Golden Law

"Me?"

Dago froze, confusion creeping across his face.

The tendrils of his thoughts writhed sluggishly through the void, like rusted gears forced to mesh.

He instinctively marshaled his mental power, trying to scan every inch of his flesh and bones.

There was only boundless gold, and that ancient, parched presence that seeped deep into his soul.

Honestly, he still had no idea why he had suddenly arrived here, in this dream belonging to Melville, the "Gold Eater."

Fragments of memory churned violently in his mind, piecing together scenes of carnage.

He only remembered fighting Ashen Witch Tracy over the Golden Magic Box in the Mechanical Heart Ruins, only for both of them to fall under some powerful Golden Curse and become golden statues.

The feeling still made him shudder—not pain, but suffocating despair.

Golden patterns spread along his blood vessels, instantly solidifying his seething blood into cold gold.

His cells were forcibly stripped of their vitality, the rules of matter brutally rewritten.

It was the absolute domination of a higher law over a lesser life, a cruel mockery of the truth that "flesh is weak."

Later, Tracy had shaken off the curse before he did. She seemed to have tried to kill him, but failed, and then sought to use the Golden Curse's power to finish him off.

That madwoman's eyes had burned with disregard for life.

"After all these years, you're the first person to make it this far and witness the gates of the Golden Kingdom with me."

The voice rang out again, interrupting Dago's recollections.

It lacked the usual coldness and calculation of a wizard. Instead, it held a clarity tempered by the passage of years.

"Thank fate for bringing you to me. Had you come any later, this remnant of my consciousness would have faded away