"Look. Senior Giovanni has woken up," someone yelled.
Men crowded Radeon at once, voices crashing together until he could not tell one greeting from the next.
Giovanni had clout here. He sparred with newer recruits as part of his work, and he served as Jekyll's errand boy besides.
Hands clapped Radeon's shoulders. Faces leaned close. Eyes shone with respect.
Radeon felt what lay beneath it. Admiration. Curiosity. The sharp edge of men who wanted what he had and would bleed for it.
He needed space without sounding like a lord refusing peasants.
"I'd stay for a quick chat," Radeon said, voice steady, "and even spar. But I need to see Master Jekyll first. To thank him."
That was safe. Piety bought him distance. The men did not press.
Before they could drift into awkward silence, Radeon rummaged through his dark cloak and produced a pouch. He tossed it into the nearest hands.
"A hundred spirit stones," he said. "Treat everyone to drinks in the mess hall. It's on me."
The crowd roared approval. Laughter broke out. Shoulders loosened.
They left him in a bright, drunken mood without a single cup poured.
It fit Giovanni too. The youth had never cared for money. He was a crowd pleaser.
Radeon could not afford to break character now. Not here.
As the last man thanked him and turned away, Radeon finally let his gaze range.
Marble veined with rust and bronze lined the wide corridors.
Each carved stone made this place feel under open sky instead of buried underground. His target was close.
For now he needed only to probe for information. Radeon did not yet know what source of vitality he was reaching for.
Radeon passed the guards in pairs and trios, nodding as Giovanni would, neither too humble nor too proud.
Errand boys bowed when they saw him. None smiled too wide. They knew where the boundary lay, and they kept their faces behind it.
Radeon fell in beside them in a way that looked coincidental, but was built by design. Small talk came easily after that.
The day. The weather trapped underground. Aspirations spoken like prayers. Motivations dressed up as duty.
Radeon let Giovanni's mouth do what it always did, blabbing just enough to seem harmless, just enough to keep them comfortable.
Then he sprang the question as if it had only just occurred to him.
"I almost forgot," Radeon said, scratching his head as he looked at one of the boys. "Do you happen to know what time the alchemical rooms are being cleaned?"
The boy blinked, then lowered his voice in the way of men repeating rules they did not make.
"Senior, you may not know this, but that job is for those about to be taken by a master," one of the young cleaners whispered.
"They come in whenever they please. As long as the alchemists are long gone, they go in," the other chimed in.
Radeon kept his face easy, but inside, surprise pricked. Giovanni had not known that.
Even among cultists, worlds existed, and status drew walls thick enough to hide schedules behind them.
Radeon did not let them feel their time was wasted.
He pressed a spirit stone into each errand boy's hand and gave them a ladle of profound soup for the soul.
The sort of lines young men repeated later to sound wise in front of other young men.
They thanked him. They left pleased. The moment their footsteps faded, Radeon changed his route.
He headed for the alchemical rooms. The corridor narrowed into a chamber lined with doors.
At the far end stood two massive steel doors, over five meters tall, built for pill artisans who needed space for grand furnaces and larger mistakes.
Along the sides were nine smaller doors, creaky and rust-rimmed, meant for production work and laxer standards.
Radeon walked the line and brushed his fingers along each surface. Heat leaked through the seams.
His palms measured life and emptiness by warmth, by vibration, by the faint scrape of breath behind metal.
Five of the small rooms were already sweltering. One of the large doors felt occupied.
Giovanni knew which rooms were best and which were worst. Jekyll had forced that knowledge into him. Radeon used it.
He placed himself in front of the worst door. It held a cauldron with a missing leg, a four legged tool made into a cripple.
A room no one wanted unless they had no choice. Radeon glanced down the corridor. No one coming.
He planted his feet on the cold iron of the floor, steadied his breathing, and kept his ears open.
A fire died. A dull clunk followed, the sound of a lid being dropped without care.
Then the wet hiss of water thrown over flame. One of the doors was about to open. Steam sighed through a crack.
Radeon caught the critical detail. Heat and vapor sliding through the hinges would moisten them.
A tiny degree of lubrication. Minuscule. The sort of thing mortals never noticed.
Cultivators did. He moved at once. With his left hand he gathered the vapor droplets with qi, drawing them into trembling beads.
With his other hand he probed the joints, listening for the right tune, the way the metal wanted to sing when it moved.
When he had the measure of it, he fed the droplets into the hinge a tenth of a drop at a time, careful as a man laying poison.
Then he returned his hand to the handle, ready to match the door's sound to what it had always been.
Two screams of rust rose together and blurred into one grating noise. Radeon slipped into the alchemic room on the echo.
A pill maker looked around, eyes exhausted, smoke still in his exhale. Thinking he had heard another door open, he looked again. Nothing.
The alchemist shook his head, telling himself he was hearing things.
Radeon waited behind the door. He did not dare let himself relax. Frail or not, every one of these alchemists was a gilded core expert.
Then he heard leather scraping stone. Footsteps. Drawing closer.