Radeon caught Fay and hauled her up in one hard pull. She was about to yelp, startled air already in her throat, but his hand clamped over her mouth before the sound could escape.
The wood seemed to hold its breath. Every chirp and chime died at once, as if even the insects had learned when to stay quiet.
"Make. No. Sound." Radeon's voice slid through the qi.
He carried Fay deeper into the tight, broken hull. Inside, their bodies became nothing but breath and rustle.
Radeon pressed something into her hands. A yellowish orb, faint veins webbed beneath its stretched membrane.
Fay stared at it, confusion written plain across her face.
"Pig intestines. Find the opening, blow them full, and they'll keep you floating in that river."
Fay gripped Radeon's sleeve. She wanted to tell him the treasure was enough. She wanted to ask what his plan was, what came next, and how they meant to get out.
The questions crowded her mouth and turned to heat behind her teeth.
'Fool. I buried myself in flower manuals and neglected what truly mattered. When the world turns its face away, I have no way to endure.'
For now she could only place blind faith in Radeon. It was her only choice.
Radeon broke in on her thoughts with a firm grip on her shoulder, urging her to try the contraptions.
Fay's fingers worried the ball until they found the small opening. She kept her face still and blew, steady and hard, until it swelled under her breath.
Radeon took it, pinched the mouth, let the air out in a controlled sigh, then pressed it back into her hands.
"Don't cry." He wiped her pooling eyes with his thumb. "Keep the treasures on you. Keep them safe. Walk the bank of Requiem Griefwaters, north, toward the Pale Cataclysms. I'll meet you on the way. If you see men, hide."
Fay knew the Pale Cataclysms, an ancient battlefield where those of old had fought beings from beyond the stars.
"They're here already. Time for you to go." Radeon's voice stayed low, but the edge was sharp.
"Disappear," she murmured.
Radeon squeezed her shoulders as she began to vanish. He could only guide her by inches, steering Fay along thin slivers of ground where her next step would not carry her into an enemy.
"Go," he said.
Fay swallowed her sniffle and set her jaw as she ran. Fear gnawed at her with every step. She looked back one more time, but he was no longer there.
Maybe the silence was his goodbye. A sign Radeon trusted her more than she had ever thought.
Radeon kept his breathing shallow. He listened for the small betrayals, a boot scuffing dirt, a sleeve brushing bark, a throat clearing before a shout.
Then something cut the air.
A dagger, fast enough to even stir a few strands of hair and raise gooseflesh along his brow.
It was not meant for him. He did not flinch. He only tracked the line of it with the corner of his vision and felt the attacker's murderous intention.
Simeon snapped his weapon up in a short, hard thrust. Metal met metal, and the knife skipped aside, its path knocked askew.
It hit the ground and blew it open, leaving a crater the size of a head. Its power was at least equal to the spearman's.
"Show yourself!" Simeon barked. "Only rats skulk and hide."
Nothing else moved, not a cloak hem, not a blade edge. Still, Radeon had already read the energies they carried.
'Blood cultivators. Nine or ten at Cornerstone Setting, here to grab the lion's share. Thirty at Breath Tempering. Mostly fresh, or desperate.'
Radeon's feet burst into a sprint before the others could settle into any clean formation.
Bodies shifted in the dark. Weapons angled. Breaths steadied. He did not give them time to become a single thing.
Among the scattered fighters, he picked the strongest. The one whose breath had been tempered the most.
Radeon fixed him in his sights and let the rest of the field fall away.
He closed the distance as he poured qi into the dozens of needles pressed between his fingers, charging them until they trembled with hungry force.
A spruce clawed up higher than the others. Radeon angled for it.
His boots found the rough bark and bit without a sound as he climbed.
The trunk did not shudder under his weight. His breath came short and sharp in his ears.
At the top he gathered himself, coiled, and dropped.
The man below never looked up.
Needles tore free from Radeon and found their marks.
Ear. Throat. Eye. Lung. Heart. Each strike came like a surgeon's tap. The needles kissed skin and slipped in without the courtesy of blood.
No spray, no mess, no mercy you could point to. They went for the cords that told a man he still owned his limbs.
A twitch died in the jaw. One eyelid fluttered and froze. Breath hitched, then obeyed.
The heart kept its stubborn drum, but the rest of him turned into borrowed meat, moving only when the nerves were told to move.
The Hemal Tithe cultists missed little. When their companion gave a small, unnatural jerk, three hooded heads turned at once.
The man Radeon held went rigid for a beat, breath snagging, and stance sagging.
Any trained eye could see it. And everyone here had trained eyes.
Radeon tightened his hold and forced the body to move. He lifted the man's hand in a lazy wave, a casual dismissal.
Then he set the shoulders, squared the hips, placed the feet, and walked him away with just enough steadiness to sell it.
Giovanni was still alive. Horror could not even settle on his face. His eyes wanted to widen, to ask for help, but they went lazy with his usual contempt.
Radeon walked Giovanni straight toward the cultists with the highest rank, hands on him like invisible strings.
Giovanni's tried to wrench his head aside, tried to make his mouth work, to beg, to warn, but even the effort felt stolen.
His neck did not turn. His tongue did not rise. He could only watch as his own body obeyed someone else.
"Slow down. Where do you think you're going?" The senior cultist asked.
Hope flared in Giovanni like a match in a tomb. This was it. His last inch of road if he meant to live.
He rammed everything he had into his throat. Qi. Vitality. Breath that burned like lye.
He tried to force out a shout, a plea, a single broken warning, anything that might reach another ear.
Radeon caught the rising breath and cut it off. Only a warped sneer crawled out instead.
Giovanni's throat cinched hard under a pressure he could not see. The qi he had packed into his windpipe burst apart inside him, scattered through muscle and marrow like spilled powder.
Radeon did not waste the break. He drank it. The needles in Giovanni's flesh turned greedy, not tools now but mouths.
Tiny proboscis deep in nerve and channel, they drew out the spilling heat, siphoning it in thin, obedient streams.
Then Radeon sent sword qi straight down the lines of sensation.
Blackness took Giovanni. Sight went first. Sound followed. Even the feel of his own tongue vanished.
"My bones say my breakthrough isn't here, Senior," Giovanni replied.
It was Giovanni's mouth, and it was not Giovanni speaking. It wore Radeon's schemes the way a mask wears a face.
The older peer's gaze lingered on the stricken man, doubt tightening his brow. A moment later he let it go, chalking it up to an off day.
The other twenty nine Breath Tempering cultists did not relax. If anything, they got more fervorous.
They saw Giovanni retreat, the strongest presence among them giving ground, and their eyes lit with hungry enthusiasm.
This was it for them. A chance to take more, to prove themselves on a bleeding rung of the ladder.
By the time the senior cultist showed himself to Simeon and Todd, Giovanni's body had been drained to a quarter of what it had been.
His face had gone hollow. The marrow in his bones felt half emptied. Giovanni's flesh was failing. Organs slowed. Signals misfired.
As the body shut down, Radeon reached past the failing nerves and into what remained awake inside the man's mind.
Memories came without resistance. Giovanni's first day in the cult. The first killing. The first time he watched a brother fall and told himself it did not matter.
Radeon took it all. Giovanni's skin sagged, but did not fall away.
It clung to Radeon and began to sink into him, slow and sick, folding and merging until it became his own.
Then the soul came. It peeled free from the husk and was drawn in. Radeon swallowed the young man for his own nourishment.
Paradoxical Devouring Arts. The method Radeon created, crafted to perfection, and cultivated his whole life.
He clenched, then loosened his hand around the sword hilt, weighing the balance.
When Radeon stepped back toward the battlefield, something new settled into place as if it had always been there.
He gained a new identity. His name, now, was Giovanni.