The gates of Callestan groaned open with the weight of history behind them. Dawn had just broken, and a thin orange light painted the road ahead as Koda stepped through first, followed by the six who had chosen to walk beside him into Greed's scar.
There were no banners. No horns. No crowd to see them off.
Only the low whisper of the morning wind, and the distant hum of the scar's breath curling across the horizon.
The land before them, now fully revealed in daylight, didn't disguise its wrongness. The ground looked stable, but it moved ever so slightly beneath their boots—not enough to cause imbalance, but enough to be felt in the bones. The soil was cracked like dried blood, and faint traces of green light flickered through those fractures, like veins pulsing toward a distant heart.
The scar had its own rhythm. A slow beat, not unlike a pulse, echoing faintly beneath everything. A It wasn't frightening in the light, not the way it had been beneath the fog and moon during those first incursions. In daylight, the scar wore a mask of stillness. But that stillness didn't soothe.
It watched.
Koda didn't speak. He adjusted the twin blades at his back and pressed forward. The rest followed without needing a word.
The further they went, the more it felt like crossing not distance, but thresholds. Step by step, the rules of the world they knew seemed to loosen their grip. The wind became inconsistent—strong one moment, utterly absent the next. Color bled slightly from the edges of the world, as though saturation had been turned down.
Wren glanced toward a crooked tree that looked more like bone than bark and whispered, "Something's shifting. Not around us… under us."
Maia nodded, her steps unwavering. "It's adjusting."
"To us?" Deker asked.
"To our presence," Thessa said. "Or our purpose."
They crested the first rise, a steep hill marked by scorched earth and glassed stone, and there it was.
In the far distance—towering, wrong, magnificent in its cruelty—stood the castle.
No one needed to ask if it was Greed's.
They all felt it. Like something had clicked into place behind their eyes. The structure was black stone veined with green crystal, the same hue that flickered in the earth. Its silhouette looked as though it had been forged to wound the horizon: long, narrow towers stabbed the air at asymmetric angles, and its foundation sank into the land as if the castle were drinking from it.
Junen's voice was low, reverent and grim. "That's it."
"It knows we're coming," Koda said.
"And it doesn't care," Terron muttered. "Yet."
They descended the far side of the hill in silence. No more jokes. No commentary. The mission had begun.
The land didn't welcome them. It didn't even challenge them—not yet.
It simply watched.
The path twisted through a dried riverbed and past the remains of what might once have been a forest, now warped into a field of petrified wood and hollow stumps. Several trees had been carved into twisted effigies: humanoid figures in states of agony, mouths open in silent screams, reaching for things just out of reach—gold, weapons, mirrors.
Maia turned her eyes away. "These weren't made by accident."
"No," Koda said. "They're warnings."
They kept moving.
The first ambush came an hour later.
They'd passed through a narrow pass between two ridges, where the ground crunched like gravel but had no stones. Bones. Koda recognized them as such just a heartbeat before they stirred.
A dozen skeletal warriors erupted from beneath their feet, armed with rusted polearms and bound together with glowing green sinew. No mind, no strategy—just frenzy.
Junen's shield flared immediately, her sanctum flashing outward in a shimmering dome that knocked two back and gave Wren time to cast.
Arcane threads burst from the tip of her staff, pinning three more in place. Deker followed with a wide-cast ignition, burning through joints and tendon.
Koda moved before the smoke cleared, ducking under a wild swing from a jagged blade and cutting upward with both swords—splitting spine and helm in one motion. He rolled forward into the next, disarming the skeleton with a brutal slash to the forearm before kicking it hard in the chest.
Terron met it mid-fall with a hammer swing that flattened it into the ground.
The fight lasted less than a minute.
They didn't speak after. Just kept walking.
The second wave came twenty minutes later.
A ruined village, buildings collapsed inward and half-sunk into the ground, revealed a waiting horde: shamblers twisted with excess—bloated with black gold embedded in their flesh. Their eyes gleamed green. Their mouths whispered soundlessly, constantly.
Thirty of them.
Koda didn't hesitate.
"Thessa—burn the path forward. Deker, the left flank. Terron, lock the right."
The casters split off with precision. Flames roared through the center line, halting the rush long enough for Koda to sprint forward, blades trailing arcs of silvered light behind him.
He didn't stop moving.
He didn't have to.
His job wasn't just to kill.
It was to pull every eye, every claw, every tooth.
The undead followed.
And the team cut them down.
Wren's glyphs exploded beneath feet. Thessa lit the air like a furnace. Maia flowed behind them all, her magic keeping wounds from lingering, her presence steady.
When the smoke cleared, the land was black and still again.
But they were closer.
The pressure built with every step.
Not pain. Not weight.
But desire.
Each of them felt it differently.
Deker began to see echoes of himself in the corners of his vision—tinkering in perfect labs, laughing. Wren heard the absence of noise and felt a strange, aching longing. Junen thought of a family she never had. Thessa's flame flickered against images of herself in temples, healing with a gesture.
Terron began to remember things he swore he'd buried.
Maia reached for Koda's hand once, just briefly, and that was enough.
It was real.
They held the line.
Another rise.
Another glimpse of the castle.
Closer now. So much closer.
The sky above it shimmered as though heat haze distorted the very air. The green light in the cracks around them grew stronger. Pulsing. Urging.
A battalion waited at the next ridge.
Over fifty undead—more coordinated now. Banners stitched with gold thread. Their armor etched with Greed's sigils.
The leader was a figure in full plate, golden eyes burning beneath a shattered helm. Not dead—but not alive. A knight corrupted.
Koda spotted it first.
He pointed. "That's our trial."
They formed a triangle formation: Junen anchoring the point, Terron on one side, Wren on the other. Casters in the back. Koda ahead.
The enemy advanced.
Slow. Confident.
The team braced.
And the clash came.
It was not clean.
There was no order.
Only chaos.
Koda wove between armored warriors, striking joints and weak points. The enemy knight met him directly, and their clash sent sparks across the ridge.
Terron roared, slamming his hammer down to shatter a wall of spearmen pressing into their flank.
Junen held the line—barely. Her shield cracked but held, her sanctum flashing with pure will.
Wren and Deker rained destruction.
Thessa burned through the enemy ranks like a wildfire loosed in a dry forest.
Maia ran herself to the edge, her hands never still, her breath ragged with the effort of keeping them all standing.
The battle dragged.
But they did not break.
Eventually, the knight faltered—Koda's strikes finding purchase, his blades carving deep. The thing let out a scream of fury, of want, before it dissolved into dust and flame.
The rest followed quickly after.
Silence returned.
The land seemed to sigh.
They rested just long enough to drink and reset formations.
The castle now loomed ahead.
A single road twisted up toward its gates, lined with broken statues—each one bearing the face of someone they recognized, or thought they did.
Koda narrowed his eyes.
Greed was playing games now.
No more whispers.
Just reflections.
Traps of memory.
But they did not stop.
They walked that road.
And the castle gates awaited.
———
The gates didn't open. They parted.
Two massive slabs of dark stone split down the center with a motion that was too smooth, too silent, as though the castle itself had been listening for their arrival. There was no mechanical groan, no screech of hinges—just the sickening grace of something expecting to be entered.
No guards greeted them. No warning call or trap sprung from the threshold.
The invitation had been extended long before their arrival.
And now it was being honored.
The seven crossed the boundary into Greed's domain.
The castle swallowed them.
The corridor stretched forward—endless and narrow, like the gullet of something ancient. The air changed the instant they crossed the threshold. It didn't just smell different—it felt different. It clung to the lungs, thick and metallic, tinged with perfume and something cloying, like wine left to rot.
Gold lined the walls in thin, winding veins, pulsing faintly like blood beneath translucent skin. The pattern wasn't symmetrical. It was chaotic, spiraling outward like cracked glass converging around an unseen impact. Along the walls, recesses held hundreds—maybe thousands—of objects: a dagger carved from dragon bone, a necklace encrusted with rubies so large they looked fake, an open book whose pages were made of preserved, inked skin.
Every item was pristine.
Every object oozed significance.
None were dusted. None forgotten.
It wasn't a corridor. It was a museum.
Or a vault.
And they were the intruders.
The floor was made of polished obsidian—perfectly smooth, perfectly reflective. Their steps left no mark. But their reflections shimmered faintly with delay, always a half-second too slow. Always slightly… different.
Not off.
Better.
Fitter. Taller. Sharper eyes. Richer clothes.
Improved versions of themselves—just waiting.
They didn't speak.
Their breath echoed in their own skulls, but not aloud.
The air suppressed sound like a wet cloth over the mouth.
The deeper they walked, the more wrong the space felt. Geometry started to bend. Corners stretched too far or snapped short. Doors appeared on the sides of the corridor—perfectly spaced, identical in design, each one gilded and bolted with thick chains.
Behind each door: sounds.
Coins shifting.
Voices muttering in a dozen languages.
Weeping. Moaning.
Begging.
Deker glanced at one of the doors as they passed and flinched. "Someone's inside," he murmured.
Koda shook his head. "No. Not someone."
He glanced back, eyes narrowing.
"Desire."
They passed through another archway. There was no seam in the stone. It simply changed—one room becoming the next.
They had entered the throne chamber.
It was not what they expected.
It was worse.
The walls were entirely gold—melted and reshaped into an undulating surface like frozen wax. Coins, bars, chains, goblets, idols. Everything of value had been forged into the structure of the room itself, sculpted to curve and crawl upward like roots twisting toward sunlight.
The ceiling disappeared into darkness.
There were no torches. No natural light. The room glowed from within—green veins of light coursed behind gold panels like arteries, throbbing in time with something huge buried deep beneath the floor.
And the floor…
The floor was treasure.
Not stone. Not metal.
Just wealth.
Piles and piles of it, arranged into paths and plateaus—mountains of gems, oceans of crowns, weapons crusted with jewels, armor etched with forgotten languages, gilded masks, chests overflowing with coin. The team's boots sank slightly with each step, metal shifting and clinking underfoot.
But none of it moved with sound.
Even here, the castle choked all echoes.
Their passage left ripples through the wealth—like fish beneath water, adjusting the surface.
Then they saw the throne.
It was shaped like a spire erupting from the treasure itself, built from layers of gold-engraved bone and broken scepters. It curved into a high, arching back draped in red silk that shimmered like blood in moonlight. Jewels as large as human heads were embedded in the frame, and behind it, an entire wall of mirrors rose—each one angled toward the throne, each one flawless, each one full of reflections that did not quite match the room.
The throne sat elevated on a platform of shaped gold bars—each one stamped with a different symbol of ancient currency.
And atop it—
A figure.
Humanoid.
Still.
Waiting.
His form cloaked in shadow from the light that glowed behind the mirrors, the figure sat with a composure that was not lazy, but deliberate.
As though every part of his posture had been designed for effect.
Koda's hand twitched near his blade but didn't draw.
The team slowed.
None of them spoke.
Maia's breath caught—not in fear, but in revulsion. Wren swallowed hard. Deker's eyes scanned the edges of the treasure piles, half-expecting it all to move.
Terron muttered under his breath, "This is a tomb."
"No," Junen said quietly. "It's a shrine."
Koda stepped forward.
The figure did not move.
Not yet.
But the throne pulsed.
And the castle breathed.
They had arrived.
And Greed was watching.
The figure atop the throne did not move for a long moment.
Then, like the curtain rising on a carefully prepared performance, he stood.
There was no sound as he did — not the scuff of boot against gold, not the creak of bone or cloth. The room seemed to quiet further still, the breath of the castle halting as if it, too, held reverence for the being who now revealed himself.
Greed was tall.
Not just in stature — in presence. He stood like he had always belonged there, like the throne had not been built for him, but from him. His frame was lean, but not frail—every movement controlled, each step purposeful as he descended from the high platform of gold with the grace of a noble and the silence of a phantom.
His skin was pale, but not bloodless. Smooth, unmarred. His dark hair was swept back with effortless style, not a strand out of place. His jaw was cut, his nose straight, his lips perpetually curled at the edge in something between amusement and invitation.
And his eyes—
They were black. Not shadowed or void, but polished. Glassy, endless, as if they reflected nothing because they already knew everything. When they met Koda's, there was no weight. No pressure. Just stillness. Observation.
He smiled.
A single gold tooth winked in the light.
It should have been charming. Reassuring, even.
But it wasn't.
Because nothing in his body moved that shouldn't.
He didn't breathe.
There was no rise and fall of the chest. No rhythm of pulse in the neck. No twitch, no flaw, no heat.
He was perfect.
And wrong.
Greed spread his hands slowly, palms up — the gesture smooth, theatrical.
"Welcome," he said.
His voice was honeyed silk. Low, precise, every word dipped in warmth. No resonance. No rumble of power. No threat.
But it landed too deep.
Each word felt like it reached into the chest, not the ear. Whispering to something older than memory.
"You've come so far," Greed continued, descending one step at a time. "Shed blood, buried comrades, earned power and pain in equal measure."
He smiled again. "And now, you stand here — at the precipice of peace."
Koda didn't respond.
Neither did the others.
Greed came to a stop at the base of the throne, standing atop the treasure-paved floor like it had been made for his steps alone.
"Don't be shy," he said, glancing across the seven. "You've proven yourselves already. That trial outside? Thorough. I'm impressed. Not many make it this far with their minds intact."
He took another slow step forward, hands still spread in welcome.
"I offer congratulations. And, perhaps… opportunity."
Maia shifted slightly, eyes locked on his mouth.
Greed noticed.
"Ah," he said, "the healer. The foundation. The light in the storm." He turned slightly, speaking to her but addressing all. "You, especially, must understand. Peace is a currency, and it is always in short supply. But I offer an investment."
His eyes returned to Koda.
"You've already seen what's possible," he said. "Haven't you?"
Koda said nothing.
"You don't have to deny it. The scar shared it with you. A life. A home. A child's laughter." Greed's voice softened. "It's not a lie, you know. Not a trick. Just a preview. A future that could be, if only…"
He let the sentence trail.
Then smiled wider.
"If only you had the means to protect it."
He began to walk now — not approaching, but circling, like a teacher addressing a room of prodigies. Each step light. Effortless. No sound. His coat — a tailored thing of black silk embroidered with patterns in gold thread — didn't flutter. It followed.
"There's always another war," Greed said. "Another threat. You know this. Even if you defeat me, there will be others. Wrath. Envy. Pride."
He paused, glancing at Terron.
"You could break yourselves saving a world that only finds new ways to bleed."
Terron's jaw flexed. He didn't speak.
Greed turned to Thessa, nodding slightly.
"But imagine," he said, "a world where you had the power to end war before it began. Where your voice — your will — was the final word. You, young flame. You've tasted control. You know what it feels like to command chaos. What if you never had to hesitate again?"
Thessa didn't flinch. But her hands tensed.
Greed walked past her without comment.
To Wren next. "And you. The architect of precision. You fight for order, don't you? For systems. Efficiency. All that waste — the death, the corruption, the mess of flawed people." His tone darkened just a fraction. "Wouldn't it be easier to reshape them?"
Wren's lips parted.
She didn't answer.
Greed continued.
"Deker. My favorite contradiction. Power in pure form, and yet… so unsure of what to do with it. What if you never had to doubt again? I could give you vision. Direction. Purpose."
Deker swallowed but kept his eyes down.
To Junen next.
"Sanctuary," he said gently. "You carry it like a burden, but what if it could be a gift? What if your shield didn't just protect your friends, but every soul on this continent? What would that cost you, really?"
Junen's knuckles whitened on her weapon's grip.
And then he came to Maia.
He stopped in front of her.
He didn't reach out. He didn't need to.
He simply looked at her.
"The garden was beautiful," he said. "And the laughter? Real. So real it hurt."
Maia's throat tightened. Her eyes shimmered — but didn't fall.
Greed's smile softened.
"I understand," he said. "You've fought so hard. You've given so much. Don't you deserve to rest in that dream?"
Koda stepped between them.
Finally.
Greed looked at him — not surprised, not alarmed. Just… curious.
"Of course," Greed said. "The sword of will. The boy who walked through fire and built his peace with broken hands." He tilted his head. "But you're tired too, aren't you?"
Koda said nothing.
"You could have all of it," Greed whispered. "The house. The garden. The daughter. Not an illusion. Not a projection. I could give it to you. Now."
And now, Greed's smile changed.
Just a hair.
It was still warm. Still elegant.
But the hunger behind it finally showed.
Not in his face.
In his stillness.
The way he didn't blink. Didn't shift.
He didn't breathe.
He only wanted.
Koda saw it.
And that was when he understood.
This wasn't Greed.
Not really.
It was a suit worn by something older. Something buried. Something hungry.
A perfect mask.
Too perfect.
"Who are you really?" Koda said, voice quiet but pointed.
Greed's smile faltered for the first time.
Then returned.
"I am what I must be," he said. "For you. For all of you. A patron. A promise. A path forward."
He spread his arms again.
"You came here to kill a monster," he said. "But what if I'm the only thing left that can save your world?"
Silence fell like a stone.
Koda stared at him.
Saw the absence behind the form.
And understood: this was not a man to be reasoned with.
He was a hunger given shape.
And it had just made an offer.