Around them, the forest rose in strange shapes, trunks twisting upward until they vanished into the murk above.
Underfoot, the forest floor was soft with old needles and damp loam that yielded beneath Fay and Radeon's boots.
Twilight pressed a starless sky down on them, a dim lid without a point of light.
The wood held its breath. All chirps and chimes of animals had fallen silent.
"Make no sound." Radeon's voice slid through the soundless transmission.
He dragged Fay into the tight, broken hull, the darkness further obscuring their figures.
He handed her an opaque, yellowish orb, faint veins visible through the stretched membrane.
Fay's eyes widened, shock and confusion written plain across her face.
"Pig intestines. Find the opening, blow them full, and they'll keep you floating in that river."
Fay gripped his sleeve. Her eyes watered, her lips pressed tight, holding back words she wasn't allowed to say.
She wanted to tell him the treasure was enough, and ask more about his plan.
He said he trusted her, yet she could feel the weight of what he kept back hanging between them.
"Fay. Check it first. We don't have time."
Her fingers worked the ball until they found the opening. She kept her face still and blew until it swelled.
Radeon let the air out again and pressed it back into her hands.
"Don't cry." She wiped at her tears. "We'll meet on the banks before the Pale Cataclysms. Hide well. Stay alive. I'll find you."
Fay had not wasted her hours in the Everwritten Archivists Court.
She knew the Pale Cataclysms, an ancient battlefield farther north, where those of old had fought beings from beyond the stars.
"You go first. They're here already." Radeon's voice stayed low, but the edge was sharp.
"Disappear," she murmured.
He squeezed her shoulders once, a brief promise that he was there, then walked her a few steps into the dark.
"Go," he said.
Fay swallowed her sniffle and ground her teeth as she ran. Fear gnawed at her with every step toward what waited ahead.
She looked back one more time, but he was no longer there.
Maybe that was his goodbye. Just enough to keep her heart from breaking.
The wind died against his skin, leaving the air oddly bare.
Radeon shaded his eyes and saw them at last, a loose scatter of bodies spread across the field, too far apart to be called a crowd.
Something hissed past his eye, close enough to stir his hair.
A dagger tore through his periphery, riding its own small gust as it streaked for the man with the spear.
The spearman snapped his weapon up in a short, hard thrust.
Metal met metal, and the knife skipped aside, its path knocked askew.
It hit the ground and blew it open, leaving a crater the size of a head. Its power was at least the spearman's equal.
"Show yourself!" the spear master barked. "Only rats skulk and hide."
Radeon kept his eyes on the spear wielder. The man stood still at the center of the wrecked earth.
Nothing else moved around him, not a cloak, not a blade.
'Almost ten at Cornerstone Setting, here to hook the big share. Thirty at Breath Tempering, mostly green or chasing fortune.'
Radeon had already chosen his side. He would not let them form up.
Among the scattered fighters, he picked the strongest of those with tempered breaths and fixed him in his sights.
His legs carried him in measured strides, never wasting a step. He moved like a man walking a pattern only he could see.
Internal energy pulled tight inside him until it felt like a hundred needles pressing against his skin.
A spruce clawed high above the others. Radeon ran for it, boots biting silently into the rough bark as he climbed.
The trunk didn't shudder under his weight. His breath came short and sharp in his ears.
At the top, he gathered himself and dropped. The man below never looked up.
Needles tore from Radeon and found their marks.
Ears. Throat. Eyes. Lungs. Heart. Each point struck with merciless precision.
Radeon was not about to let the man make a sound.
The Hemal Tithe Cultists missed little. When their companion gave a small, unnatural jerk, three hooded heads turned at once.
His breath hitched, his stance went slack, and a murmur rippled through their line. Something was wrong with him.
Radeon made the man's hand drift in an idle wave and shook his head, as if dismissing a minor flaw, then turned to leave.
He controlled every twitch of muscle, one measured step at a time.
Behind him, the man still lived. Horror froze on his face.
His eyes strained in their sockets but did not dart where they wished.
His lips worked without sound. Color leeched from his skin as his qi thinned, his vitality draining by slow degrees.
Radeon walked on and passed a robed peer the others treated with careful respect.
He felt the dying man's gaze latch on to the senior like a hook.
A last wild hope trapped behind eyes that could not move.
"Slow down. Where do you think you're going?"
Hope flickered in the man. Radeon felt the surge as the qi in that ruined body rallied and climbed for the throat.
The fool shoved everything into it. A shout. A plea. Anything.
But only a warped sneer came out.
The sound died half born as Radeon caught the rising breath and tore it apart.
He spliced the man's flow and scattered it, pulling the loose power into himself.
Panic cracked what was left of the man's mind.
Radeon sent a sharp, cold pulse into him, a sting behind the eyes, keeping him from slipping into shock.
"My bones say my breakthrough isn't here, Senior," Radeon said, using the puppeteered man's tongue.
The older peer eyed the stricken man with doubt, then brushed it off as nothing more than an off day.
For the other twenty-nine cultists, their eyes only burned hotter. A chance to go in first.
By the time the doubtful one made it to the front, his body was already half drained by Radeon.
His face had hollowed, his marrow half drunk.
With the flesh shutting down, Radeon reached into the conscious part of the man's mind.
Memories flowed through him with ease. His first day in the cult, his first murder, his first loss, his first woman.
The ivory of the bones turned light and empty. No marrow, no strength, not even dust left inside.
The man's skin sagged, then clung to Radeon, not slipping away but sinking into him in a slow, sick crawl until it became his own.
The soul followed, dragged out of the husk and folded into him as nourishment.
Radeon flexed his fingers, then clenched and unclenched his hand around the sword hilt.
When he stepped back toward the battlefield, he carried a new weight in his head.
His name, now, was Giovanni.