The tunnel swallowed their light in the first three steps. Rock closed in around Radeon's shoulders so tight he felt his heartbeat in the stone.
The air smelled of wet clay, cold water slicked the floor under his boots.
"Easy now, one at a time. The walls won't run off," Piero called, slipping in front of him with a grin.
Luca looked back at Radeon, leaning in until their noses almost touched. Radeon caught a blast of his hot, sour breath right in his face.
"We'll be walking in from here for an hour and a half."
Piero tapped the right wall with his bronze ring at every third arch, a quiet rhythm to keep tally and pass the time.
After a quarter and a half under nothing but wooden beams, with only the soft hiss of their lantern for company, their legs had begun to ache with boredom.
"Heads up, boy. Your old master's waddling over. Give him a fine, deep bow," Piero said, meant for Radeon but loud enough that the far-off senior guard would catch every word.
Along the narrow path they came upon the guard. His hood was lowered and his eyes were shut, as if sleep had taken him on his feet.
"We pay our respects, senior," the three of them said together.
The lantern light brushed his face and found it smooth and untroubled, the senior guard focused on meditation.
"Were halfway there now," said Luca.
Radeon glanced around as he heard the wind howl. Above him, a small hole pierced the stone, a pale circle where he could glimpse clouds sliding past.
With every slow breath the guard drew, a thin draft slipped down into the cave, cool air threading along the narrow path.
Radeon realized the man was feeding the tunnel with outside wind, keeping the way from baking in its own stale heat.
After a while, Luca and Piero both pulled out cloths and tied them over their faces. Thick wool and linen pressed to mouth and nose.
Then they stuffed muffled wool into their ears.
Whatever waited ahead, they meant to block it out as much as they could.
Radeon pulled one of the spare cloths he had taken from the Skyflight Sword camp and covered his own face. He gave them a brief nod and they moved on.
Soon the air filled with muffled sounds. Wet, bloody grunts. The slow, deliberate crunch of bone and flesh.
The cloth dulled it but could not hide it.
Radeon did not scare easily, yet on either side of him Luca and Piero shivered, their eyes fixed ahead, their minds already recoiling from whatever made those noises.
The stench hit next. Piss and excrement soaked the stone, the reek of bodies that had lost control to terror long before Piero and Luca laid hands on them.
As the whole chamber came into view, he saw it. Hundreds of bodies crucified upside down.
Cold iron bound them, metal once used to make superior weapons, now tasked with one simple purpose, to lock each captive true.
"Eager to start, are you two? Now, now," the cultist in charge said with a crooked smile. "And you've even let our little star in here. What are you up to, Giovanni?"
"Curiosity, nothing more, ser," Radeon said. "I thought I'd look around and see if there was anything here to teach me."
"Aye, you will, sure enough," he said. "No need to dirty your hands. Walk around, have a look. The job's filthy, but you won't walk off at a loss."
Piero and Luca looked to the man in charge, fear shining plain in their eyes. One cold nod from him was all it took.
They moved to the nearest bodies and began to haul them out, men and women first, then children and the old. Each one carried the faint weight of cultivation. They were so sedated that not a muscle dared twitch.
The work had the same blunt routine as a slaughterhouse, hundreds of bodies drained with the same mundanity as farm cows after the knife.
Bones had already been broken. Limbs hung at wrong angles. Necks were twisted, jaws slack and ruined so no scream could rise, yet their eyes remained clear and aware, spiritual roots still clinging to life deep inside them.
Radeon turned his head as another senior cultist moved down the line with practiced ease.
He pried slack jaws open and shoved in mouthfuls of pills, fingers working fast.
Then he tipped water past cracked lips to force it all down. One body after another.
A quiet factory of horror, stripping living cultivators of honor, dignity, and their very being.
'This blood's going somewhere. Either a cauldron for a peerless brew, or an artifact that drinks it.'
Radeon approached one of the cultivators hanging upside down. The stench of weeks old excrement told him the man had been here a long time.
Thick cords of muscle swelled along his arms and chest, legs still packed tight with veined strength that spoke of long years on the training floor.
Radeon tapped the hanging cultivator on the shoulder. The man barely stirred, eyes almost blank.
Certainty hit Radeon. Whatever lived behind them had been scraped out.
He had seen that look before, the slack gaze of a soul scooped out again and again.
Curious, he plucked one of the pills from the ladle. It was a dull gray thing that left a chalk smear on his fingertips.
Radeon lifted it to his nose and drew in the scent. Bitter herbs. Wheat essence.
Nothing of the shredding cold that came with soul killers.
'Not the pills' he thought. 'Something else broke them.'
Radeon moved to another victim. Her body was fixed the same way, but she was clearly new to the torture. The first thing he saw was her eyes.
Wide and bloodshot. Veins crawled across her skin, swelling along her neck and arms.
No sound left her throat, yet anyone could see she drowned in pain.
'Something's wrong. Forced blood essence extraction didn't need to hurt. Not like this.'
He laid his fingers on the carved lines near her feet. A soft warmth rose through his skin, seeping into his chest until a faint cheerfulness tugged at the corners of his mood.
Radeon pulled back and moved to the next body. A man who glared at him with raw hatred.
When Radeon touched the array at the man's side, the warmth changed.
It burned hotter, thick and sweltering, like swallowing a mouthful of strong liquor.
What Radeon tasted was not emotion. It was the taste of living souls, channeled into something. Now he needed to know what.