The tower braced itself.
Floor 910—once a proud trial chamber—had become a ruptured wound, a scar torn open by Bones' influence and now flooded with the clashing lights of two ancient forces.
On one side stood Dar'kan, now a Void Colossus, a living engine of destruction forced into monstrous shape by Bones' wrath. Shards of obsidian swirled around him like the rings of a broken planet. His wings—vast scythes of midnight—trembled with each pulse of void inside his core. Every breath he gave off dissolved the air into static.
On the other stood Danny.
Not human.
Not entirely yet dragon.
A radiant being caught between forms, his golden transformation still unfolding like the dawn of a forgotten world. Light poured through every seam in the chamber, refracting from the growing plates of polished scales that covered his chest, his arms, his legs. His wings were half-formed but enormous, unfurling with ripples of creation that shattered what remained of the floor.
The two forces faced each other.
Creation.
Destruction.
The ancient dance resumed.
But this time, the tower watched not as an impartial arena—
but as something desperate to live.
The First Breath
Danny inhaled.
It wasn't just air he pulled into his expanding draconic lungs—it was the tower's ambient energy, the corrupted particles of void, the remnants of shattered runes, even fragments of Dar'kan's own void miasma.
All of it flowed into him.
The light inside his throat grew brighter.
Dar'kan staggered back.
"No… no no no—YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT!" he screeched, shards bristling like quills.
Danny's chest expanded, his silhouette shifting more into draconic proportions with each heartbeat. Bone restructured under golden fire. His spine elongated. His tailbone cracked and extended, scales forming along its length.
He opened his mouth.
And the chamber filled with solar radiance.
A beam of pure creation—gold, white, luminous beyond vision—ripped through the air.
Dar'kan threw up his wings to block, but creation denied permission.
Danny's breath struck him like a tidal wave.
Void cracked.
Obsidian screamed.
Violet fire died, flaring violently before collapsing inward.
Dar'kan was thrown clear across the chamber, smashing into the wall so hard the entire floor quivered. Fractures spread through his colossal form. His wings began dissolving into black dust.
Danny closed his jaws slowly.
Light still glimmered between his teeth.
He wasn't done.
The Tower Reacts
For the first time in centuries, the Celestial Tower gasped.
Not in fear.
Not in pain.
In relief.
Golden flame spread across the floor, spiderwebbing out from Danny's claws and jaws. Wherever the fire touched corruption, it did not burn through—it replaced. Shadows turned to stone. Cracks sealed. Runes reignited in shimmering blue and gold.
One rune above the gate flickered weakly, then brightened:
PURIFICATION INITIATED
The tower's consciousness—ancient, algorithmic, yet emotional—shivered with renewed clarity.
The Golden Flame had returned.
And the tower remembered the first time it had seen one.
Dar'kan's Counterattack
"STOP—STOP—STOP!" Dar'kan roared, ripping himself free from the wall.
The void core at his center pulsed violently, destabilizing the chamber air.
Destruction gathered.
A cyclone of void spiraled around him.
The chamber darkened to complete black.
Light refuted the space around him, bending backward.
Danny lowered his head, growling low in his throat—an emerging draconic rumble layered with echoing resonance.
Dar'kan hurled the cyclone forward.
Void slammed into Danny, tearing through his golden aura, gnawing at his forming scales. The pressure cracked the floor beneath them; the gravity inverted; the sound warped into a shriek that seemed to claw at Danny's very identity.
The force crushed him backward.
Danny dug his claws into the ground—
and kept sliding.
His wings flared, but they weren't yet strong enough to stabilize him fully.
Dar'kan pressed harder, void flames reaching crescendo.
"I WILL ERASE YOU!" Dar'kan bellowed, shards extending into a bladed storm.
"With YOU dies creation! With YOU ends the cycle!"
Danny was pushed to his knees, half-dragon body trembling under the onslaught.
The void was eating his light.
And that was when Danny remembered the dragon's voice from the memory:
"You taught them creation.
They chose destruction."
His heart tightened.
But not with sorrow—
with resolve.
He planted one clawed foot firmly.
"No," he growled.
"I choose creation again."
Light erupted beneath him.
The Golden Surge
His transformation advanced explosively.
Scales spread across his face and neck, each gleaming like hammered sunlight.
His arms thickened, muscles reweaving into draconic density.
His wings completed their growth, stretching wide and luminous, membrane glowing with layered runes of creation.
His tail lashed outward, heavy and golden, slamming into the ground with a tremor.
Danny rose.
Void slid back as creation flared—
not like a weapon,
but like a promise.
He lifted his now-draconic head, eyes glowing molten gold.
And then—
Danny pushed forward.
His wings snapped outward, propelling him through the void cyclone.
The winds tore at his scales but could not breach their light.
Dar'kan's attack fractured around him.
In three massive strides, Danny reached the Void Colossus.
He reared back—
and unleashed a roar the tower had not heard in thousands of years.
The roar of a Golden Dragon.
The sound alone shattered half of Dar'kan's remaining shards.
Void recoiled.
Shadows fled.
The floor lit like a sunrise blasting through a storm.
Dar'kan staggered.
His body flickered.
His void core pulsed erratically, each pulse weaker than the last.
"No… no…" he whispered.
"I am destruction. I do not… lose…"
Danny stepped closer.
His breath warm.
His wings outstretched.
His scales gleaming.
"You're not destruction," Danny said softly.
"You're despair. I felt you the moment I saw you."
He placed one massive golden claw against Dar'kan's chest—
right over the failing void core.
Dar'kan froze.
"You can end me," he said, voice shaking.
"But you cannot change me."
Danny sighed.
"I'm not here to change you."
Light began gathering under his claw.
Thousands of tiny golden particles—
like sparks of a newborn star—
crawled across Dar'kan's chest.
Dar'kan looked down, trembling.
"What are you doing…?"
Danny's voice deepened, resonating with ancient power he was only beginning to access:
"Creation purifies."
Then he released the light.
Purification
It wasn't an explosion.
It wasn't even a flash.
It was a dawn.
Golden fire flowed into Dar'kan, threading through void and crystal, stitching ruptured metaphysics. It purified—not by destroying, but by rebalancing.
Void screamed.
Corruption writhed.
The obsidian shards tried to flee but were anchored by Danny's aura.
Golden flame washed through every fragment, burning away Bones' influence, unraveling the twisted bindings that forced Dar'kan into servitude.
The Colossus shrank—
losing its monstrous height,
its bladed wings,
its jagged mantling.
Dar'kan's form condensed into something smaller, weaker, but more coherent:
A dark humanoid shape of obsidian shards, trembling, cracks glowing faint violet—not with hunger, but with fear.
He collapsed to his knees.
Danny crouched down—massive, radiant, draconic.
Their eyes met.
For the first time, Dar'kan's were not pits of void.
They were just eyes.
Confused.
Lost.
Broken.
"I… was made to destroy," Dar'kan whispered.
"It is all I know."
Danny lowered his great head, golden horns framing him like a celestial crown.
"No," he said gently.
"You were made to serve destruction. You are more than that."
Dar'kan's shards rattled.
Then, slowly—
He bowed.
Not out of servitude.
Out of relief.
The tower pulsed.
LIGHT SPREAD.
Purification expanded outward from Danny's golden form in concentric rings.
Runes reformed like blooming flowers.
The walls straightened.
The floors healed.
Corruption cracked and dissolved wherever the waves touched.
Floor 910—once a corrupted battlefield—
now shone like a sunlit cathedral.
The tower exhaled.
Ancient, sacred, saved.
Danny Completes His Transformation
The purification ended, but Danny's transformation did not.
His body continued shifting—
growing
stretching
evolving.
The chamber expanded further to accommodate him, walls bending into vast domes of rune-carved stone.
Danny rose onto his hind legs, towering three times the height of a human.
His wings unfurled completely, each membrane a tapestry of creation runes.
His tail extended, heavy and plated.
His head reshaped into the fully aristocratic snout of a western dragon—
majestic, symmetrical, adorned with flowing lines of bright gold.
He glowed with so much radiance that shadows ceased to exist around him.
He was still Danny—
but now also the first Golden Dragon to exist in eons.
And the transformation wasn't simply physical.
His senses expanded.
He felt:
Jake's battle on Floor 820.
Swift dancing past fractal blades on Floor 840.
Jade Killington firing chi blasts on Floor 600.
Sedge Hat chuckling on Floor 760.
Jimmy eating a waffle somewhere in the observation deck.
And far above—
The Wolf King.
Wounded.
Bleeding.
Raging through Floor 976 with renewed fury
after feeling Danny's ascendance echo through the tower.
A rivalry was forming—
not of hatred,
but of inevitable collision.
Danny lowered his head.
He was ready.
Dar'kan Speaks One Last Time
The now-humbled Dar'kan looked up at the towering golden dragon before him.
He placed a trembling shard-hand against his chest.
"Creation… does not kill.
It reshapes.
Even those born from nothing."
Danny nodded.
Dar'kan bowed deeply.
"Go," he whispered.
"The tower needs you."
Danny turned toward the gate of Floor 911.
The rune-lit archway blazed brighter than any floor before it.
Not in warning.
In welcome.
As Danny stepped toward it, the golden scales across his body shimmered, wings scraping lightly against the purifying air with divine resonance.
He was no longer climbing the tower.
He was ascending it.
As the last of Floor 910's corruption burned away, the purified runes spelled out a line not spoken in millennia:
RETURN OF THE GOLDEN HEIR
Danny stepped through the gate.
The tower shined.
And destruction shuddered.