Chapter 46 – The Weight of Greed
Mammon remembered gold.
Not as a currency. Not as a tool for power. As comfort.
As a child, Mammon had never known war. He’d known luxury. Towering obsidian halls. Silver fountains that poured molten honey. Tutors reciting ancient scriptures while handmaidens in silks rocked his cradle. A life untouched by blood.
Mammon was born into wealth older than kingdoms. His name whispered in contract halls before he could walk. He was a prince—not of people, but of possessions.
And he loved it.
He loved the weight of coins in his palm, the smell of new parchment, the terror in a debtor’s eyes. He loved that his worth wasn’t debated. It was counted.
But then, one day, the riches were no longer his.
He remembered betrayal. His court. His siblings. Envy. They stormed the vaults. His guardians executed. His name blacklisted.
He remembered crawling out of the grave his brother had buried him in. Selling his immortality, one fragment at a time, for revenge.
He remembered binding his soul to gold so no one could take it from him again.
He remembered pain.
And then—
He remembered laughter.
It wasn’t kind.
Light shattered his darkness—warm, nostalgic. It should have felt like home. But it cut into him, sharp, like a taunt, not a comfort.
He heard them.
Voices. Familiar ones. Laughing. Talking. Echoing through his mind, like a curse.
A concrete alley. A blood-drenched rooftop. A scorched afternoon where the air stank of metal. Footsteps echoed like thunder. The world was a suffocating cage.
Moments that should have felt good—but didn’t.
The world blurred.
A punch thrown too hard. A promise made too eagerly. A laugh that echoed too long.
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No warmth. Only leashes. No faces. Only executioners.
His body shook.
He remembered them.
The seven.
The promise.
He remembered Lucifer.
Not the King.
Lucifer, that asshole.
He remembered why they rebelled.
Because they were too broken to kneel.
Hands stained in blood. Eyes hollow. Words spat, not spoken:
“If we burn, we burn everything.”
His throat choked. His body cracked. And in that moment of collapse—
He screamed.
"LUCIFER!"
A scream so raw the ice cracked beneath him.
It wasn’t hope.
It wasn’t loyalty.
It was the last curse of a dying god.
And far away—Satan turned.
Mammon knelt, blood soaking into the ash beneath him. His body trembled. He coughed again—slick crimson pouring from his mouth, staining his once-golden robes.
One of the twins lay dead before him. Her body still warm. Her eyes wide, staring at something no one could see.
His left arm? Useless. The golden corruption had spread past his shoulder.
And they were coming.
Identical faces. Identical grins. A hundred of them in kimonos, their feet bare, their presence unreal.
No words.
Just a slow, inevitable approach.
Mammon stood—not with pride, not with fury, but with desperation. Every inch of his body screamed in protest. Pain sliced up his back, but he ignored it.
Chains erupted from his shadow. Holy. Wreathed in flames of debt. They tore across the ice in wild spirals.
Dozens of women flew backward, severed at the waist, the arms, the neck. But for every one that fell, two more took her place.
He fought like a dying god, knowing death was already gnawing at his soul.
They circled him.
This time, they didn’t attack.
They wept.
One stabbed herself.
Then another.
Then another.
Until the hundred formed a red-ringed lotus of death.
Mammon collapsed to his knees, his skin cracking, eyes bulging. He screamed—not in sound—but in light.
His body crumbled. His bones warped. His golden arm flaked to dust.
Something left him.
A single light. Weak. Flickering.
It drifted toward the last girl standing.
She pulled an orb from her sleeve. White. Unblemished.
She poured blood over it.
Let it weep.
The soul entered. And the orb turned red.
Satan arrived in silence.
A second too late.
The girl looked up at him—no fear, no reverence. She slit her throat with no hesitation.
Her body fell.
The orb? It shot upward, impossibly fast, vanishing into the clouds.
Carried by no wind. Tracked by no force.
Gone.
And so was Mammon.
From a distance, Belzeebub turned. Just a glance.
He’d heard the scream.
He’d felt the end.
The feast was over.
He looked down at the three dragon-turtles.
One lay in pieces. The others bled freely, screeching beneath his grotesque form.
Six eyes blinked. None of them human.
His voice came not from a throat, but from the sky.
“Your turn.”
Above the clouds, Levi hung.
Two dead bodies—one in each hand. Heads dangling, blood streaming like rainfall.
A third fell from the sky, arms splayed like broken wings.
The ocean trembled beneath him.
Thunder bent around his presence.
Below, fleets approached.
Dozens of martial artists. Human—but not. Fast. Controlled. Terrifying.
With them, hundreds of those same fast-recovery assassins.
Levi didn’t move.
His shadow did.
It spread across the sea, monstrous, ancient, shifting with tendrils, eyes, and a mouth too wide to belong to anything sane.
The Leviathan stirred.
And every human below felt their courage evaporate.
Their blades rose.
Their souls followed.
End of Chapter.
