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Not subtle.

Not quiet.

The sound echoes through the cavern like a goddamn confession, and I bite the inside of my cheek so hard I taste copper. Riven looks like he’s aged ten years in three seconds. Lucien mutters something murderous under his breath.Ambrose doesn’t even blink. He just watches the pedestal like it might open its mouth and swallow us whole if we breathe wrong.

I, on the other hand, am not okay.

“What thefuck, Silas?” I hiss, half-laughing, half-mortified. “We’re literally standing in a sentient vault of cursed wealth, and you’re out here moaning like she just spit in your mouth.”

Silas, to hiscredit, is panting now, eyes still on the coins. “Shepulledmy hair,” he gasps, like that explainseverything.“I—I think I saw the gods. One of them winked at me.”

Luna lets go with a shove, and Silas stumbles back onto his ass, still grinning like a man who just tasted divinity and wants seconds. I lose it. I have to turn away, one hand on my face, because if I make eye contact with anyone right now, I’m going to combust from secondhand embarrassment. Or arousal. Or both. Probably both.

“I hate it here,” I mutter, to no one in particular. “I hope the treasure eats us. Honestly. I hope we all die right here and now so I don’t have to live with the memory of Silas having a full-body religious experience because Luna yanked his hair.”

Luna, stone-faced as ever, brushes her palms off on her coat like she’s just handled garbage, then looks at the rest of us likewe’rethe problem.

“You think that pedestal woke up for no reason?” she asks, already moving back toward the center of the vault like she didn’t just publicly dom Silas in front of the entire group.

Silas scrambles to his feet, still breathless, still glowing with that stupid, blissed-out grin, and follows her like a shadow.

Riven mutters, “He’s going to die in here.”

And Orin—unbothered as ever—simply hums. “Maybe. But at least he’ll die fulfilled.”

I don’t respond. Because Luna’s stopped walking. And nowshe’sstaring at the pedestal. The gold around it is shiftingagain—just slightly. Not from her. Not from magic. Something beneath it is waking.

And this time, I don’t think it wants to be worshipped.

There’s a weight to the silence that follows. The kind that stretches too long. Not dramatic, not theatrical—just wrong. Like the room is holding its breath, and we’re the only ones too stupid to notice we’re standing at the edge of something that remembers hunger.

And then it speaks.

A voice—low, masculine, amused in the way only something ancient and blood-wet can be amused—slithers through the chamber like it owns the air. Like it always has.

“Ah. You’ve come for my gold.”

The words brush against the skin, inside the skull, deep enough to feel like they’re beinginhaledinstead of heard. My stomach knots, and I glance at the others—Riven’s already reaching for his blade, Caspian frozen mid-step, Luna standing dead still, magic coiled up around her shoulders like armor. But it’s Ambrose who doesn’t move at all. Just watches.

“It’s mine,”the voice continues, silk-wrapped steel, too deep to be fully human, toocasualto be divine.“Every coin. Every gem. Every crown broken beneath the hands of kings. I took them. I earned them. I watched kingdoms fall for them.”

I don’t want to ask the obvious question, because Iknowthe answer. We all do. But the room is starting to shift, the air tightening, the gold… moving.

Not like it’s alive.

Like something beneath it iswaking up.

The largest mound—far back near the northern arch, maybe twenty feet tall, studded with shattered scepters and a ruined war helm the size of a small table—begins to quake. Slowly. Softly. Coins slough down its side like sand off a dune. Jewelsroll loose and vanish into the cracks of the obsidian floor. Something massive groans beneath the pile.

And then itrises.

Gold splits in a slow cascade as something ancient and vast unfurls from beneath it.

Wings—massive, black-veined and iridescent, unfurl like blades carved from midnight. Their surface shimmers like polished obsidian, streaked with molten gold that pulses with every movement. Not leathery like stories tell, not scaled like beasts—they look alive, like fire frozen mid-bloom.

The creature’s body emerges next, dragging mounds of treasure with it. Massive, brutal, and not bound to any biology I recognize. Its limbs stretch long, coiled muscle and shadow, ribcage glinting with embedded metal—runes carved into its spine in languages I don’t think were ever meant to be spoken aloud. Horns curl from its skull like the bones of some long-dead god, wicked and spiraling, gilded at the tips. And then—then—the eyes open.

Gold. Not soft. Not warm.