In the Null, where existence did not shine, a fleck of gold drifted alone. Dried black veins could be traced across its microscopic surface.
It was the last shred Radeon had left. Still, nothing in that very dust stirred.
A year. A decade. A century. A millennium. A thousand millennia. Nobody could have said how long it lasted.
Not even Radeon, because Radeon did not have senses anymore.
No touch. No smell. No sight. No sound. Nothing at all.
Only instinct. Good or bad, he could not tell. He simply reacted.
Then one of the black veins twitched.
A tug followed. Not physical. Not even spiritual in the way cultivators described it.
An Eldritch summoning, crooked and unrecognizable.
The runes were wrong. They were not even a true address for him.
Still, it pulled, and Radeon let them because being pulled was better than floating forever.
He followed the drag of it and found the circle. A wish already fulfilled.
Someone had wanted a large leather to become invisible.
The man who had drawn the summoning circle was dead.
Dead for a day. Eyes bulging, face locked in the last moment of seeing something he should not have seen.
The corpse sat slumped beside the chalk and blood, and the air held a sour stink of excrement, the final fear of the man now dead.
For Radeon, it was a chance. He poured himself into the body. Pain slammed into him at once.
Eyes burned as they had been held open too long. Lungs felt stiff and wet, refusing air like stubborn doors.
Radeon ground his teeth and forced a breath through the corpse's throat. A sputtering cough tore out of him.
"Pay. Pay. Pay."
A whisper slid into his ears. An Eldritch, from this universe he was in, calling for the one it believed it had contracted.
Radeon did not answer. The corpse he had seized felt ready to fall apart.
Every breath was borrowed. Every heartbeat was a threat.
He dropped to his knees and began rummaging by instinct, fingers scraping stone.
He found herbs crushed into paste. Chalk dust. A strip of leather.
The leather trembled with a faint vibrating jiggle, and Radeon followed it like a thirsty animal.
It was a waterskin. His hands fumbled until they found the opening.
He tore at it, brought it to his mouth, and gulped down mouthful after mouthful, spilling as much as he swallowed.
The water hit his stomach. Radeon drove two fingers into his throat. Index and middle, hard and deep.
Acid climbed up. He gagged and spat, coughing until his ribs screamed.
Blackened phlegm came up from the lungs in thick clots, and for the first time the body's chest loosened as it remembered what air was.
"Pay. Pay. Pay. Pay. Pay."
The whispering did not stop. It kept pressing, asking for payment, for compliance, for the expected tribute.
Radeon knew he was in a weak position. A stolen corpse. A cave. A hostile summoning. The balance was wrong.
The voice on the other side still did not faze him.
"The one who called you is dead," Radeon said, flat. "You wasted your mark."
Silence. Then the cave drowned in darkness that swallowed even the idea of light.
Bloodshot eyes sprouted across the walls and ceiling like mushrooms after rain, swelling open and fixing on Radeon with raw rage.
Mouths tore into existence between stones, wet and hungry, tasting the air.
Then the Eldritch hesitated. It had expected terror.
It had expected a mortal heart to seize and fail. It saw instead a man who spoke like fear was a rumor.
Radeon lifted his hands slowly, palms out, as if calming an animal.
"You killed the one who summoned you," he said. "Scared him stupid."
The eyes narrowed. The mouths stilled. It was not surprised. It only paused, thinking, as if weighing whether this new situation could still be forced into profit.
"What is it that you need from this body?" Radeon asked.
The Eldritch examined him. It sensed age on him, something old and layered, and it did not look awed.
It looked annoyed. Suspicious. Like a trader realizing the other party knew the numbers too well.
Radeon could read its intent anyway. It wanted to profit.
It wanted to demand a task too arduous, something that would bind him, bleed him, and leave it smiling.
A brief lull settled in the cave. Radeon did not wait for the Eldritch to speak first. He had lived too long to let another creature set the terms.
"How about this," he said. "Make that large leather into two cloaks. I only need three hours of invisibility."
He dug into the dead man's pockets and found spirit stones, smooth and cold.
He tossed them toward the horror, one after another, and the stones vanished into the dark as if swallowed.
"Three spirit stones set as timer each," Radeon added. "Turn me invisible. Blend my heat into the room. Kill the sound I was making."
The Eldritch complied. It shaped the leather without hands, twisting it in midair, pulling seams, folding the material into two cloaks.
For a thing like this, the work was almost mundane.
The leather's absolute obscurity thinned into a lesser darkness as the creature swallowed back most of the power it had put into it.
"Here. Mark me." He offered his wrist. "I'd rather pay you later than owe you."
The Eldritch grew bolder when it saw Radeon pay.
"Collateral," it hissed. "A heart. An arm. A hand. Yes. A hand. It's enough."
Radeon did not flinch. He extended his hand.
Pain bit, quick and deep. A brand seared into his wrist, a mark shaped like a sea of blood, eyes, and mouths.
It resembled him. It was pathetically weak by comparison.
Even so, it carried a thin ability to warp reality, and that had its uses in his current state.
Then the Eldritch spoke again, voice rasping from nowhere, as if the cave itself had become its throat.
"Immortality once held. He. She. All the same. A speck. A mote of dust. A grain." The words came broken, hungry. "Give it to me."
Radeon did not argue with the Eldritch being. He had no taste for bargaining with something that might have been born in the void.
It would not want what men wanted. It would not fear what men feared.
Curiosity was the best case. If it decided to swallow the world, let it.
Radeon was no king here. He could cultivate enough to traverse the void, then be on his way to another realm.
He spoke again, his voice even.
"One more thing. Heal this body. Full health. Nothing else." He met its gaze. "In a year, I'll give you what you need."
The cave eyes began to rotate. The Eldritch being was thinking, then it paused.
That darkness flowed around Radeon, slow as oil. It scanned him without hands, without touch.
Then the darkness slid into his mouth. Radeon did not gag. He suppressed the reflex and held still.
The Eldritch moved through him, carefully rearranging what was wrong inside.
Organs settling into new places. His blood tasted like iron and old pennies instead of fishy and stale.
A clip, then the return. Something in his chest was removed, and he felt lighter. Crimson trickled from his lips, warming his chin.
He spat. Something landed with a soft and wet sound. Then it held its shape. A tumor, the size of his whole thumb.
Radeon picked it up between two fingers and rolled it once. He could feel how it had been rooted into the cardiac muscles.
One glance told him it was cancerous. He looked at the darkness exiting his mouth with slight approval, then flicked the tumor aside.