A crowded New York street buzzed around them as Sai and Desta waited at the crosswalk.
Sai glanced at the traffic and smirked.
"Bro, I'm telling you, if a car hit us right now, we could be rich. Like, really rich."
Desta glanced at him.
"If we survived."
Sai shrugged.
"Minor detail."
Desta considered that for half a second.
"Depending on the car, we could still get a decent lawsuit out of it."
Sai pointed at him.
"Exactly. See? You get it."
The crosswalk light changed.
"Come on," Sai said. "Let's move before we're late."
They stepped forward.
Then came the screech of tires.
A car whipped around the corner far too fast.
Sai kept walking for half a second too long, completely unbothered.
Desta tapped him on the shoulder.
"What?" Sai asked.
Desta looked toward the street.
"Car."
Sai turned just in time to see it.
"Oh. Is that a Labrador driving?"
The impact hit them before either of them could move properly.
For one brief, terrible moment, they felt exactly like human speed bumps.
They hit the pavement hard.
Pain exploded through both of them.
Sai let out a weak laugh from where he lay sprawled across the asphalt.
"You jinxed us," Desta muttered.
"It was a good jinx," Sai said weakly. "We're going to get paid, right?"
He raised one fist toward the sky with what little strength he had left.
Desta stared upward.
"No. We're not."
Sai blinked slowly.
"Huh."
A pause.
"My money… no."
Their laughter died with the last of their breath.
Then everything went dark.
A voice reached them through the void, cold, measured, and utterly without pity.
"Sai, do you desire riches beyond mortal measure?"
"Desta, do you wish to quench your unquenchable thirst for knowledge?"
"Enter my domain, and I will grant you the opportunity to pursue both."
When awareness returned, they found themselves standing before a door.
Sai blinked at it, then at Desta.
"Desta, I just had a terrible dream where we were late for class, got run over by a dog driving a car, and died."
"That was not a dream," Desta said. "And we are dead."
"How can you tell?" Sai asked.
Desta gestured behind them.
Sai turned to look.
There was nothing.
No street.
No city.
No sky.
Only a dark, endless void stretching in every direction.
Slowly, he turned back toward the door.
It towered above them, immense and radiant, washed in a deep golden light that made it look less built than consecrated.
Sai placed a hand against it.
The door opened slowly.
Golden light spilled outward.
A mountain of treasure surrounded them.
Shining gold coins spilled in glittering rivers between relics, broken crowns, and gemstones so large they looked carved from captured stars. Shelves of grimoires rose between the heaps like half-buried walls, their spines gleaming with gold leaf and age-dark leather.
Here and there, strange objects of impossible value jutted from the slopes—jeweled scepters, cracked masks, crystal fragments, and ornaments from worlds neither of them recognized.
Sai crouched immediately and grabbed a handful of coins, letting them slip through his fingers with something close to reverence.
"Desta," he said, breathless, "this must be heaven. We're rich."
Desta's gaze stayed elsewhere.
"What about the voice?" he asked.
Sai waved a hand.
"Must've been God inviting us in."
Desta had already stepped toward one of the bookshelves. His fingers brushed the spine of a grimoire—
A voice came from above them.
The same voice as before.
"I am no god," it said, cool and measured. "Though you may refer to me as such if it pleases you."
A pause.
"And remove my treasure from your hands."
Both of them looked up.
At the very top of the largest heap, seated on a throne that seemed carved from wealth itself, sat a man.
His posture was elegant, almost lazy in its confidence, but too exact to be careless. He sat near the edge of the throne rather than sinking into it, one leg angled with deliberate ease, one arm resting lightly as if the whole world already belonged to him.
And somehow, it did.
His face looked carved from polished black marble, beautiful in the same way statues of kings were beautiful: cold, unmoving, and made to be looked at from below.
Gold rested against his skin as though it belonged there, tracing the throat, the arms, and the draped darkness at his waist. He did not look dressed in wealth. He looked like wealth had taken a throne.
Sai dropped the gold onto the pile.
"Sorry about that, man—"
Desta elbowed his side.
"Sir. Had I known this was yours, I would not have tried to indulge in it."
"Quite all right. I am sure you are curious where you are and what you are doing here. I shall explain."
"I welcome you to the Citrine Vault. You may refer to me as Mavnir."
"Sir Mavnir, may I ask what you are?" Desta asked. "You said you were not a god, though you brought us to this place. What are you?"
"So you request knowledge of what I am. That is a question you do not need answered for now," Mavnir said.
"But I shall answer another."
"Your purpose in being here."
Sai raised his hand.
"I have a guess of what you are."
"Proceed."
"Are you a dragon? I mean, with the treasures and all the expensive-looking stuff. You're definitely not human, and you kind of talk like a dragon too."
"You are incorrect. I am no reptile."
"He meant that as a compliment, Sir Mavnir," Desta quickly added.
"May I continue?"
They nodded.
"I shall give you the gift of a new body and send you to a new universe, where you will continue your lives," Mavnir said.
"So basically we're being reincarnated," Sai interrupted.
"Yes, in a sense. But I warn you: interrupt me one more time, and it will be one fewer person I have to remake."
Desta raised his hand.
"What is it?" Mavnir asked.
"What kind of bodies would you give us when you remake us?"
"Stronger ones than you have now," Mavnir said.
Desta paused.
"Before that, may I offer you a deal, Sir Mavnir?" he asked.
Mavnir lifted an eyebrow.
"A deal, you say? What do you have to offer me?"
He gestured lightly to the treasures around him.
Sai interrupted.
"You should give us something extra—."
"Be quiet, Sai," Desta snapped. "We may already be dead, but I'm fairly sure you can still make this worse."
He turned back to Mavnir.
"Like I was saying, if these new bodies are meant to serve a purpose, then immortal ones would serve that purpose better. Wouldn't they?"
"Yes, that would help," Mavnir said. "But it is against the rules, so I cannot."
He paused.
"But that is a rule I may be willing to bend. So long as the others do not find out."
A faint smile touched his face.
"I like you. You have piqued my interest. You have a deal."
Mavnir extended his hand toward them.
A low rumble followed.
As if answering his will, stairs emerged from the treasure pile beneath his throne.
"Approach."
They approached the man, with Sai leading.
"A deal, then?" Mavnir said.
Sai grinned.
"You've got yourself a deal. Also, you are a lot bigger up close."
Mavnir extended one hand.
Sai took it without hesitation.
The moment their hands met, the treasure around them shuddered.
Coins trembled. Relics shifted. A low metallic rumble rolled through the vault as though the entire hoard had suddenly taken breath.
Sai blinked.
"…Was that supposed to happen?"
Before anyone could answer, the slope beneath him gave way.
Gold surged upward.
Not light.
Not flame.
Treasure.
Coins, chains, jewels, crystal shards, and fragments of priceless things rose around Sai in a gleaming wave and swallowed him whole.
For a moment, his scream was muffled beneath the avalanche of wealth.
Then even that disappeared.
The pile churned violently.
Sai could not breathe.
The pressure was everywhere — crushing against his ribs, forcing into his mouth, grinding against skin that no longer felt fully his. The gold was not merely burying him. It was remaking him, dragging him through greed so complete it left no room for air, no room for thought, no room for anything except possession.
Then the hoard convulsed.
Sai was spat back out at the bottom of the pile like something rejected and perfected at once.
He hit the ground hard and immediately curled inward, gasping as though he had forgotten how breathing worked.
Above him, Mavnir did not move.
"You have been remade," he said. "Now you, Desta. Shake my hand."
At the bottom of the treasure mound, Sai weakly patted his chest.
"Okay," he croaked. "That was… less fun than expected."
Desta looked at him, then at Mavnir's waiting hand.
For the first time since waking in the Vault, he hesitated.
Mavnir waited with the stillness of someone who already knew the outcome was inevitable.
Slowly, Desta stepped forward and placed his hand in Mavnir's.
Again, the treasure moved.
The gold beneath Desta's feet opened like a mouth.
He did not shout when it took him.
He only sucked in one sharp breath before the hoard swallowed him whole.
The pile shuddered once.
Then again.
At the bottom of the treasure mound, Sai slowly pushed himself upright.
He dragged in a breath, then another, one hand pressed to his chest as though he still did not trust the air.
"That was nothing," he muttered.
Then he looked down at his hands.
They were no longer human.
Long, black, tapered claws had replaced his fingers, elegant and cruel, each one ending in a polished point that caught the gold light like lacquered stone. Fine dark scales ran over the backs of his hands and vanished beneath the cuffs of his sleeves.
Sai stared.
Then he grinned.
"Cool."
He flexed one hand.
"I'm like one of those supervillains with sharp fingers."
He turned the hand slightly, admiring the claws from another angle.
"These are perfect for back scratches."
Seconds later, Desta was thrown from the treasure pile.
He landed farther down the slope than Sai had, as if the hoard had found him less agreeable, and dragged in air like someone surfacing after being held underwater too long.
Sai pointed at him and burst out laughing.
"You look like a fish out of water," he said. "And what's with those long ears?"
Desta ignored him at first. He pushed himself up on shaking arms and looked down at his own hands.
They were wrong.
Longer. Sharper. Dark at the fingertips, with narrow black claws instead of nails. Fine scales shimmered faintly near the wrists and along the backs of his hands, more hidden than Sai's until the light struck them.
Sai kept laughing.
Desta slowly raised one hand and pointed at him.
"You have the same ears."
Sai froze.
"What?"
He reached up at once.
His ears were no longer rounded and human. They had lengthened into elegant, swept shapes that flared more to the sides of his head.
He touched them again, disbelieving.
Then his gaze shifted to Desta.
Desta's had changed too, but differently.
His ears angled lower, longer and more severe, slanting downward in a way that made his face look sharper, quieter, and faintly less forgiving. Where Sai's drew the eye outward, Desta's made his whole expression seem narrower and harder to read.
"Why me?" Sai asked.
"Quiet, both of you," Mavnir said.
The two of them looked up.
Only then did they truly see what they had become.
Sai's hair had changed first.
What had once been ordinary dark hair now fell in thick silver-white locs, pale enough to gleam against his darker skin, the color almost metallic in the Vault's light. His eyes had sharpened too, the irises turned a rich violet. His face had become finer without losing its arrogance, more striking, more dangerous, with canines just sharp enough to show when he smiled.
His clothes looked as though Mavnir had designed them to flatter greed itself.
A long black coat fell from his shoulders in sharp, expensive lines, the inner lining touched with deep wine-red and the seams marked with restrained gold detailing. Beneath it, fitted dark layers sat close to the body, tailored more for presence than practicality. Gold rested at the collar, cuffs, and fastenings with deliberate restraint.
Desta's transformation had gone another direction.
His hair was shorter and rougher, black at the roots and deep red through the ends, jagged where Sai's was controlled. An eyepatch now covered one eye, dark and severe, as though it had always belonged there. His visible eye had become pale and strange. His features had sharpened into something leaner and more severe. He looked less openly radiant than Sai and far less interested in being admired.
His clothes suited that difference.
Dark layered fabric wrapped close through the torso and shoulders, black with muted crimson and deep blue-black ornament worked into the edges. The silhouette was cleaner, less flamboyant, but more exact. A long outer layer fell behind him in heavy folds, while the structured details at the collar, chest, and sleeves gave him a colder, more deliberate silhouette.
Both of them had changed in the same direction without matching.
Sai looked down at himself again, then at Desta.
"Well," he said, lifting one clawed hand, "this is a lot sexier than dying."
Desta adjusted his sleeve, still staring at the unfamiliar shape of his fingers.
"I hate that you said that first," he said.