It started with a scream.
Not one of terror. Not pain. Something else.
A scream of denial.
Thessa stood a few steps behind Junen's sanctum, her body locked in a rigid stance, her staff raised but trembling. Her eyes were wide, glassy, pupils dilated to near-black. Her lips moved, but the words didn't make sense—not at first.
"No—no, that's not it. That's not what I said—"
Her staff twitched.
"I didn't want this. I didn't mean for this—!"
Flames ignited at the edge of her spell-channel, licking up from the floor in chaotic arcs, not shaped, not aimed. Her other hand curled into a fist so tight blood seeped between her knuckles. The fire around her surged in a wave.
"SHUT UP!"
Thessa's voice cracked, splitting under weight not her own.
She swung her staff in a wild arc—not at an enemy, but through the sanctum.
A blast of uncontrolled fire erupted in all directions.
Junen barely raised her shield in time to deflect the majority of the blast from the team.
But Maia had stepped forward.
She caught the edge of the spell full-force.
The explosion knocked her off her feet—her body hurled into a mound of treasure, which crumpled beneath her with the sound of bones snapping under velvet.
The chamber roared, flame casting shadows in every direction.
Maia didn't scream.
She just hit the floor and didn't rise.
Her armor cracked. Her breath vanished. Her hands twitched once and went still.
Koda turned.
He had been half-kneeling, gripping his temples, caught in the spiral of offered dreams. The image of a child laughing still echoed in his mind.
Then the sound of Maia's body striking the floor cut through everything.
Time resumed.
The garden vanished.
The child vanished.
The lie shattered.
"…Maia?" Koda said softly, as if her name had never tasted right until now.
No response.
Only a low groan from Wren. The others still fought their own demons, locked in illusions painted by Greed's omnipresent whisper.
But Koda?
Koda was awake.
His heartbeat returned.
But it didn't steady.
It spiked.
Thessa stood where she was, still locked in a full trance, her eyes unfocused. "No more… no more—she shouldn't have touched it. She wasn't supposed to touch it—"
Koda's hands clenched around his blades.
He stepped through the broken arc of Junen's barrier. The weight in the room fought to drag him back down, to blanket him in comfort again. It whispered of peace. Of forgiveness. Of how it could all still be undone. Of how Maia could live if only he surrendered.
But it was too late for that.
He walked across the battlefield like it wasn't happening anymore.
He crossed the cracked gold toward Maia.
She lay on her side, partially buried under a collapsed statue. Her robes were scorched. One leg twisted wrong. Her ribs didn't move.
"Maia," he whispered again, kneeling beside her. He pressed trembling fingers to her throat.
A pulse.
But faint.
Too faint.
Her skin was cold. Her mark—the soft glow at her collarbone—flickered like a dying ember.
Koda looked at her face.
The faintest shadow of pain sat at the corners of her mouth. A single tear trailed down her temple, mixed with soot and blood.
His vision darkened.
Not from shadow.
From fury.
Something broke in his chest.
Greed's voice rose again, soft as ever, coiling around the edges of his hearing.
"You only had to say yes. This could have been avoided. But now, perhaps, you will understand."
Koda didn't answer.
His blades didn't hum.
They screamed.
But he didn't move.
Not yet.
Not while Maia lay dying.
His body shook.
Not with fear.
With restraint.
He looked up—across the chamber, where Thessa still stood in a trance, arms twitching, face soaked with tears she didn't know she was crying. Her flame still burned.
Uncontrolled.
Dangerous.
And behind it all, Greed watched.
Silent.
Smiling.
Unseen.
But present.
Always present.
Koda bowed his head once.
Not in defeat.
In mourning.
Then he stood.
Gold cracked beneath Koda's steps as he rose.
Not with grandeur. Not with grace.
He stood like a man dragging his soul up from the pit.
The light from Greed's heart—deep within the massive, undead dragon's chest—pulsed with sickly rhythm. The hoards still circled, but the team was out of sight now, scattered, wounded, breaking. The battlefield had collapsed into the private war Koda had tried to avoid.
But Greed had made it personal.
Maia's breath was faint.
Her hand had slipped from his.
He felt the weight of it like a chain wrapped around his ribs.
Greed's voice slithered again across the chamber. "She can live. I told you already. Take what is owed. Just say yes."
Koda didn't respond.
He moved.
The first step rang like a bell — his foot sinking into molten coin, burning his heel, his blades rising with fury.
Greed responded in kind.
The massive body lunged forward — not with the clumsy weight of a beast, but the cunning of a killer. The draconic form spun, its tail arcing in a glittering wall of bone and treasure. Koda ducked under it, sliding across the shattered gold like it was ash, and came up with both blades slashing.
The first tore across the exposed flesh between two plates of gold-scaled bone. The second struck Greed's rib — and stuck.
The bone didn't crack.
It screamed.
Greed let out a shriek that shook the ceiling loose — massive stones raining like teeth from a god's jaw. He pivoted and struck with a wing, catching Koda mid-dodge. Koda flew into a pile of crowns and shattered relics.
He rose bleeding, limping.
He smiled.
"Going to have to try harder," Koda spat blood, "if you want to sell me on eternity."
Greed lunged.
The maw opened — flame poured out, green-black and cold. Koda didn't dodge this time. He ran straight through it. The pain hit like broken glass against skin, but his Vow held. His cloak burned. His hood curled away.
But he emerged inside the dragon's guard.
And drove both blades up beneath Greed's lower jaw.
Bone split.
Greed recoiled, snarling, wings spreading wide — wind rippling through the chamber hard enough to extinguish every magical light.
Darkness.
For a heartbeat, silence.
Then Greed's voice came again — behind Koda, inside his ears, in his mind.
"Do you think this fury makes you pure?" Greed hissed. "It is mine, boy. You burn with want. That is my fire."
Koda turned slowly.
"You're right," he said softly.
And then charged.
Each clash rang louder. Each parry cracked bone. Each blow was Koda answering the death of his daughter-that-wasn't, the silence of Maia's lips, the promise he had believed for a moment too long.
Greed struck with claws like razors — Koda slipped between them, a blur of rage and discipline.
Greed breathed fire — Koda took it, blades held wide like wings of his own.
The chamber shrank around them.
Gold boiled.
Dead things screamed from their graves.
And still Koda fought.
Blood soaked through his armor. His arms shook. His knees buckled with each step. But he did not fall.
He would not fall.
"I've walked through worse," Koda roared, leaping from the dragon's forearm to its shoulder, plunging a blade into the joint. "I bled for peace! I broke myself to build something worth saving!"
Greed twisted violently, hurling Koda from its body. He slammed into the ground, carving a trench in the treasure.
He didn't rise right away.
Greed loomed.
"Then why did you hesitate?" it whispered.
Koda looked up.
Eyes bloodshot.
Rage clear.
"Because I wanted it."
The admission was raw. Honest. Painful.
"I wanted everything you showed me. Maia. Our home. That life. That peace."
Greed smiled with its many teeth.
"And you can still have it."
Koda stood.
Shaking.
Bleeding.
Alive.
"But not at your cost."
And then he ran.
Not from the dragon.
At it.
Greed struck with a claw — Koda leapt.
A wing blocked the air — Koda rolled across it.
The chest opened again — the heart exposed, glowing, screaming in pulses of green.
Koda's blades crossed.
And he drove them both into the dragon's ribs—into the core of its being.
Greed shrieked.
The chamber shattered.
Ceiling cracked.
Walls burst.
The hoards dropped dead mid-motion.
And Greed…
Still fought.
Still not dead.
Breathing shallow.
Reeling.
But wounded.
Truly.
Koda stood above the dragon's ribcage.
Breathing ragged.
Barely conscious.
But still standing.
Greed looked up.
And grinned.
"You will lose yourself before the end."
Greed did not die.
It bled.
Not with blood. But with essence.
As Koda's blades tore through its core and the green fire inside shattered like brittle crystal, something thick and black poured out — not smoke, not shadow, but greeds corrupt soul. An unholy essence, divine and wrong, seeping from the wound in the dragon's chest like molasses from a ruptured vein.
It didn't fall.
It reached.
Koda felt it before he saw it — the way his hands trembled not from effort, but from invasion. The pressure in his spine. The chill in his thoughts. And the system—normally a silent observer—screamed.
WARNING: Unfiltered essence detected
Corruption risk… high
High-density divine matter: GREED
The ichor rolled over his boots. Over his calves. Up his ribs.
His blades still pulsed in his hands, but they dimmed. Flickered.
Then the system flared.
Not a ping. A flood.
DING.
LEVEL UP — 31
DING.
LEVEL UP — 32
DING.
LEVEL UP — 33
Koda cried out and fell to one knee, arms shaking violently.
DING.
LEVEL UP — 34
DING.
LEVEL UP — 35
His breath caught.
DING.
LEVEL UP — 36
The world twisted.
His mind broke open.
And Greed poured in.
The dragon's body spasmed, twitching like a puppet being flung from its own strings. But its spirit—the intent, the ambition, the hunger—was no longer confined to flesh. It now flowed through Koda's bones.
And with it, came the vision.
Not an illusion.
A dream.
A nightmare dressed in prophecy.
He stood in the garden.
The wind was still.
Maia's back was to him. She stood by the tree.
Their daughter's laughter rang like bells.
"Koda," Maia said softly.
He walked forward.
His boots crushed fresh blossoms.
But as he neared—
The laughter stopped.
He looked down.
The grass was red.
The tree was dead.
Maia turned. Her eyes were empty. Her stomach torn.
Their daughter sat in the swing.
Lifeless.
Hands slack.
Koda screamed—
And the world collapsed.
The swing fell.
The sky cracked.
Black hands reached up from the soil, dragging their bodies into the dirt. Their mouths opened, but no sound came.
Just blame.
"You weren't fast enough."
"You weren't strong enough."
"You hesitated."
He fell to his knees.
His hands touched the stone of a grave.
Two names carved in gold:
Maia of the Holy Mother.
And their Unnamed Daughter.
And beneath it, the epitaph:
"He had power, but he chose mercy."
Koda's fingers clawed at the stone, blood streaking down the etching.
And Greed's voice whispered again.
"You see now what mercy costs. You see what you let slip through your fingers."
The grave beneath Koda's hands felt cold.
Not the chill of stone—but of finality. The kind that sinks into the marrow and doesn't leave. The soil was soft and black, flecked with shattered gold. His nails cracked against the epitaph as if he could scratch it away. Erase it. Undo it.
"He had power, but he chose mercy."
No blade could cut that deep.
The world around him pulsed red. The dream had festered, growing more vivid with every second. The tree above him now rotted from within, leaking thick sap the color of blood. The flowers were gone. The laughter was gone. Even the sky had turned black.
And the system…
DING.
LEVEL UP — 37
DING.
LEVEL UP — 38
DING.
LEVEL UP — 39
The pressure inside his head bloomed. Like something inside him was inflating. Stretching skin and soul. Greed's essence flowed freely now—no longer a tide, but a flood. It seeped through the cracks in his will, pooling in the hollow places left behind by pain, loss, desire.
And the whispers began again.
Thousands of them. A chorus.
More.
Take more.
You earned more.
You lost too much.
And in the eye of it—
Koda broke.
He didn't scream.
He folded.
His body slumped. Shoulders shaking. Eyes empty. His blades lay beside him in the dirt of a grave that had never existed and always would.
He couldn't even remember why he fought.
He just wanted—
"Koda."
A whisper.
Not like Greed's.
This voice wasn't in his ear.
It was in his chest.
He blinked.
A hand rested on his shoulder. Broad. Warm. Not heavy—but anchored, as if it had always belonged there.
He turned his head—
And saw him.
The man from the memories. The boy from the beginning. The god who became a guide.
Clad in humble robes, no crown, no armor, his presence was still as a mountain.
And his eyes—
Not gold. Not black.
But endless.
The Guide smiled gently.
"We all live with Greed," he said, voice low, as though it would bruise the moment if spoken louder. "It is in us, and always has been. But so is something else."
The garden began to shimmer.
Color returned.
Not fully. Not perfectly.
But the black turned gray.
The rot paused.
"You must live with Greed. But you must also live Charity."
Koda swallowed.
"I wanted them back," he whispered. "I saw them, and I wanted them."
The Guide nodded. "Wanting is not evil. But taking without giving? That is where it begins."
Koda looked back at the grave.
It was smaller now.
The names still there—but the stone cracked, no longer untouched. A flower had bloomed at its base.
"You can still have the future you envision," the Guide said. "But not if you trade yourself for it."
The whispers dimmed.
The red receded.
And something else—
Something older—rose in its place.
A soft pulse.
A slow breath.
Charity.
Not shouted.
Not demanded.
Simply… given.
And for the first time in minutes—maybe hours—Koda breathed.
Truly breathed.
The storm of chants fractured.
The voices of Greed cracked like mirrors struck with truth.
And in their place…
Silence.
Peace.
A moment of stillness.
He reached down.
Picked up his blades.
And stood.