The gold cracked the floor before he even moved.

Victor watched it creep outward – silent, gleaming, perfect. Veins of gilded infection spreading from Mammon's bare feet like roots from a dead god. Every inch it touched turned to treasure. Every breath in this room felt taxed.

His claws twitched. His shoulder was still torn open from the farmhouse fight. His ribs hadn't mended right. Blood soaked the bandages Max had wrapped two hours ago.

None of it mattered.

Because Liz was in that pod.

And Mammon was moving toward her.

Victor growled low in his throat, something deep and animal. He didn't speak. Didn't ask. He just looked at Max once – Max, coiled in fire – and nodded.

Then he stepped forward.

Not as a man.

As the monster he'd buried.

The change was fast. Not clean.

Bones snapped. Skin tore. His back arched with a sickening pop as vertebrae split to make room for new muscle. Horns pushed out of his skull – longer than before. Not ornamental. Functional. He dropped to all fours as bone-plated spines erupted along his arms, curling over his shoulders like organic armour.

The pain was still there.

From Kimaris. From torture. From the fight that nearly killed him.

It didn't matter.

He needed more.

And the Beast gave it.

Victor leapt.

The floor ruptured behind him. A sonic boom cracked the vault. He hit Mammon like a freight train of blood and fury, claws extended, jaws open.

Mammon turned – but too late.

Victor's first swipe caught his side, raking through silk robes and pristine flesh.

The white fabric split. Gold blood sprayed.

Mammon stumbled.

Not much. A minor wound. But enough.

He could bleed.

Victor hit the ground in a crouch, spinning for another strike, his claws humming with power. He followed instinct, not thought – gut, rage, muscle. Always keep moving. Target the legs. Disable his base. Disable his base.

He lunged again.

But Mammon was ready.

A golden lance appeared midair – no flash, no conjuration circle. It simply was, born from valuation and contempt. It slammed into Victor's abdomen like the universe had decided to impale him.

The sound wasn't metal-on-flesh.

It was debt being paid.

Victor screamed.

The lance pinned him to the floor, bisecting his side clean through. Blood poured. His claws scraped weakly at the tile. He twisted – half-instinct, half-reflex – and punched the ground hard enough to break it, just to stay conscious.

The pain was incandescent. The old wounds screamed. He felt Kimaris's chains again. The burn. The acid. The voices.

He shoved them away.

Not now. Not here. Not yet.

Above him, Mammon didn't gloat. He simply adjusted. Brushed a fleck of gold from his sleeve and stared down as if Victor were a number refusing to round up.

"You were once valuable," Mammon murmured. "But value depreciates. Especially when it screams."

Victor bared his teeth, still impaled, still bleeding.

Then he smiled.

Not wide. Not manic.

Just enough.

"I'm not done," he growled, blood bubbling between his teeth.

And then, he pulled.

Not out.

Through.

The lance scraped against bone, then snapped, the golden shaft breaking off inside him. Victor rose, breath heaving, blood gushing, claws flexing with renewed fury.

He wasn't healing.

He was choosing.

Choosing to stand.

Choosing to kill.

…………………

Victor fell.

Dan saw it happen in slow motion – the golden lance spearing him clean through, like a divine receipt stamped through flesh and muscle. The Beast flailed. Roared. Refused to die. But even monsters bled.

And Mammon was already stepping forward.

Silent. Surgical.

There was no cruelty in his movement. No glee. Just intent.

A debt collector arriving on time.

Dan looked down at his hands.

Still glowing.

He wasn't supposed to be here – not like this. He was the healer. The support. The one who fixed what the others broke. He had always told himself that was enough.

But Victor was down.

Alyssa and Chloe were behind him.

And Liz—

Liz was in that pod.

Dan clenched his jaw.

Then I'm done waiting.

His body tensed. The golden light around his arms, usually a balm, flared – thicker, denser, darker. Not gentle anymore. Not warm.

He turned it inward.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Then unleashed it.

The floor cracked.

A surge of golden aura erupted from his body like wings made of sunlight – arched, jagged, divine. It wasn't clean or perfect. It was furious. Tendrils of radiant light snapped out from behind him like living whips, curling around his arms, extending through the air like divine roots seeking rot.

Mammon stopped mid-step.

Dan stepped in front of Victor's body.

"You don't touch him," he said.

Mammon raised one brow.

And spears rained from the air.

Golden weapons. Thousands. Born from nothing. Each one precise, beautiful, fatal.

Dan's aura reacted before he did.

The golden tendrils lashed upward – meeting the storm.

They didn't just block.

They healed.

Each spear that struck his aura dissolved – not shattered, not deflected, but purified. As if they were never meant to exist. The tendrils pulsed outward, striking the floor, the walls, the broken pieces of containment tech. Where they hit, ash cleared. Light returned. A strange peace spread through the battlefield – every strike undoing Mammon's corruption even as it defended against it.

Mammon recoiled.

His expression didn't change.

But his footing did.

Dan took a step forward.

Then another.

He lashed the tendrils – whip-fast, three slashing arcs aimed directly at Mammon's chest.

They hit.

And for the first time since entering the Burrow, Mammon stumbled.

Not much.

But enough.

Golden light burned across his robes – not Max's fire. Not rage.

Restoration.

A kind of violence Mammon had never accounted for.

"You heal with it," Mammon said softly.

Dan's eyes burned. "No. I fight with it."

The next strike came faster. Dan wasn't just attacking now. He was exorcising. Unravelling Mammon's presence like it was a sickness baked into the world.

He flicked one hand.

A spear dissolved mid-flight.

He flicked the other.

Gold peeled from the floor like flaking paint.

Mammon frowned now – actually frowned – as if seeing a math equation that refused to balance.

"You disrupt valuation," Mammon murmured. "You heal what should remain scarred."

He moved.

Faster than Dan expected.

One step forward. Then a hand outstretched. Not in malice. In price.

He touched Dan's shoulder.

And pain howled.

Dan screamed.

His body seized as something impossible crawled into him. Not fire. Not cold.

Conversion.

His skin began to change.

From inside out.

Flesh to ore. Blood to bullion.

His left arm went stiff – elbow to fingertips gilded like a cursed statue. His shoulder cracked. His eye—

He fell to one knee.

"No," he gasped.

The tendrils flickered.

Wavered.

No—

He pulled inward. Turned the aura not outward but into himself. A desperate act. A gamble. He wasn't healing anymore.

He was fighting off ownership.

Mammon stepped back.

Hands still folded.

No rush. No cruelty.

He had touched the man once.

And that was all he needed.

Dan's breath came shallow. One eye was gold. His arm glinted in the firelight.

But the aura—

It still flickered.

Still pulsed.

He wasn't gone.

Not yet.

…………………

The pain didn't matter anymore.

Victor felt it – gods, he felt it but it was distant. Like thunder miles away. Background noise behind the roar in his head.

The remains of the golden lance were still in him. Buried deep – jutting out from his side like a cursed tree branch. Every breath came with a fresh lurch of agony.

But he was still standing.

Still breathing.

He reached down, grabbed the shaft fragments with both hands—

And ripped them out.

The metal shrieked. Blood sprayed – thick, black-red, smoking on the air. He didn't scream. Didn't even grunt.

He snarled.

The shattered remains of the golden spear hit the ground with a heavy clatter, rolling to a stop like a discarded trophy. Victor let it lie. He didn't care.

He dropped to all fours.

And charged.

The transformation surged back through him in an instant. Bone cracked. Muscles ballooned. His spine flexed and burst with spines. Fur erupted along his arms. His claws dug into the floor, carving furrows in the soulsteel.

His mouth split open wider than any human jaw should.

He moved like an animal now – no strategy, no hesitation.

Just rage.

Mammon turned to meet him.

Too late.

Victor slammed into him with a sound like tectonic plates grinding. His claws tore across the white robe – through silk, through glyphs, through enchantment. For the first time, Mammon bled.

A thin line of gold dripped from his side. Not thick. Not fast. But it flowed.

Victor's grin was feral.

"Got you," he hissed.

Then something shifted.

Not in Mammon.

In the air.

A shimmer coalesced behind Victor – above him. The ceiling groaned. Reality twitched.

And then—

A cage dropped from the air.

Ribs of molten gold slammed into the ground in a perfect dome around him – interlocking, seamless, inevitable. The bars curved inward with unnatural geometry, like a ribcage closing in around prey. The cage was alive – breathing, pulsing. Shrinking.

Victor spun, claws flashing, but it was too late.

He was trapped.

He smashed a bar. It didn't bend.

He roared – slammed both fists into the ground. The entire cage shuddered, but held.

Mammon stood just outside it. Calm. Immaculate—save for the thin gold wound still bleeding down his side.

He didn't look angry.

Just confirmed.

"You already belong to me," Mammon said.

Victor snarled.

His claws scraped gold.

His muscles shook.

Blood dripped from his jaw.

And still—

He smiled.

"Not yet," he said.

And the cage creaked.

…………………

The world was tinted gold.

Dan hit the ground with a thud that didn't sound like flesh meeting floor.

It sounded like metal.

He tried to move – and couldn't.

His legs had fused to the ground. A slick layer of gold encased his calves, anchoring him in place like a half-finished statue. His left arm shimmered with gilded veins, frozen in place. And his eye—

God, his eye.

He couldn't see out of it anymore.

Only shimmer.

Only shine.

Only gold.

The spreading infection wasn't just in his body. He felt it in his soul. A slow calcification. Like his light was hardening – cooling into something currency-shaped.

Mammon's touch. It was more than skin. It was soul-deep.

Victor was trapped nearby. He could hear the beast hammering the cage. Snarling. Alive.

But Dan?

Dan was dying.

Not fast.

Not loud.

But quietly. Like a hospital monitor flatlining in slow motion.

No.

He shut his remaining eye.

And reached inward.

The world around him faded. The noise. The heat. The screams. It all receded like a wave dragging out to sea.

Inside his mind – his soul – was a storm of light. Gold, soft and healing, had always been his gift. His burden. His answer to violence.

But now that gold was curdling.

Cracking.

His soulfield pulsed before him like a torn wing of sunlight, threaded with creeping veins of Mammon's rot. It wasn't magic. It was systemic. Transactional. Like even his compassion had been rewritten as a line item.

He reached for it.

Heal.

The aura flared – once. The gold flinched.

But it didn't burn away.

Not yet.

Dan gritted his teeth.

Focused.

No thoughts. No fear.

Only purpose.

Heal.

The golden tendrils receded a fraction – hissing like steam from a cauterized wound. Dan's chest heaved. His light flickered with strain. He wasn't repairing bone. He wasn't closing wounds.

He was fighting for his identity.

A single name escaped his lips:

"Liz…"

Then another.

"Max…"

And then—

"Not done yet…"

His soul pulsed again. Brighter this time. Stronger. The gold cracked at the edges of his vision. His leg twitched. His eye ached—

And then the spread stopped.

He gasped, falling forward. His fingers scraped the floor – flesh again.

Dan opened his eyes.

One arm still gleamed, sealed in gold from shoulder to wrist. His left eye was still glassy. But the rest?

Alive.

Healing.

He stood.

Barely.

But he stood.

And across the chamber, Mammon looked at him – not surprised.

Just interested.

Dan squared his shoulders and rose.

…………………

Dan staggered upright.

His left arm was still etched in solid gold – unnaturally stiff, bone cracked and humming with weight. The rest of his body flared with light. His aura no longer whispered. It howled. Not soft, not gentle. This was no longer healing energy.

It was a weapon.

He raised his unbroken hand, palm glowing like the sun had cracked open inside it. Golden tendrils whipped outward, carving into the air with radiant force. Each lash hummed with vengeance, with life. Not to restore, but to punish.

Across the chamber, Victor snarled behind the gilded ribs of his cage.

He was hunched low, blood still leaking from the wound in his side. One hand clawed the gold. The other gripped a bar and twisted. Bone cracked. Metal groaned. His eyes were wild – pupils blown, breath ragged, lips pulled back in a grin too sharp to be human.

"Not. Done."

The bar splintered like dry wood.

Dan's next blast slammed into Mammon's side with a concussive thud – pure golden aura colliding with divine gold. It didn't pierce. But it moved him.

Mammon took a step back.

A miscalculation.

He turned toward Dan slowly, the cold mask of calm cracking at the edges. His eyes narrowed, and for the first time, the calculation shifted. Not in wonder. In annoyance.

Victor took that opening.

With a roar, he broke the last two ribs of the cage, metal shrieking as it bent around him. He tumbled free, landing in a crouch beside Dan, claws dragging gouges into the floor.

"You take the left," Dan muttered, steadying himself.

Victor stood tall. Blood ran down his ribs. His teeth were crimson.

"You take the lightshow."

From behind – footsteps. Fast. Heavy.

A blur of motion, and Chloe ghosted past them, sword drawn, eyes blazing silver-white. Behind her came Alyssa, her gauntlets glowing, her body dense as bedrock. She hit the floor like a meteor, cracking tile beneath her heels.

Mammon looked up.

Hundreds of golden spears shimmered into existence above them – arrayed like the blades of a celestial guillotine, hanging in perfect, silent orbit.

Victor raised his claws.

Dan's aura surged brighter, wrapping his broken arm in fire and resolve.

The gold in the room caught its breath.

And just before the storm broke—

Dan smiled through the pain.

"Round two."

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