Marcus didn’t turn.

But Pemberton did—eyes rolling upward in raw animal terror despite the hand crushing his throat like a vice of living iron. And Harrison, still standing uselessly by the trap machine, fell backward onto his ass as his gaze found the sky, his bladder letting go in a hot shameful rush he wouldn’t remember until later.

A figure descended in a form of a man drifting downward through empty air like gravity had politely asked for his cooperation—reality and space itself bending around him in reluctant submission while his catchy golden hair caught the afternoon light like molten divinity.

His features too perfect to be entirely human and arranged themselves into the most punchable smile in existence yet in the same way, it was the same smile that promised both salvation and annihilation in the same breath.

He landed without sound because of course even gravity bended to his pleasure ang grace was his second trait after his name.

"They were never yours the moment the dragon got involved with them, Helel, my friend!" Danton spread his arms wide like he was delivering the good news at a sermon, voice ringing with theatrical benevolence that somehow made the air taste of ozone and old graves.

"Not even a little bit! Not even on Tuesdays! Stop being delusional, Helel, it’s such a bad look on your honorable ancient self!"

Marcus’s grip on Pemberton’s throat tightened, knuckles whitening until the butler’s windpipe creaked like dry twigs under a boot.

Danton walked toward them like he’d never encountered a threat he couldn’t destroy and found this limitation boring.

His hand gestured casually at Harrison, a dismissive flick that somehow communicated leave, now, while you still can, also you have something in your teeth and your soul is already forfeit.

The Chief scrambled to obey. His legs tangled and his dignity evaporated in a puddle of piss and panic feeling the weight of Danton’s attention settle on him for just a moment—golden eyes with vertical pupils, serpent slits that saw straight through flesh and bone and pretense and hive very patheic mortal soul—

—and a shiver ran down his spine that had nothing to do with temperature, a primal dread that whispered he was already erased from whatever came next.

He ran.

Danton watched him go, waved cheerfully, then turned back to Marcus with a grin that belonged on a cat who’d just discovered the canary cage was unlocked and the canary had been begging for it.

"As for this disappointment..."

He reached Marcus’s side. Looked down at Pemberton, still pinned beneath his master’s grip, still bleeding, still desperately trying to breathe through the vise of fingers that would not yield.

Danton snapped his fingers.

Golden flames bloomed into existence.

Not fire as mortals understood it—not heat and light and chemical reaction.

These flames existed on a different level entirely. They bent and burnt the air around them. They made reality itself flinch and whimper while they burned with the particular intensity of something that had existed before the concept of burning was invented, before pain had a name, before mercy was even a thought.

What Danton held looked like a candle flame. Small. Almost delicate.

He dropped it onto Pemberton.

The butler didn’t scream.

There wasn’t mercy left for the man to.

The flame kissed his chest — and hell erupted inside him with the force of creation undoing itself.

Pemberton’s body convulsed as if struck by divine lightning as the golden fire sank into his flesh like liquid damnation, igniting every cell in an instantaneous, soul-shredding inferno. Skin blistered and peeled away in glowing sheets, muscle and fat sizzling as it vaporized. Blood boiled in his veins, flash-cooking him from within.

His nerves screamed in a symphony of agony so pure and absolute that his mind fractured under the weight of it. Forty years of service, loyalty, quiet desperation — all of it burned away while he was still conscious, forced to witness his own unmaking in helpless, chaotic torment.

His bones turned to glass and shatter into golden dust. His memories ignited one by one, each one a fresh stab of loss and pain as they dissolved into nothingness. His soul itself caught fire — a white-hot, cosmic burning that tore him apart thread by screaming thread.

Every regret, every suppressed terror and buried loyalty was dragged kicking and howling into the golden blaze.

He tried desperately to scream, mouth stretched wide in silent agony, but his throat had already dissolved into light. Lungs filled with molten gold. Heart burst into flame. Eyes melted in their sockets as the last of his terror burned itself out.

For one endless, unbearable heartbeat that stretched into eternity inside his fracturing mind, Pemberton existed in pure, conscious, soul-shredding hell — fully aware, fully helpless and erased. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Then, in less than a heartbeat that felt like an eternity of torment, Pemberton was simply gone.

No ash, residue, charred corpse or final ragged breath.

Just slightly singed grass and a terrible, sucking void in the world where a man had stood.

A soul had been violently erased from existence itself.

Danton chuckled. Actually wiped a fake tear from his eye.

"What do you think, Helel?" He turned to Marcus, who had risen to his feet and was staring at the empty space where his butler had existed, a fresh crater opening inside his chest where something small and human had just died.

"If we’d had these flames in our old days—imagine! Imagine, Helel! Just—" He snapped his fingers again, mimicking the sound. "Poof! Problem solved! We wouldn’t even be here, would we? Stuck on this miserable rock, our brothers and sisters not even awakened yet, waiting around like idiots at a party that started without us."

He sighed theatrically, hand pressed to his chest.

"Annoying. So very annoying."

Marcus scoffed. "I see you’ve completely absorbed and mastered the Flames of Beginning."

"Oh, not even close!" Danton’s laugh was bright and infuriating. "I won’t master these flames for the next hundred years. Maybe two hundred. But who’s counting?" He examined his fingernails like they were suddenly fascinating.

"You see, these flames—as you know—belonged to HER. And without being a dragon myself, controlling their real power is... tricky. Difficult. A real pain in my divine ass, actually. Despite having her core."