungry.
"Impressive. You kill my hands, my tongues… but you are not finished. Are you, little slayer? You want more!"
Koda staggered to his feet.
Blood dripping.
Blades shaking in his hands.
But he faced the mist.
And did not look away.
Koda stood amid the ruin, blades lowered, breath ragged.
His body ached in ways no healing magic could fix.
He was bleeding, burned, scraped down to bone beneath places where his armor had cracked.
The mist slithered closer.
And with it came something worse than pain.
Hunger.
Not his own.
A surge of craving—raw, overwhelming, sickening.
His heart began to race.
His fingers twitched.
His eyes drifted—just briefly—to the remains of the fallen wraiths, to the shattered staff of the lich, to the still-glowing remnants of their power.
And in that flicker of a moment, he wanted.
Wanted to take them.
Absorb their strength.
Claim their essence.
To rise even higher.
To be untouchable.
Greed's voice sank deeper into his mind.
"Do you feel it?" it whispered.
"That itch? That ache in your teeth when you see power unclaimed? That is me. That is truth."
The world seemed to shimmer around him.
He saw visions—not illusions, but urges.
Himself sitting upon a throne of silver and bones, the cities of the living kneeling at his feet.
He saw his team alive, eternal, unaging, fed by endless victory, because he willed it.
He saw Maia, untouched by fear, by war, by death—held safe in a golden cage he built around her heart.
All he had to do was take it.
Koda's hands clenched his blades harder.
He grounded himself in the ache of his body, the sting of his wounds, the reality of the blood caking his hands.
He focused on the cold.
The weight of his armor.
The sound of the city's war drums behind him.
He breathed once.
Deep.
Painfully.
And then he said, clearly, with no fear:
"This world does not belong to you."
The mist shivered.
The voice grew colder.
Darker.
"How brave. How foolish."
Then, a chuckle.
Silken.
Coiling.
"Join me, young one."
The voice was no longer abstract.
It was closer. Whispering just behind his ear.
"You are marked already. I can feel the old one's rot clinging to you. Gluttony's bile in your breath. Do you know what that makes you?"
Koda didn't answer.
"Valuable."
The world tilted slightly.
The battlefield shifted beneath his feet—not physically, but conceptually.
He saw it then.
Not with his eyes, but with something deeper.
A crack in reality. A rift.
And beyond it—
Another realm.
Not of fire.
Not of shadow.
But of want.
It pulsed with cities made of golden bones and rivers of molten silver.
It was beautiful.
And wrong.
Greed purred through the mist.
"I want you. As mine. You could lead my legions. You could feast forever. You already have the tools."
A pause.
"You already take what you kill. All you lack is permission."
Koda narrowed his eyes.
And spoke evenly:
"If you want me… why not come yourself?"
Silence.
Then, slow, deliberate words:
"Because I cannot. Not yet."
The ground trembled.
The mist thinned for a heartbeat—revealing a massive, swirling vortex of gold and void flickering just beyond the rift.
"The gods tore themselves apart long ago, slayer. And now we—what remains—have begun to stir again no longer contained by their will."
Koda remained silent, waiting.
"I am one piece. One desire. The first to awaken fully. The first to see the battlefield again."
There was pride in its voice.
And desperation.
"But the others are waking too. Pride. Wrath. Lust. Envy. Sloth. All of us… fragmented, jostling, pulling on the leash."
A shudder in the air.
"When the last barriers fall—when the rift is fully broken—we will fight for dominance. One desire will rise. And the rest will be absorbed. That is how the Primal God will be reborn."
Koda's mouth went dry.
He knew what he was hearing mattered.
This wasn't just posturing.
This was strategy.
"And if you win?" Koda asked.
"If you become the dominant desire?"
Greed didn't hesitate.
"Then this world will become mine.
And I will make it a palace of indulgence and loyalty.
No starvation.
No fear.
No war unprofitable."
It paused.
"Isn't that better than chaos?
Better than sacrifice?
Better than losing the ones you love to meaningless pain?"
Greed's voice dropped to a whisper.
"Come. Cross the rift. Enter my realm. See what awaits. You'll have to come eventually, won't you? If you want to kill me.
Why not come now?"
A slow, dangerous smile in the words.
"You could even bring the girl."
Koda's aura flared.
A quiet ripple of focus and fury.
But he didn't strike out.
Didn't rage.
Instead, he spoke with quiet certainty:
"I will come."
The mist tensed—eager, greedy.
"But not as yours."
The black fog recoiled.
Greed's voice snarled now.
"Then come and be broken.
Come and see how desire devours all resolve."
The rift pulsed again.
Then—
vanished.
The mist peeled back, shredded and whipped away like cloth torn by a storm.
The battlefield returned.
Empty of enemies.
Littered with corpses.
Koda stood alone.
But no longer unseen.
Behind him, the gates of Callestan groaned open.
And the dawn began to rise.