Radeon waited behind the door. The alchemist was only a few steps away on the other side.
He close enough that Radeon could hear the faint shift of cloth. Silence held between them, stretched thin as wire.
Around that silence, the other rooms kept working. Bubbling. Gurgling.
Then came a yawn.
"Anyone want to walk with me. Let's go," the alchemist said, voice thick with boredom.
Another door opened. Radeon stayed tuned to every sound. Footsteps joined, then began to fade, growing distant down the corridor.
Only then did Radeon let out a slow breath.
Locking the door was impossible. A locked door invited a harsher search than a simple stem caught in the wedge.
He scanned the floor and found crushed, discarded herb stems. He gathered them, then ground them tighter between his fingers.
The dried fibers slid into the narrow gap beneath the door. Radeon pressed until they held.
Then he moved toward his target, past the cold cauldron and the stained tables, straight to the metal trapdoor at the far end of the room.
He hooked his fingers under the lip and hauled it open. Blood waited below. A wide pool of dark red spread under the floor.
It ran beneath all eleven rooms, large and small, tying them together in one hidden vein.
Radeon leaned closer and drew in the stench. Not just men. Mostly beasts, spiritual and demonic by the bite of it. Then another layer. Beastkin.
He watched the surface roll over itself in silence. Radeon took out a needle and thread and let the thread sink.
It slid down, silk feeding into the dark. After a dozen feet he stopped and channeled qi through it, testing what waited beneath.
Nine and a half feet deep. Enough for his plan. The quality still made his lip curl. Thin. Polluted. More waste than worth.
Radeon started thinking of a way to keep just the vitality and leave the dregs.
His Devour Arts could have sufficed, but he needed to stay here.
His missing face with all that clout would make people suspicious. It might even put them on alert.
Radeon stared at the swirling blood and an idea came.
His pupils dilated as his divine eyes activated. The immaterial yielded by degrees, letting him see through the pool of crimson.
Radeon mapped it. Twelve simple nodes, linked in a slow turn that kept the pool alive on middle-grade spirit stones. Then the hidden array core at its center.
'An array like this needed fresh work every month,' he thought.
By his estimate, it was the second or fifth day before its next maintenance. No one would touch it yet.
Then his mind fell back to the camp established by Skyflight Sword Court. It was clearly made for a one swift campaign.
"A day from now and at most a week, they'd surely start the siege," he murmured.
Radeon went back to the door and plucked the crushed herbs from the gap.
He paused, listening, and made sure no one nearby was finishing a batch.
The last thing he needed was some tired alchemist catching him in the doorway and dragging him into small talk.
He let the latch click first. He had never locked it, he was just selling the illusion he did.
Then he caught the edge and gave the door a sharp swing. Fast enough to close. Soft enough that it did not bang.
The hinges whined once and settled. No second scream to draw ears.
Radeon slipped back into the passage, qi burning away any scent that might lead a nose back to the alchemical room.
He took the route toward where Jekyll idled.
Guards appeared along the way. The pattern felt wrong now that Radeon listened for it. Some pairs passed within three to five minutes of walking.
Then came stretches that ran as long as fifteen without a single patrol. The scheduling here was not simple. It was layered. It shifted.
At last he reached what passed for a stairway, if a man could call it that. Each step offered only a toe's worth of stone.
Above, the passage narrowed into a climbing tunnel that rose into pure darkness. The message was plain.
Jekyll did not want to be disturbed, and Radeon climbed anyway.
He set his foot on the first narrow stone and let blood qi coat the tips of his boots.
He drew on the Hemal Tithe methods in Giovanni's mind, shaping his aura to match their taste.
A gilded core could probe him at any moment. Simple questioning was the kindest outcome.
The other path was uglier, a hand in his spirit, yanking truth out by the roots.
Time stretched with every step. His calves burned. His ribs complained with each lift of his weight.
By his count, twelve minutes crawled past before the darkness finally broke.
A spirit torch hung in the shaft ahead. Its white flame gave off no smoke and no heat.
It chewed quietly through a ring of spirit stones and threw a dim, cold light down the tunnel.
At the top, Radeon found a single door. He knocked once. The door snapped inward at once.
The swing was hard and sudden, and Radeon jerked a foot back at the last instant.
Still, he stepped through and bowed low, spine folding until his head hovered near his feet.
"This disciple pays his respects to Master Jekyll," he greeted.
"I took that buzzing for a fly bold enough to spoil my viewing pleasure. Very well. Come in," Jekyll said, flashing a wide smile.
As he entered through another door, the air hit him first. A hard, clean wind that smelled of stone and old rain.
It rushed through the chamber and set Jekyll's hair drifting. Beyond his master's shoulder, the land spread out in broken lines.
Ridges. Forest. A distant stain of smoke where the cultists and the Skyflight Sword Court scouts clashed.
Wind gnawed at Radeon's eyes until they watered and stung, and he channeled qi into them to seal the moisture in.
He looked to the low table first. Nothing moved. A pot of tea rested there, plain and unassuming.
Steam rose from its spout in a thin, straight column, unbent by the gusts that worried at Radeon's robes.
No ripple touched the tea in his master's cup. The surface lay smooth, glass still, as if the air itself had learned to behave in Jekyll's presence.
For Radeon, it meant something else. This was not the calm of a mere gilded core.
It was not even the weight of a Nascent Embryo resting on its own certainty.
Radeon had cultivated to unimaginable heights before. Radeon knew the feeling of strength and the way it resonated.
Jekyll did not leak his power. Jekyll hid it.
Radeon sensed a plan, a scheme he might have spun himself.