The coughing didn't stop as the stink hit him, sour and bitter, thick as the air in a leper's hall.
Radeon blinked the haze away. Darkness met him as his hands found rough stone.
"So. A cave."
Herbs, medicines, and cultivation manuals lay scattered around him. He tried to stand, but pain stabbed through his joints, sharp as nails driven into bone.
He sank back, breath thin, a dull weight settling behind his eyes. Out of that weight, memories not his own crawled toward him.
"Rai. That was his name." The thought came with a brief nod to the dead youth whose life he now wore.
His thoughts faded, turning to the work of staying alive.
"Need something. Anything to keep this body upright."
Rai's body had been dead for less than a day. Its organs were already slowing, eager to drag him down after the boy.
His hand scraped over lime grit and cold stone. Glass kissed his fingers and rolled away. He followed the faint clink, caught a small bottle, pulled the stopper, and sniffed once.
"Good enough."
He tipped the pills onto his tongue and swallowed. His gut clenched at once. Heat surged up his chest and pried at his throat. He doubled over and vomited.
Black blood splashed the stone, stinking of rot and metal. Blindly, he clawed for a waterskin, found it, and drank every drop.
After a few hard breaths, he set himself to the old circulation he'd found in Rai's memory.
'Breath Tempering stage. Could be worse.'
Qi stirred through his limbs. His muscles clenched then loosened, easing a body that was only at the first rung of cultivation, just a step beyond mortal flesh.
His starved soul jolted as it brushed the stream of energy, and the old sight from his past life stirred behind his eyes.
That same sight deepened. Six shades converged behind his eyes, ones that should never be entangled.
"Samsara. This has to be a samsara realm."
His thoughts cut off as pain knifed through his skull. The sight drilled in, cold and steady, beyond what his body could endure.
Sweat ran down his forehead, and crimson dripped from his nose to patter on the stone.
"This realm's hiding something."
After a brief rest, his vision steadied. The world stopped spinning.
"Need information. A lot more."
His hands found the herbs by his feet. He crushed them for their oil and rubbed it into his jaw, neck and armpits. Then he changed into a clean robe and stepped out of the cave.
Warm light met his skin. Fresh pine rode a soft breeze and for a moment the mountain smelled almost kind.
The path down from the cliff wound through the trees, roots and stone underfoot, until it spilled him into the outer market.
Here, the air turned pungent. Stalls leaned into one another in warped lines as he walked, canvas patched with old rags, wood gone soft with rot.
Every few paces a crude latrine gaped beside the lane, boards dark and swollen, the stink of waste rolling out to mingle with sour wine and boiled gruel.
Disciples in faded robes drifted through the filth, their belts bare of anything worth stealing. Their auras barely stirred the air.
A breath of power here, a flicker there. Nothing more than candle smoke in a storm.
'Everwritten Archivists Court. A court should mean a top sect. But this...'
Radeon walked a few paces more, his face lifeless, bafflement dulling his eyes, then stopped beside a hunched disciple bent over a small steamer.
He lifted the lid. Buns puffed within, fragrant and hot. He spread five fingers. The disciple glanced up.
"You look half dead, junior brother," the man said, but he passed the buns over all the same.
"Just light on sleep," Radeon answered.
With a shallow bow, he moved on without another word, eating as he walked.
Rai was not famous in this sect, nor was he hated. A gray name among gray names. For Radeon, that was a perfect place to start.
With his gut steady and the pain caged, he made for the library. He wiped grease from his fingers and offered the clerk a brief bow.
"What is it?" the clerk asked without much interest.
"Old maps," he replied.
The man pointed him to a row of wooden drawers and went back to his ledger. Radeon checked the catalogue, then took the creaking stairs to the cartography floor.
There, he tore an atlas off the rack and weighed it on his palm, the leather dry and thin as old skin.
'Only a few centuries. Too young,' he thought.
He slammed the old book back into place and pushed on along the shelves.
His feet carried him under range labels. Love stories. Research diaries. Historical writings.
All too new. All useless.
Exhaustion bit at his lungs, forcing short, ragged pulls of air until he caught sight of a lower row of older works.
Dust coated their spines, but the faint gleam of their pages still pushed through.
The dates marked them as tens of thousands of years old, and more.
He read of phoenixes like common larks, immortal lands thick with abundance, ships slipping across a sea of stars.
Yet on his way to the reading hall, he had passed squat villages behind wattle fences, pigsties and open latrines sharing the same ditch.
The pages were real enough. It was the present that felt forged.
"This doesn't add up," he said, the words coming out low and flat.
Radeon closed the book, his heart like stone. The sweet reek of pine sap that had once calmed him now lay thin and wrong in the air.
"Need strength. Fast."
Leaving a sect was no simple parting of ways. Each disciple was a strategic asset nurtured over years.
They had to believe he was maimed beyond saving, or gone for good.
Radeon jogged from board to board, reading each posting without meeting a single eye.
Then he saw it. A mission for men who did not plan to come back.
(Publish the success in the trade cities. Bring glory to our name. Commissioned by Feather Sword School and Yew Sigil School. Overseen by Skyflight Court.)
Radeon plucked the parchment free and laid it gently on the abbot's table.
"Elder, I'll take this," he said.
The abbot studied him. The old man's sunken eyes held no malice, only a deep and tired concern.
A senior brother, his face tight with worry, snatched the sheet from Radeon's hand.
"Rai, have you lost your wits? This is folly. Are you so blind you cannot see how unclear their command is? Look at it."
Radeon cupped his hand in respect. His eyes dropped to the grass mat. He did not dare meet the man's gaze.
"Senior, this disciple seeks a chance to grow," he said. "With such thin talent, I may never see the Cornerstone Setting stage in this life."
It wasn't a lie. He had seen hundreds of scholastic sects, and whenever their coffers swelled with gold, rot always followed close behind.
This place felt different. Too poor. Too honest.
"Rai, the true path is long and hard, yet we are given only one life to walk it," the abbot said softly.
Radeon bowed. He did not step back.
Seeing the firmness in the young man's gaze, the abbot pressed his seal to the scroll and slid it toward Radeon.
"Abbot, may I keep the mission parchment?"
"You already have the request scroll, do you not?"
"I'd still like to keep it. Paper's worth its weight in gold."
Knowing the worth of such things, the elder handed it over without another word and watched Radeon as he went down the mountain.