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 yet name.
As he passed beneath the ivy drowned walls on the peak, the power behind his eyes stirred of its own accord. Heat gathered under his brow and refused to fade.
"Dragon thread. Black serpent in her shadow."
Lines only he could see twisted from his eyes to hers.
'Luck on one line. Ruin on the other.'
Her green eyes shone, bright as river glass, skin was too smooth for the grime. A beggar's stains on the face of as if a lost lord's daughter.
Folks and disciples said she'd lost her wits, with them, the marvels that once clung to her.
Even the loneliest men kept their distance. Her beauty never drew them in. It only set their nerves on edge.
But his sight slid true past skin and bone. A bright soul. 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 heaven blessed child was worth nurturing in any era, whether she knew it or not.
Radeon had fought heavenly sons and daughters for a place in the high wars of the sky.
At their last breaths they always seemed to find some buried trick, some relic or half-starved god ready to take their side.
A memory that still made his teeth clench.
For Radeon, there were only two ways to live under them.
Build bonds that surpassed blood or gain overwhelming power that commanded respect.
"Name's Radeon," he said. "I'm here about immortality. I've seen proof it's real. What you say 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, may heaven's lightning take me where I stand."
The last word left his lips and the sky answered. Clouds shuddered. A deep rumble crawled over the roofs and walls, as if some great brush had stroked his oath hard across the bright blue.
For a heartbeat, the revetment fell quiet. Even the wind seemed to listen.
Fay stared, shocked. Her whole body felt every stirring of heaven.
No man she knew had ever claimed as much. Even she would not go so far as to swear such an oath.
Radeon 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.
'Feed them secrets in your order, piece by piece. Let each one land heavy. Let them grow around it.'
If they chose to leave the road before the end, Radeon would see to it that no sword of revenge ever rose from their hands in his name.
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 as well.
A little ward of jade or steel. Some simple piece that might turn a killing blow.
Radeon had no wish to fatten rumors for idle merchants by simply following what was written.
What he wanted was a clean taking. A quiet heist, with himself as the showman at its heart.