Radeon's thoughts drifted, dull and heavy. Grass between the cobbles clutched at his boots, as if the world's buried riddles were dragging him toward something he could not name.
As he passed beneath the ivy drowned walls at the peak, the power behind his eyes stirred on its own. Heat gathered under his brow and refused to fade.
When he took the next left, the energy in his gaze grew more restless.
Radeon saw a robed disciple, face smeared with mud, tending the bright campions by the flower beds by the side.
The sight whispered, as it always did when it found a thread worth tugging.
Lines only he could see twisted from his eyes to hers.
'Dragon thread. Black serpent in her shadow. One line for luck. One for ruin.'
Her blue eyes shone, bright as river glass, her skin too smooth for the grime that masked it. A beggar's stains on the face of a lost lord's daughter worn thin by the streets.
Folk and disciples alike said she had lost her wits. With them had gone the small marvels that once clung to her name.
Even the loneliest men kept their distance. Her beauty did not draw them closer.
It only set their nerves on edge.
But Radeon's sight slid past skin and bone. He saw a bright soul there.
Fierce and gold. Trapped in a tired mortal shell that sagged around it like wet cloth.
"A child of the heavenly dao," he murmured.
The woman lifted her head as if heaven itself had tugged a string. Her gaze met his and held.
Radeon did not believe in mystery. Heaven might look strange to most men. To him, it was only gears turning.
"Rai, was it?" Her voice was soft, almost pleased. "Forgive me, but... have you heard the old tales? Of cultivators who could hold the stars in their bare hands?"
She could not draw a breath of qi, yet her tongue chased immortals and endings.
"Or the last apocalypse," she went on. "The one that cracked heaven and earth."
In her mouth, the world was always on the verge of breaking.
Despite all her ill news, one reason kept him rooted. A child blessed by heaven was worth nurturing in any era, whether she knew it or not.
'I've fought heavenly sons and daughters for a place in the high wars. At the end, they always find something buried. A relic, a half-starved god ready to crawl to their side.'
A memory that still made his teeth clench. Under them there were only two ways to live.
Unbreakable shackles of spellcraft. Deception layered on deception. A drugged haze that made obedience feel like sleep.
Or something older and harder to counterfeit, a bred filial loyalty that left people eager to throw their lives away with your name in their mouths.
This time, Radeon gambled on the latter. He would not call it kindness. He would call it an investment, and he meant to collect.
"Right, Rai. Full name's Radeon. That's who's left," he said. "I'm here for immortality. I've seen proof it's real. You talking about the world ending isn't madness."
"I... I don't mean to doubt you, but how is someone like me meant to trust such words?" she asked.
Radeon did not let the doubt breathe.
"If what I know of immortality is lacking, if I've never stood at its height... then may heaven's lightning take me where I stand."
As if to sweep her doubts aside, the sky answered. The clouds shuddered, the old sign that heaven had heard and weighed an oath, but found no lie worth striking.
Fay stared up, stunned, her whole body feeling every small stirring of heaven. No man she knew had ever claimed so much. Even she would not dare to swear such an oath.
For a heartbeat, the parapet fell quiet. Even the wind seemed to listen.
"Just who are you?"
Radeon did not answer her. Instead, he laid out his plan in a few spare lines.
"Three days from now, we leave," he said. "Pack as if we might not come back."
"Is there... anything else I can do to be of use?" Fay asked.
"Your spirit stones," Radeon said. "All of them. And your quill and ink. Now."
Fay dropped into a crouch at once. She dug through her bag until half her belongings spilled onto the cobbled street.
Dried herbs, bent knives, a leather-bound book swollen with old rain. Radeon stooped only long enough to take the quill and a clean sheet from the chaos.
He wrote with a steady hand. Silk thread, a thousand fine needles, coils of strong rope.
Fay drank the words in. Her heart beat so hard he could see it in the hollow of her throat.
This was not just a list to her. It was a door to the immortality she had begged the streets to grant.
"Thread every needle with silk," Radeon said. "No knots. No tangles."
"I... I can do that," Fay said, breath quickening. "I swear I won't let a single thread catch." Her fingers twitched as if she wanted to start already.
At her belt, a leather pouch bulged. Radeon tugged it free, the contents jingling like ice in a glass.
'At least a hundred,' he thought.
He loosened the strings and let the spirit stones spill into his palm, each the size of a fingernail.
After counting them off, he pressed thirty stones back into her fingers and kept the pouch.
"This is enough," he said. "Spend the rest on a month of food. Travel light. Only what you need."
Fay nodded again and again, clutching the spirit stones and the list to her chest as if someone might snatch them away at any moment.
Radeon could see she was choking on questions. Her eyes burned with a hungry, feverish light.
"Heaven's secrets don't come cheap," he said. "There's always a price."
He turned before she could beg for more. Behind him, the parchment rustled in her hands.
A sharp little hitch in her breath told him she would cling to his words now, the way a drowning soul clings to driftwood.
With that vow and his new fortune in mind, he walked toward the sect exchange hall. He meant to burn every last point Rai had so kindly saved for him.
He needed to make something. Not only for himself, but for her.
'Something she can use without qi. We'll see.'
Whatever lay ahead would be a martial practitioner's road, hard as whetstone, and her mortal body was soft enough to break on it.