Koda's voice broke the silence like a sword piercing velvet.
"And if we should refuse this… kind offer?"
The words rang out sharper than steel, not with bravado, but with defiance honed over years of survival. His eyes locked with the black mirrors of the thing pretending to be human. He didn't blink.
Greed's grin twitched.
Then split.
Not metaphorically.
The perfect mask of charm cracked at the edges, lips stretching too wide, revealing too many teeth—far more than a human mouth could hold. A seam tore open from the corner of one cheek to the hinge of his jaw, golden tooth gleaming among rows of blackened fangs.
His smile peeled into something primal.
The illusion ruptured.
The figure on the golden floor stuttered—his hands jerking upward like a marionette yanked by broken strings. Limbs spasmed unnaturally. Shoulders twitched. The golden coat stiffened like a shed skin filled with nothing.
And then he collapsed.
The shell of the humanoid slumped, folding at the waist, limbs dangling like a butchered puppet. His head lolled to the side, mouth still frozen in that grotesque grin.
But the voice—
It didn't stop.
It didn't even drop.
It echoed louder.
And this time, it came from the walls.
From the gold.
From everywhere.
"You will join me," Greed said.
The voice oozed from the castle itself, layered and reverberating like dozens of mouths speaking in unison from every golden idol, every pile of coin, every polished goblet.
"You are already mine."
The air dropped ten degrees.
And the castle moved.
The piles of treasure shifted.
Not subtly.
Not metaphorically.
Shifted.
The floor beneath them buckled, coin and chain scattering in cascading avalanches. And from within the mounds—
Hands.
Bones.
Teeth.
They crawled free.
Undead—not the emaciated things they'd seen in the plains, but lavish, monstrous things assembled from kings and queens and hoarded souls. Skeletal knights in gold-plated armor clawed their way from jewel-strewn burial mounds. Corpses wrapped in velvet and pearls, skin mummified and encrusted with coins. Some wore crowns. Others had no heads.
Eyes of emerald fire flickered to life in empty sockets.
And the walls?
The walls bled.
Molten gold trickled down from the grotesque reliefs, carving tears into the faces of weeping statues. The veins behind the walls pulsed faster, harder—rushing like blood toward a beating heart buried deep.
And Greed's voice continued.
"The question is not whether you will serve."
The words became harsher, less refined. Less human.
"The question is whether your mind will remain."
The shell on the floor crumbled, collapsing into a pile of fine gold dust.
And behind the throne—
The mountain moved.
A slow shift at first, like a landslide stirring beneath silk.
The golden mound shuddered.
Twitched.
And rose.
Coins and gems tumbled like rain from a massive, shifting shape—until it stood.
A form too large, too solid, too ancient to be anything but true.
An undead dragon.
Not decayed.
Not broken.
Preserved.
Its body was enormous, spanning the back half of the chamber—scaled in plates of gleaming gold, but beneath them was a structure of rot and ancient bone. Its eyes burned with green fire. Its wings, when they flexed, rattled with coins fused to the skin like scales. Gems glittered at every joint. Spines of silver jutted from its back, and its chest was hollowed to reveal a pulsing, green-lit cavity that beat with a slow rhythm.
Greed.
His true form.
His voice deepened further, now rumbling through their bones.
"You cannot kill want. You cannot bury it. You cannot resist it."
The dragon took a step forward.
The gold beneath it melted.
The temperature dropped even further—so cold the breath from the team came in bursts of fog, clinging to the back of their throats.
Koda didn't hesitate.
"Formation!" he barked.
The team moved.
Junen threw up a barrier just as the first wave of gold-clad undead lunged. Terron swept the flank with a ground-shaking hammer swing, sending two skeletal lords flying backward.
Wren and Thessa unleashed fire and ice, sigils flaring across the chamber.
Maia shifted back, hands glowing, already chanting.
Deker turned and sent a pulse of force through a cluster of undead wrapped in burial silks.
And Koda—
Koda moved like a storm.
He met the first knight mid-lunge, severing a jeweled arm in one swing, the second blade driving through the thing's throat before it could cry out.
The undead didn't bleed.
They rang—like bells struck from inside hollowed bones.
Above them, the dragon reared its head.
Its mouth opened, and a column of black-green flame erupted forth—not fire, but sickness given form. It scorched the air. Melted treasure. Warped light.
The team dove aside, breaking formation just in time.
And still Greed's voice echoed, deeper now, from beneath the floor.
"Come. Come claim your peace."
"You will find it beneath me."
The air collapsed inward.
A single heartbeat after Greed's voice dissolved into the room, chaos answered.
The golden hall—once still and theatrical—erupted into motion as the hoarded wealth of centuries stirred. What had been silent mounds of treasure twisted violently into motion, spewing undead in droves. The dead did not rise from coffins or crypts. They crawled from the gluttonous belly of gold itself—melted into it, forged from it, possessed by it.
Out from jeweled caskets and shattered golden armor, bodies fell free like carrion, their frames adorned with trophies from lives they never lived: crowns half-melted into skulls, rings fused to clawed fingers, broken relics nailed into torsos.
The treasure screamed.
The sound was not vocal. It was metallic. Gold screeching against itself. Silver crying as it cracked. Rubies shattering from the weight of limbs clawing over them.
And in the center of it all, Greed, massive and unmoving, loomed.
Koda was already in motion.
"Form on me!" he shouted.
The team reacted instantly. Terron pulled up to the right flank, hammer already spinning. Junen dropped her shield and activated her sanctum in a burst of radiant, circular light, catching three others inside it. Wren and Thessa moved behind her, staffs raised.
A wave of undead charged the throne's steps—gilded knights, skeletal monks holding scythes adorned with scripture, bloated nobles dragging capes of flayed silk.
Koda met them mid-charge.
His twin blades blurred. The first slice dismembered a knight at the wrist, sending its sword flying into a cascade of gold. The second cleaved upward, snapping a bejeweled ribcage in half. He pivoted, spinning low, and gutted a third, the blow carving through a breastplate inscribed with the name of a forgotten empire.
His mark burned. A familiar tingle crawled up the back of his neck.
Ding.
LEVEL UP — 24
He grit his teeth and pressed forward.
Every step he took was deeper into slaughter. Each enemy he felled added weight—not to his muscles, but to his mind. He was gaining something. Not just strength. Not just experience.
Mass.
Like a soul swelling with inheritance.
To his left, Thessa unleashed a cone of flame that swept through five undead at once, incinerating them before they could reach the team's inner circle. Their corpses howled as they collapsed, but the sound didn't end—it became laughter. High and giddy, echoing from every coin they touched.
Wren summoned a burst of illusion that forced a cluster of spearmen to spin in confusion. Deker followed with a concussive burst, flipping half of them onto their backs.
But they kept coming.
Ten. Twenty. Forty.
Greed's wealth had no bottom.
Koda cut down two more—twin nobles wielding curved blades lined with emeralds—and the rush came again:
Ding.
LEVEL UP — 25
This time, his vision shifted.
Not blurred—widened. For a moment, the battle slowed. Every motion around him became clearer. Not just enemies—his team. Their movements. Their stances. Their weaknesses.
He shook his head to clear it.
Not now.
Behind him, Junen held the inner sanctum. Her arms trembled from the force of undead crashing against the barrier, but it held—its pale glow casting long shadows across the golden floor.
Terron roared, taking a blow from a halberd square to the chest and retaliating with a hammer swing that shattered the offending corpse, spraying gems and teeth across the floor.
"Koda!" Maia shouted, casting a beam of light that sealed the gash forming across his arm. "Fall back a step! You're bleeding power!"
But he didn't fall back.
He charged forward.
A new figure stepped into view—a seven-foot undead wrapped in papal robes, its eyes glowing brighter than the rest. It raised a staff tipped with a crown. Words echoed around it in a forgotten tongue.
Koda didn't hesitate.
He surged forward, blades slashing in an X pattern.
The priest-lich screamed as its spine was severed in one smooth movement.
Ding.
LEVEL UP — 26
Koda stumbled.
His heart thundered.
His eyes widened.
The world tilted slightly.
He was too fast.
Too strong.
Each movement surged with more than it should. Momentum snapped from one motion to the next like chain lightning. And in the very back of his mind, a thought curled.
You are closer now.
Closer to what?
He didn't answer.
He stabbed forward again.
Behind him, Wren shouted in warning. Another undead—a banshee swathed in veils of platinum—screamed and tore toward the center. Junen dropped her shield, tackling it mid-lunge with her sanctum flaring.
Their impact sent both sprawling.
Terron rushed in, hammer high, smashing down onto the creature's chest before it could rise.
Deker spun a glyph and unleashed a cascade of piercing spikes into the far side of the chamber, pinning a skeletal beast shaped like a wingless wyvern.
Maia collapsed beside Thessa, panting, as a spell failed in her hands. "It's thickening. The air. The pressure."
The castle was alive.
And Greed's breath was getting heavier.
The dragon's eyes flared. Its ribcage swelled with green light. Its mouth opened—and a beam of black flame erupted across the floor, melting not just gold, but bone, floor, and time. The blast scraped just short of the team as they ducked and scattered, the roar deafening.
Koda's blades locked with a golden juggernaut's—twelve feet tall and shaped like a walking sarcophagus. He kicked off the creature's chest, flipped behind it, and drove both swords through its spine.
It howled in two voices.
One man.
One child.
Ding.
LEVEL UP — 27
He gasped.
It hurt now.
The ascension wasn't clean.
It was ripping something loose.
Not just lifting him—pulling him.
He looked to Maia.
And for a heartbeat, he saw her—not here—but there.
In the garden.
Smiling.
Laughing.
Holding something in her arms.
A girl.
Their girl.
Koda blinked.
It vanished.
"Still with us?" Terron called, dragging a half-torn undead off Wren's back.
Koda nodded. "Barely."
The ground split open.
A new cluster surged forth—these not warriors, but screamers—undead children with flayed faces and long limbs, moving like spiders.
Wren faltered.
Maia turned away.
Junen's sanctum flickered.
Koda screamed, shoving forward, blades spinning in wide arcs, carving a bloody path through them.
Their cries were voices he knew.
Every kill took something.
But it gave something, too.
Ding.
LEVEL UP — 28
Koda was panting now.
Not from exhaustion—his body barely registered the strain.
But from something worse.
Every time he struck, the thrill grew.
Every kill was a reward.
Every strike a promise.
It felt good to be this strong.
The pull of it rippled through him like an infection of clarity. He didn't just see enemies. He saw paths. Openings. Possibilities. Every undead was an equation, every parry a chance to become more.
Behind him, Maia shouted again.
"Koda, you're pushing too—"
Ding.
LEVEL UP — 29
He fell to a knee.
The level hit like lightning up the spine. His vision fractured—three, four versions of the room overlapping for half a breath.
In one, he saw the team winning.
In another, he saw them dying.
In a third—
He stood alone.
Atop a mountain of bodies.
Crowned.
His blades rusted.
Maia nowhere.
He vomited.
Maia reached him first, grabbing his shoulders.
"You're burning through everything, Koda. You need to slow down."
But he couldn't.
The next enemy was already upon him—a skeletal queen fused to her throne, floating above the gold with robes that shifted like water. Her mouth opened and sang—a long, low note that pulled at the sinew of the mind.
Koda roared and threw a blade through her skull.
Ding.
LEVEL UP — 30
Time snapped.
The world stretched.
And then—
Greed reacted.
The massive dragon behind the throne rose taller, wings unfolding with a sound like entire nations burning. Its chest opened wider—ribs peeling apart—and the green glow inside pulsed once.
Then exploded.
A wave of psychic force burst outward in every direction—not just force, not just pressure.
Desire.
The chamber became a storm of voices.
Not screams.
Offers.
Wren fell to her knees. "I can see the academy. I can see them—my students, my scrolls—"
Thessa gasped. "No… no it's not real. That's not—that wasn't—!"
Deker laughed again. "Everything works. Every invention. I can fix the world…"
Terron grunted, fists tightening. "They'll call me a hero. I'll be remembered. Feared."
Junen stood firm—but tears ran down her face.
Maia sobbed openly, her hands clenched tight. "She's real. I saw her. I held her. I saw our child, Koda…"
Koda stood frozen in the eye of the storm.
His hands shook.
Because he saw it too.
Their garden.
Their daughter.
A world without pain. A world where no one needed to fight again. A world he could protect forever.
A world where he had won.
It was so close.
All he had to do was take it.
Behind him, the team began to falter. Their cries became incoherent. Their stances broke. Wards fizzled.
The corruption had seeped in.
Greed's voice was no longer a whisper.
It was inside them.
You are already mine.
You are what you were meant to be.
Let go. And I will give you everything.
Koda's knees buckled.
His blades trembled.
The offer was perfect.
The cost?
Only himself.