There were always people who wanted the shortest road to success. The world never ran out of them.
Radeon hated that kind of hunger. Calyx hated it too. So did anyone who earned by honest work, even the merchants who skimmed every legal edge just to survive.
Seventeen men tried anyway. All mortals. All listening where they should not. They overheard secrets that were not theirs, then decided those secrets could be turned into profit if they moved fast enough.
They planned to point the white robed men of Radeon Bank toward vaults that did not belong to them, to claim another man's buried fear as their own reward.
They told themselves they were here first. They didn't know wraiths were evil by nature, like lions eating meat and gazelles grazing grass.
The ghost attendants could taste malice the way Radeon tasted enmity, not with fine detail, but still with the same certainty.
A stench. A wrongness. They nodded politely, as if taking instructions.
