The blood orb hanging above the broken crag screamed as if the sky had hooked it by the marrow.
Its faces cycled through rage, fear, and a grief so raw it looked like pain given skin.
Dozens of mouths opened at once, all wearing the same strained expression, all turned upward toward the storm that had come to judge it.
Then the scream curdled into laughter.
It laughed like something unchained, maniacal and loud, and one by one the faces shifted.
Pained masks became masks of ecstasy, eyes rolling back, lips peeling wide as if it could taste its own swelling strength even while the lightning carved it.
Agony fed it. Agony made it grow.
Above, the sky still raged, threads of lightning crackling and snapping, but down on the earth, the stolen colors began to seep back in.
Hundreds of vortexes collapsed and vanished in the same breath, not in mercy but in decision.
A thick mist began to form above the survivors, gathering into a small, tight whirl where the air had already been flayed raw.
It turned slowly at first, then quicker, drinking warmth from the ground, tugging at loose ash and stray strands of smoke.
The Heaven's tribulation was not finished. It had only shifted its grip and reached for a stronger bolt in its arsenal.
In a patch of burning maple trees, a blackened man stood at the center with one arm raised against the sky.
Flame worried the trunks. Leaves hissed and curled. Ash drifted down and settled on him like a shroud.
Radeon felt none of it.
No heat. No pain. No weight of air in his lungs.
He might have been a corpse that had forgotten to fall.
Then he forced his jaw to move.
Chew. Grind. Again.
A glass bottle was wedged between his teeth. He crushed it with a slow, stubborn bite.
The vial broke inside his mouth. Shards sliced gum and tongue.
He swallowed anyway, gulping shards and pills together like a man choking down gravel.
Vitality came back to him soon after, not comfort, not wholeness, just the rude insistence of life.
Skin drew together over ruined meat. It sealed, but wrong.
What returned looked like melted flesh that had cooled in a hurry, puckered and warped.
He could not see. He could not hear. He could not feel.
His face was gone. Where it had been, only a charred skull and ragged remnants remained.
From that ruin came a thin wheeze as he dragged air in, again and again.
'I just... need to leave. The range of the lightning. Just a little more.'
Radeon let the soles of his feet lead him, the only nerves that still answered, faint and unreliable.
He walked toward where he had threw the glider hard, guided more by habit than feeling.
It took a dozen heartbeats to find it.
His charred hand could not properly close around the frame.
But the qi that had returned to him was enough. He drove it through blackened marrow, making the still sizzling limb obey.
Radeon strapped the glider over his burnt back and fed qi into the array.
He lifted one leg, testing balance, then turned.
The direction was easy to find because the tribulation was still drinking the air into itself.
A steady pull that tugged at smoke and ash and loose leaves.
Radeon tucked the blood ruby under his arm.
He knew his roasted hand could not be trusted, so he wedged the ruby tight against the bones of his exposed ribs, pinning it there with what little strength his ruined arm could still give.
Then he launched and flew in a single hard line toward the Great Requiem Griefwaters, the river he had told Fay to swim.
Radeon knew the next lightning would not descend for another hour.
Not if the pattern held. Not if heaven kept its cruel schedule. His speed would be enough.
He had already covered more than half the distance on his first flight, before the sky had found him and tried to burn him down.
The pressure of the tribulation began to make itself known again.
Even at this distance, it pressed at the skull, a tightening band that promised pain and then promised worse.
Radeon's head should have split from it. He felt nothing. The burning had done him that mercy.
His nerves were ruined, and what would have staggered him only made the air seem heavier.
He opened his mouth and tasted for the river. He could not see it. He could not hear it. So he hunted it the way a starving man hunts smoke.
He let his throat search the wind for dampness, for that faint cool edge that meant moving water.
His diligence paid off. The weight in the air eased, the deathly reach of the lightning tribulation falling behind him.
The wind shifted and grew lighter, fresher, with a northern bite that should have stung his throat.
Instead, it was only information. A thin thread of moisture touched the back of his mouth. He turned into it and dropped.
The glider dipped. His numb hand met soil in a rough scrape as he skimmed too low, the ground jolting his arm up through bone.
He rose again without thinking, corrected, then dipped once more.
This time the world caught him with water. He circled back and found the river's beach.
Radeon slowed and came in low, his body gliding through the water in a hard skim.
The bank rose too fast. His ruined frame scraped soil and stone, the impact ripping him sideways, and he rolled a couple dozen times before he stopped.
Gritting what was left of his teeth, Radeon forced himself upright and lurched along the edge on unsteady feet.
Ash and mud smearing his ruined body as the river hissed past.
Rest was a luxury. The mission was not done.
He clawed into the pocket of his cloak and found the last spool of silk, the final thin promise he had left to spend.
He began tying everything together. Cloak. Blood ruby. Knots pulled tight with his teeth when his fingers failed.
He used his feet to search for a rock heavy enough, toes bumping and dragging until he found one with the right stubborn weight.
He lashed it to the heart of the bundle. Then he tied the silk thread to his smallest toe.
Qi probed outward, seeking a stretch where the river ran slower, where the current would not tear the offering away too quickly.
He found it, a gentler lane near the bank, and with a final shove he threw the cloak into the water.
The bundle splashed and sank. The silk drew taut against his toe, a cold tug that told him it held.
Radeon lowered himself near the river and lay there, chest lifting in thin wheezes, letting the damp air coat his throat.
For a few breaths, he did nothing but exist.
'This is on you now, Fay. Just… make it.'
Radeon's mind slid toward darkness, and he could only bank on the insane plan that Fay would pass along the riverbanks.