Radeon did not let instinct tug his limbs into motion. He slipped instead toward a dead corner where a man had to turn his head to find you.
He made himself small. He made himself ordinary. In a place like this, the loudest sin was to be noticed.
Then the omen came on soft soles. Footsteps where footsteps had no right to be.
Light leather squeaked against the floor, thin and wrong, like a joke told at a funeral.
Radeon did not need to look to know who dared it.
Jekyll. The man drifted in with a sadist's ease, squinting as he swept the room, as if he were counting weaknesses instead of faces.
A few of the faithful stiffened, mouths parting for complaint, but the smile caught them and closed them again.
They swallowed their words. Their brows knotted. Their curses stayed locked behind teeth.
Then a gaze found Radeon. It did not fall on him so much as press through him, deliberate as a hand sliding along ribs.
The spiritual pressure was intimate, almost tender, and it made his skin want to crawl.
Radeon kept his eyes closed. If he reacted, someone would notice. If someone noticed, questions would bloom.
From questions came suspicion. Suspicion became the small, satisfying shape of a conclusion in Jekyll's mind.
That conclusion would grow into an investigation. Radeon did not like to be cultivated like a problem.
So he feigned an epiphany state. He let his breathing thin until it was almost nothing.
Radeon let his presence loosen and drift, as if the air itself had forgotten him, as if heaven might lean down and claim its stray scrap.
Jekyll's eyebrows lifted. His slitted eyes opened a little wider in surprise.
Giovanni was not forbidden to go to this place of cultivation, no, but climbing it without a foothold was a different kind of statement.
Talent, then. Something to buy early. Jekyll formed hand seals where he stood, casual as a man straightening his sleeves.
A pulse answered in his right hand. Radeon felt it at once, a smoothness sliding into his veins.
His blood flow became regulated, thoughts suddenly clearer, edges honed. A blessing, small and precise.
Inside, Radeon almost spat a curse. He knew that trick. A master's qi, offered like kindness, would guide a disciple toward a path.
It would also give the master a thread to tug whenever he wished. Jekyll could find him by that thread.
Jekyll could show up unannounced whenever he wished. Radeon did not want that. Nobody would.
Radeon stayed quiet and let the borrowed ease settle without gratitude. He took what was given and would give nothing back.
For now, he would cultivate in silence, grind himself forward to late stage, to peak of cornerstone setting if fate allowed.
Within two days of cultivation, thirst came first. Hunger followed, patient as a creditor.
Radeon could call himself a cultivator and mean it, but he had not reached gilded core.
His body still lived by small sustenance like water and food.
He rose without hurry and sent a thread of qi down into his boots. Each step was there and not there, a suppressed footfall, a denial of sound.
Radeon swept his vision across the cultivation chamber. He told himself he was staring at no one.
He was only checking the corners, the pillars, the thin spaces where a man could stand and pretend he belonged there.
Radeon was looking for Jekyll. To see if that smile still had teeth. To see if those squinted eyes were aimed his way.
If Jekyll was watching, Radeon wanted his mind already braced for it. A thought prepared was a thought that did not flinch.
He found him. Jekyll sat at ease, legs crossed, posture loose in the way of men who never expect to be struck.
Blood rotated through his body in slow, obedient cycles, visible to an untrained eye.
There was no hunt in him now. No hand seals forming. No gaze pressing like fingers.
Only that controlled circulation, that practiced serenity, like a blade sheathed but kept close.
Radeon let the sight settle, and with it a small loosening in his chest.
'Jekyll's the kind of man you watch. I'd rather not end up on his list. Not for a minute. My gut says he's sitting on secrets. When I've got some strength back, I'll keep him close.'
He slipped out from behind the crimson waterfall without haste, without the tightness of a man fleeing.
At the tilted wall, Radeon did not bother with needles. He laid his palm to the stone and found its cool seam.
Radeon let himself slide down, cut through the corridors toward the living quarters, then slipped into the cave that was his.
Inside, he drew one deep breath and took the spare sword Giovanni kept.
Radeon held the sword by the tip and began to carve.
The runes were not Eldritch. Not the crooked, hungry script that left the mind feeling watched.
These were of the Dao. Clean lines. Patient geometry. The first settled into the blade and the air itself seemed to exhale.
A serene hush pooled around the steel, the kind that made a man lower his voice without knowing why.
He was building a ritual call, a knock on heaven's door. Heaven did not answer for free.
It demanded payment, and it liked to be paid in flesh, in blood, and would even take the senses.
Radeon bared his arm and etched twenty three runes that meant sacrifice.
Each cut was measured, each curve exact.
When the last line closed, he took thumb sized middle grade spirit stones and pressed them into the carvings one by one.
The stones sat there like pale teeth, their purpose simple. Sincerity.
An offering with weight behind it. More than half his current treasure, surrendered without ceremony.
He told himself it would buy an advantage. He did not let himself believe it too much.
Then he channeled qi through his left eye. Another engraving, finer, crueler, meant to trade sight.
A cool ache spread behind the lid, as if the world were already beginning to retreat.
He did not stop there. He sent his qi onward to his tongue and tasted iron as blood warmed his mouth.
As the pain swelled, he swallowed a blood pill from the loot he had taken where the Blood Core had been held.
The pill was old. He could feel it as soon as it dissolved, the vitality inside thin and diluted, like wine cut with water.
Still, it worked. Heat moved through his veins, stubborn and bright enough.
'I need to be careful now. I'm not wasting time doing this twice.'
Radeon began to close the wounds. He guided the vitality carefully, not letting it blur the carvings.
One cut sealed. Then another. Then another. Skin knit back together around deliberate damage.
When it was done, he was left marked. Arm, eye, tongue. Not wounds now, but brands, artistic in their cruelty.
The proof of a bargain in progress, and the reminder that heaven heard best when a man bled loud enough.