Max stood in the smoke and ruin of The Grimm Institute's lowest chamber – still, burning, silent.

And watched.

He should've moved already. He wanted to. His muscles were coiled with tension, fire building at his spine, licking at his nerves like a beast caged too long.

But he didn't move.

Because he couldn't look away.

The battle had become something else – something mythic. The kind of thing Max used to think only happened in stories. And every one of his friends was still fighting.

For her.

For Liz.

He saw Chloe first.

She flickered across the wreckage like a dying star, slipping through waves of golden spears that fell in perfect, terrible silence. Her body was fluid now – ghostlike, elemental. But it wasn't her phasing that caught him. It was her resolve.

She had no business still standing. Her power should've flickered out. But she moved like her bones had been forged in the same moment Liz smiled at her for the first time.

Max's breath caught.

Chloe was Liz's heart.

She was the best friend who had never once left her side – before the coma, before the world collapsed. The girl who folded paper cranes next to her bed because that's what Liz and Jack did. The girl who whispered hospital gossip through IV tubing, dared to believe Liz would wake up. Chloe wasn't built for war but she had become one. She'd killed a demon with her bare soul. Now she stood between a god and her sleeping best friend like a blade made of loyalty.

He wanted to scream at her to stop. To let him take over.

But she was already gone – ghosting through another barrage.

And then – Alyssa.

Max's gaze shifted as she fell like a meteor, fists first, into Mammon's chest. The floor cracked beneath her impact. Her body glowed with compressed force – gravity made flesh. Her gauntlets sparked as they collided, spiked and terrible, gifts from Ferron that turned her fury into a forge.

Alyssa was the will.

Max had never earned her trust. Maybe he never would. But here she was – again – throwing herself into the fire for someone she had no obligation to protect. For Liz. For Chloe. For Dan. She never wanted to be a hero. But she would not be outshined. And she sure as hell would never let someone else carry her friends through hell.

He saw the weight in her steps. The purpose. The refusal.

She's doing it, Max thought. Because Liz matters. Because they all do.

He turned.

Dan was limping, but still upright, his body wreathed in a golden aura that pulsed like a dying sun. One of his arms was cracked and shimmering gold to the shoulder – solid. His left eye shimmered, crystallized into something beautiful and broken. But he wasn't healing anyone else now. He was healing himself.

Dan was the conscience.

Not just April's brother. Not just the man who reminded Max how to breathe again when the grief was too much. He was family. Liz's uncle. The soul of their broken house, holding it all together even as he cracked at the edges. And he was still here. Still defending. Even as he petrified from the inside out.

He could have run. He should have. But Dan had always been the one who stayed.

Victor—

Victor was covered in blood. Ribs showing. Spines broken. Still swinging.

The golden cage Mammon conjured had bent around him like a prison made of debt – but Victor broke it. With his claws. With his rage. With his pain.

Victor was the anchor.

The part of Max that had always refused to die. They'd been through the worst together. The fire. The monsters. The silence. And Victor had seen the truth: that Max was breaking. That he needed someone to stop him from slipping entirely into the abyss. So Victor stayed. Even when he bled. Even when it wasn't fair.

Max looked at him now – crouched low, still snarling through fangs and blood.

Still choosing them.

He swallowed the guilt in his throat.

They're here because of me.

They're bleeding because of me.

They're still fighting… for her.

He looked past them all. To the containment pod.

To Liz.

Red light flickered faintly from within. Her body curled like she was still dreaming. Still unreachable. But he felt her. Knew she was there.

And every one of them – every wounded, furious, battered soul – was standing between her and Mammon.

Because she mattered.

Because they had chosen to protect her. Not for glory. Not for power.

But because they loved her.

Max clenched his fists.

The fire inside him surged upward, clawing through his ribs, hungry for release. He could feel it now – not just his soulfire, but Aamon's echo burning blue beneath the gold. It wasn't clean. It wasn't safe. But it was his.

He exhaled slowly.

A golden spear shot from the smoke, a whisper of Mammon's disdain. It grazed Max's shoulder, carving a molten line across his jacket.

He didn't flinch.

Didn't even blink.

He looked at his friends – his family – still fighting.

He whispered.

"She doesn't need a hero. She needs her father."

And then the fire answered.

…………………

The flame answered like it had been waiting.

Not a roar. Not a scream. Just a crackle – low, lethal, alive. It spiralled from Max's palms like a predator coiled too long. Soulfire – not golden now, but a deep, furious bronze edged with blue. Not the colour of glory.

The colour of war.

Max moved.

Mammon was striding toward Liz's pod again, untouched, unhurried. Gold bloomed in his wake like rot on a ledger. Around him, chaos reigned – Dan half-kneeling, Victor bleeding, Chloe ghosting through spears with her energy faltering, Alyssa gritting her teeth through another gravity-crushing blow.

Max aimed for the gap.

He dashed across the broken floor. Gold flared beneath him, but his boots hit hard. The fire didn't surge – he kept it tight. A cord around his knuckles. A blade under his breath. This wasn't about fury.

Not yet.

He slipped behind Mammon's left flank – soulfire spiralling around his right arm – and swung.

The impact hit square in Mammon's back. The fire roared as it bit, devouring silk and theory. A long burn tore down the robe, blackening the spine beneath.

Mammon paused.

Then turned – slowly, smoothly, without pain. Just recalibration.

"Reappraised," he said.

Max didn't wait.

Victor roared across the chamber – his body a mess of bleeding spines and muscle. The golden ribs of Mammon's summoned cage still clung to his back like fractured bone.

The floor cracked beneath him – gave way.

"Vic!"

Max dove across the platform, hellfire flaring from his boots like afterburners. He grabbed Victor's wrist a second before the vault wall gave out completely – pulled with everything he had. Their combined weight nearly took him over, but the fire anchored him.

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They rolled back to solid ground in a tangle of limbs and smoke.

Victor coughed blood, spat it sideways. "Little help."

Max helped him upright. "You got five more minutes of monster in you?"

Victor grinned. "I'll give you six."

Dan screamed as a golden spear burst from the ceiling, aimed like a falling guillotine.

Max was already moving.

He slammed his foot down, threw both hands up, and summoned a dome of fire – ragged, imperfect, but real. The gold struck the barrier and hissed, melting into slag. Max dropped to one knee beside Dan, who was barely conscious, eyes flickering between worlds.

"Hey. Stay with me."

Dan gritted his teeth, his golden aura sputtering. "He's… he's too fast."

Max grabbed him by the collar, hauled him behind a half-melted console. "So are we."

Chloe cried out.

Max turned.

She was stumbling near Liz's pod – her phase-skips growing erratic, her outline glitching mid-step. Three golden spears raced for her – fast, perfect, final.

Max didn't think.

He ran through fire.

The spears closed in. He leapt.

Mid-air, his left arm flared with soulfire. He brought it down like a torch, swinging it wide. The first spear dissolved on contact. The second skimmed his ribs – tearing through his coat, leaving molten pain behind. The third?

He took it on the shoulder.

Fire burst outward as it struck, ricocheting the gold aside but the impact drove him to his knees beside her.

Chloe blinked up at him, dazed.

"You okay?" he rasped.

She nodded, wincing. "Phasing's shorting. I'm… I can still fight."

Max helped her to her feet. "Then fight next to me."

Alyssa was ten feet ahead, fists clenched, gravity howling around her. Mammon had turned back toward Liz's pod. Gold spears floated overhead – hundreds of them, orbiting faster now.

Alyssa roared and charged.

Max didn't let her go alone.

He fell in step behind her – covering her flanks. Where she crushed, he burned. She shattered spears with weight. He melted them with fire. They moved like a two-pronged blade, carving a path through divine gold.

But every hit on Mammon sparked more treasure. Every scar healed over in coin.

Max saw it now – saw the futility in the pattern. No matter what they broke, Mammon rebalanced. Wounds became interest. Pain became dividends.

The more they hurt him, the more value he returned.

Max's fire dimmed for a moment as the realization took hold.

You can't outburn a god.

Not by heat alone.

And still – his fists clenched again.

He wasn't done yet.

…………………

Max's fingers shook. Not from fear.

From heat.

The fire inside him had stopped answering like a tool. Now it screamed. Not just gold anymore – something darker burned at its edges, licking toward cobalt. The blue of loss. The blue of fury.

The colour of hellfire unchained.

It crawled up his arms in forked veins, devouring the last protections his body offered. His coat was gone. His sleeves seared to ash. Skin blistered and peeled along his wrists – his pain-dampening power struggling to keep up, cracking like a windshield under a hammer.

Max staggered sideways, one foot dragging a trench through molten tile. His arm dropped. Not from choice. From failure. The fire around him raged hotter but it wasn't responding. It wasn't listening. It wasn't his anymore.

His pain dampening—

Failing.

The agony hit like a flood.

Not just pain – memory.

Suddenly the Institute was gone.

He was back in the house.

Seven years ago.

Smoke curling under the door.

Wooden beams cracking overhead.

Her voice, faint. Choked.

"Max."

His knees hit the ground. His burned hands – those same hands – scraped the floor for purchase. For her. For a path he never found in time.

Flames kissed his side again now, just as they had then – except this time, they were his. His own power searing into the old scar tissue, lighting up every nerve like a scream.

The nerves remembered. His body remembered.

April pinned beneath the burning rubble.

Their skin melting together as he wouldn't let go.

The scream he never got to let out.

"MAX!"

Chloe's voice again – but it echoed off another fire.

He couldn't breathe.

The heat pressed into his lungs, carving fissures into each breath. His ribs felt like they were made of cracked porcelain. The smell of burning flesh – his flesh – twisted his stomach. His skin bubbled along his back.

He blinked, and for a moment, Liz's pod was a burning crib.

He saw her in there.

Not sleeping.

Suffocating.

"Not again," he whispered, voice raw.

The fire clawed up his throat in response.

"Not this time."

He bit down – hard – drawing blood just to stay here, in this moment. Not seven years ago. Not in the house. Here. Now. With Liz.

He was being burned alive again.

And still – he stood. He didn't stop.

Mammon stood five paces away – calm, untouchable, a lighthouse made of greed and silk.

Max charged.

The flame lashed with his fists – left, right, overhead slash. One strike. Another. A third. Eighteen in all, fists rimmed with molten judgment, each blow precise, angry, fast. Fire coiled from his shoulders, his back, his chest – turning him into a living inferno.

Mammon didn't block.

He didn't need to.

Most of Max's strikes evaporated into veils of gold. The few that hit left small scorch marks – less than skin, less than soot.

And then – Max roared.

He wrapped himself in fire.

Not a weapon anymore. A cloak. A storm. Fire surged around his entire frame, a full-body sheath that pulsed with angry light. The blue edged further up his arms, crackling with instability.

He barrelled forward.

Crack.

The impact landed. His shoulder smashed into Mammon's chest like a cannonball made of anguish. For the first time, Mammon staggered.

A foot slid back.

The hem of his robe singed.

His cheek darkened with a smudge of ash.

It lasted one breath.

Then Mammon blinked.

Reset.

His head turned slightly, gaze falling on Max with mechanical coldness. His voice came like a balance sheet recited in court.

"Loss absorbed," Mammon said. "Risk assessed."

Max reeled back.

His hands throbbed – bones hot, flesh splitting. His breath came sharp and ragged. The fire was burning him. Not metaphorically. Literally. His body was breaking under the weight of what he was unleashing. Pain dampening cracked apart completely.

He wanted to scream.

He didn't.

Instead, he braced again.

One more strike—

"Max!"

Chloe's voice, distant. Frantic.

He turned – eyes flickering toward the pod.

The glyphs were flickering now. Weak. Faint. The containment was destabilizing. The orbiting spears tightened. Golden light spiralled inward like a countdown.

Mammon wasn't just surviving.

He was nearing the endgame.

Max clenched his jaw. A blister popped under his knuckle. Blood steamed on his palm.

I'm not fighting to win, he realized.

I'm fighting to delay.

And every second he bought…

Was bought with agony.

…………………

Max reached the pod just as Mammon did.

A hand of gold – lithe, ancient, inhuman – descended through the smoke, fingers outstretched like a banker about to sign the final line of a contract.

Max slammed into it.

He didn't block with steel. Or shield. Or even a blade.

He blocked with his bare hand – wreathed in soulfire.

The contact was instant.

Sizzle. Crackle. Burn.

Mammon's skin hissed beneath the heat, his sleeve curling into ash along the edges. Smoke coiled between their hands like a broken treaty.

Max gritted his teeth. His arm shook violently. Skin sloughed from his palm in scorched flakes. But he held.

Mammon's golden eyes narrowed – not in pain. In mild annoyance.

"Even fire," he said softly, "can be refinanced."

He reached forward with his other hand – past Max's grip – and touched the flame itself.

Touched the soulfire.

The fire flickered.

Max felt it – a strange dissonance, like his own power was being evaluated, not by laws of physics, but by rules of ownership. His flame, his last defence, paused.

As if the fire itself was considering its worth.

Max screamed.

Not in words. In rage.

In refusal.

His fist exploded outward in a pulse of raw soulfire, all control abandoned. The blast rocked the chamber, turning the air into a furnace. Gold splintered. The spear halo around the pod cracked.

Mammon staggered.

Not far. But he moved.

The impact left a black smear across his robes, the white charred down to parchment. His mask didn't shift, but he blinked once. Deliberate.

A ledger error.

Correction required.

Max dropped.

His knees hit the tile with a sound like metal giving way.

His chest was on fire – inside. His ribs had cracked under the strain. His heart was slamming against bone like it was trying to break free. Veins pulsed lava under his skin. His body was melting from the inside out.

His hands – torn open.

His vision – a tunnel of red.

It wasn't enough.

Across the battlefield:

Chloe staggered, her phase stuttering into sparks. Dan was slumped against the wall, his breathing ragged, golden veins crawling up his arm again. Victor limped forward on one leg, dragging the other, blood marking every step. Alyssa didn't move. Buried up to her ribs beneath a collapsed spire of gold, gauntlets still clenched in defiance.

And Mammon?

Still walking.

Still smiling.

Max looked at Liz.

Still cocooned. Still flickering.

Still waiting.

He thought of her birth. Her first breath. Her laugh when she called him a dork. Her tears at April's funeral. Her whispers in the hospital, asking if she'd wake up again.

And now?

She was asleep. While the world burned for her.

"I asked them to fight this war," Max thought. "To bleed. To break. For her."

He blinked through the fire in his eyes. Saw Mammon raise his hand again. Saw the pod begin to hum with golden resonance.

"I need to do more."

He reached deeper.

Past pain. Past memory. Past everything.

But what he found wasn't fire.

It was cold.

A terrible, aching cold that told him the truth:

He couldn't save them.

Not all of them.

Not like this.

And his heart cracked.

Not from despair.

From guilt.

…………………

The chamber was a graveyard.

Chloe lay unconscious, flickering where her phasing had failed. Dan was frozen mid-crawl, one arm solid gold, his light flickering like a dying match. Victor slumped against a shattered column, claws dulled, breaths shallow. Alyssa didn't move beneath the wreckage—only the occasional tremor of her gauntlets showed she was still alive.

Only Max stood.

Barely.

He was shaking. Shoulders blistered, jaw clenched so tight he felt the enamel crack in his teeth. His knees buckled under him once. Then twice.

But Mammon was there.

Still standing. Still pristine. Still reaching for the pod.

And Liz—

Liz was right there, a heartbeat away, sealed in glass, golden glyphs spiralling across her pod like lines on a receipt.

Max rose. Slowly. Every movement a betrayal of the pain tearing through his ribs.

His fists clenched again, igniting. The flames were wild now, not golden but dark – so hot they looked almost black, tinted at the edges with blue. Hellfire flared with every breath. No grace. No strategy. Just heat.

And love.

Max charged.

He didn't shout. He didn't threaten. He simply hurled himself at Mammon like the embodiment of a broken promise.

Fists collided with robes of valuation.

Flame met immortality.

He struck once – twice – six times. Each hit rocked Mammon's frame. Heat kissed his face. Smoke curled from his sleeves. There were no screams. No counters.

Just slow, steady resistance.

Max punched harder.

Fire raged down his arms, burning away his own skin in black flakes. He didn't care. He needed to stop him. He needed to stop—

And then the gold pushed back.

A pulse.

Mammon didn't punch.

He pressed.

One hand against Max's chest, golden light blooming from his palm like a signature sealing a deal.

Max's soulfire shuddered.

Then died.

Just like that.

Snuffed out.

Max stumbled back, gasping, swiping at air like the flame might reignite if he just believed hard enough.

But there was nothing.

His aura was gone. Burned to ash.

And Mammon – calm, elegant, perfectly unharmed – smiled softly.

"You still think love can change the balance sheet."

He took a step closer to the pod.

Max didn't move.

Couldn't.

Mammon's voice lowered, gentle as a teacher correcting a student.

"Do you even know what she is now? What she's become?" His fingers hovered near the glass. "Do you think she remembers you as you were?"

Max's jaw tightened.

Mammon's gaze flicked toward him – pitying. "Would you still love her, I wonder, once you see inside? Once you know what she had to become to survive?"

A silence stretched. Long enough to feel final.

Then— A whisper. Soft. Fractured.

"I'm still here."

Max's eyes went wide.

He staggered – nearly fell. The voice had come not from the pod, not from the room, but from inside his head.

A presence.

Liz.

It was her.

Weak. Echoed. Faint as a candle under the sea.

But real.

His daughter.

His Liz.

"I'm still here."

Max reached forward. Pressed his palm to the glass.

"Liz?"

Mammon smiled at Max – almost reassuring.

And the world went white.

Max's mind opened.

Split.

Like a balance sheet torn in two.

And in that instant—

He felt everything.

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