After being treated, his soul reached inward. He searched for residue, for hooks, for a seed of darkness tucked into flesh.
He found nothing. No lingering touch. No hidden gift. Clean work.
Radeon wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and waved off the Eldritch being.
"Alright. I'll bring what you need." He nodded once. "Go."
For a moment the cave held its breath. The eyes blinked one after another. Lips in the stone, too many of them, pursed into thin lines as if tasting the promise he had made.
Then the Eldritch being vanished. The darkness withdrew like a tide sliding back into a bottomless sea.
What was left were cloaks lay neatly folded. Radeon lifted one. The cloth was heavier than it looked.
Pocket after pocket after pocket, hundreds of them, stitched so clean you could miss the seams.
He tugged once and felt it stretch, not tear, not deform.
Then memories started to slide in. The material used. Water Chameleon.
Then came the boy Radeon possessed, Rai's life.
A gray name among a crowd. A young man with no legend. A master dead from old age half a year ago, no scheme, no poison, no feud.
For Radeon, that was a clean slate. Better than clean even. It was invisible.
What more, he was in a sect that used to be strongest, a scholarly sect. Everwritten Archivists Court.
People would quarrel, but with facts and information. No one draws swords.
Rai had read about the world, too. He knew of seven continents, of seas and borders. Something in the memory felt wrong.
Radeon breathed in and let his skin answer first. The air carried weight. It pressed against him in a way low realms never did.
His flesh recognized it the instant he seized the body. High level immortal realm, his instincts said.
He did not trust instincts alone, not after a cave full of eyes.
'Be sure,' he told himself. 'Pay the cost now, not later.'
He called the power within. Myridion Seersight. His gray eye burned, then forced itself into gold.
Material and immaterial peeled apart. Causal lines showed themselves as thin winding threads, marbles of fate caught in knots, routes that bent around emptiness.
And then he saw it. Not a high immortal realm. Not truly.
He was standing in a Samsara Realm, or what was left of one, a carcass that still wore the skin of its old grandeur.
The sight made his stomach drop as if the ground had shifted under him.
He did not want to linger. The longer he looked, the more the realm looked back.
His qi bottomed out like a bucket hitting the end of a well. Blood ran from his nose in slow heavy drops.
He shut the Seersight and wiped himself clean, smearing red across his knuckles until it dried dark.
Outside the cave mouth, noise clashed into heated discussions.
Boots scuffed rock. Someone laughed too loud. Someone else shouted as if volume could make a point true.
"Fay. Fay oh Fay. It would be better if you shut your yapping about those crazy theories. It is all lunacy."
"No. No. No. Listen, senior, hear me out. If you look at this book it will say there will be an apocalypse. Right here. See."
"What is even an apocalypse. That is not even a real word. Have you ever thought this might be a fantasy book made for fun."
"But. But. But. I can feel the heaven in the skin. Please listen."
"Sick. You are sick in the head. Get out my fucking way before my temper flares up. Ugh."
Radeon paused just inside the shadow of the cave.
His subconscious tugged, the old familiar pull that tried to make meaning out of coincidence.
Heaven's guidance. A nudge. A baited hook.
At his level there was nothing to be curious about. Not really.
Radeon knew how that guidance worked, how it came sweet as a promise and ended with a collar.
It would turn him into a stepping stone for a heaven child, or it would press him into a companion role and call it fate.
He felt it anyway. His mouth moved before his mind caught up.
"System."
The word left him and died in the air. Wrong life. Wrong stage. He tasted embarrassment on his tongue.
'You're not that man anymore. Don't call ghosts and expect them to come,' he told himself.
He stepped out into the cave's mouth. Faces turned.
A few men bowed and called him senior like the title was a shield they could hide behind.
Others only nodded, cautious, measuring. And there was Fay.
Blue eyes that did not match the mud. Hair the color of ripe wheat, matted now, dulled by grime.
Ridicule clung to the crowd. Mockery. Disgust. Their eyes hit her and slid away, like she carried something contagious.
She had fallen, or been shoved. Her sky blue robe was soaked and brown with it.
One sleeve hung half torn, and her fingers kept tightening around a battered book as if it was the only real thing left.
Radeon watched one man's boot shift closer, not to help, only to claim space. He watched another's mouth curl as if this was entertainment.
His feet moved before he decided to move them.
He reached down, caught Fay under the arm, and hauled her out of the mud in one steady pull.
The mud made a wet sucking sound as it let her go.
He wiped at her robe with his sleeve, a useless gesture that still drew eyes.
Her skin was cold through the cloth. Her breath came fast, and it smelled of fear and stubbornness.
She blinked at him, stunned, the book still clenched tight.
Radeon kept his voice low, so only she would hear the shape of it.
"I believe you."
A few heads snapped up at that. A few brows rose. He did not look at them.
He looked at her.
"Still. Are you really going to see it through to the end?"
Fay nodded. In Radeon's eyes, he saw that bright, reckless fire that made young people easy to steer. He did not waste it.
He guided her away from the crowd and toward his cave abode, one firm hand at her elbow.
Fay had never had an abode of her own. Her gaze darted from the folded cloaks to the bedroll, to the shelf of cheap jars.
Color rose in her cheeks, not from warmth. From the thought she could not stop thinking.
"I'm not that thirsty for intimacy," Radeon cut him off. "Relax."
Fay was still mortal. Uncultivated. A sect disciple in name only, carried along like baggage since the day she arrived.
Rai's memories slid forward, useful for once. A map of names and routes.
The strongest sect on the Emperia continent. That was where Radeon meant to go.
His first plan was simple. A new constitution. A new body. Something that could hold extreme foundations.
He turned to Fay and spoke the way a man assigned chores, not the way he took payment.
"Get supplies. Compact rations. Hardtack and jerky." He pointed north. "Then find us a job that takes us North if there are any."
Fay blinked. The red in her face shifted into confusion. She opened her mouth, closed it, then nodded too quickly, as if speed could hide relief.
Radeon watched her try to understand him and decided to make the bargain plain.
He paused, then reached for her hand. She tensed at the contact, expecting it to turn into something else, but he only held it long enough to make her meet his eyes.
"I will even help you cultivate," he said. "At worst, we both profit greatly. No promises yet."