Radeon stared at the five wraiths until their shifting stilled under his gaze. He did not look at them like prey or like servants.
He understood the fear crawling through them. It was not fear of dying. They were already dead in every way that mattered.
It was fear of existing in the sa room as sothing that should not exist at all.
Beings that could truly warp reality did not flinch at such presence.
Anything beneath that level felt the mind buckle, the way a mortal might break after watching a cultivator turn mountain and sea upside down.
Not because of pain. Because the scene had no place to fit inside a sane skull.
Radeon did not wait for them to recover. He turned to Calyx first.
"You’ve been outside the realm?"
"Yes," Calyx answered. No flourish. No pride.
He looked afraid that a single extra word might spill sothing he could not put back.
"Where did you go?" Radeon asked. "What kind of power ruled that realm?"
"Technological Realm," Calyx said.
Oisin and the others did not understand the phrase, not fully. They had not reached what Calyx had.
They listened anyway, the way you listen to a threat you cannot yet na.
Radeon’s voice stayed steady.
"Did you see the sea of stars?"
The mont the question landed, Calyx turned thin. Not taphor. His outline wavered as if so unseen hand had started erasing him from the world.
The air tightened. The clouds above the pavilion darkened. Thunder rolled, low and sick. Lightning did not strike down.
It lanced upward into the sky, as if heaven itself was trying to pin sothing in place, shielding its last fragile hope, its last chance to recover.
Oisin, Elsin, Maeron, and Ewan had grown up on myths that called stars lies.
Five thousand years had taught them to laugh at the idea of a sea above.
Now they stood with solemn eyes and no laughter at all.
Calyx looked at them and sothing strange softened his face. It was not pity. It was fortune.
They did not carry what he carried. They were still light enough to run. Silence held. Radeon lifted three fingers.
"I can give you three secrets," he said. "First one costs ten thousand years of service."
"Absurd. Master Radeon, surely that is rather too much to ask?" Oisin snapped.
The four glanced at Calyx. He already understood the shape of the bargain. He did not look pleased. He looked resolved.
"Would it suffice if the cost were mine alone?" Calyx asked. "A hundred thousand years, very well. I will bear it."
Radeon shook his head. His expression did not change, but the refusal was absolute.
He was setting rules, not bartering. He wanted loyalty with a leash, not loyalty that could be talked out of later.
Oisin, Elsin, Maeron, and Ewan felt the weight of it then. If Calyx was willing to chain himself for knowledge, and Radeon still demanded more, then the secret had value that could be asured in ten thousand years of five ghosts.
What’s more, it confird their theory that Radeon had lived long enough to learn the realm’s secrets. Maybe even beyond.
They looked at one another. Then, one by one, they nodded.
With that consent, sothing in the system inside them woke. It was Radeon’s soul, embedding deep within them now.
Not to weaken them, but to make them cards of his own. He let blood bead and fall onto their tongues.
Now. If he perished, he could leech through them and be born through them. Radeon would cross any line for safety.
He still needed answers about the Outworld Blight that had co from beyond the cosmos.
This was only the first step, a baby step made with chained ghosts and borrowed servitude.
Radeon turned his hand toward the crystal.
"The secret is this," he said. "It was made here. In this realm."
Calyx’s heart shattered without warning. No blade touched him. No aura crushed him.
The words alone split sothing inside his chest. mories flooded in, too fast and too bright.
A battlefield that spanned horizons. Millions of combatants from six realms.
All immortals. All dying anyway, torn apart by sothing above them.
Then the mory shattered like glass, and what was left was only black.
Radeon saw it through the system’s gaze, the images skimming across Calyx’s mind.
They had paid. This much he could allow. He remained steady, untouched by the corrosive edge of the secret.
Secrets could not poison him unless they rose to the level of the Outworld Blight itself.
Calyx wailed. The sound was not human. It filled the pavilion and made the beams tremble. The air shook like a drum skin.
Even beyond the pavilion, in Cairnlight Barterhold, the disguised ghosts who worked the stalls and counted the coin looked up as if they had been struck.
Tears gathered in eyes that had forgotten how to weep. Grief ca first, thick and helpless. Then anger. Then the hollow bite of helplessness.
Radeon could already tell what had broken loose inside Calyx. The mory had not simply returned.
It had been opened by triggering the right words, a seal peeled back for the space of a tenth of a breath.
In that flash, a single detail snagged Radeon’s attention. The weapon in Calyx’s hands.
It was not a simple immortal blade. It carried the weight of a peerless talent, the sort of armant that did not end up in anyone’s grip by accident.
Radeon wanted to ask where it was now, who had forged it, what it had cost.
He held the question back. Not yet. Not while the pavilion still shook with grief.
When the wailing finally thinned into ragged silence, Radeon stared at Calyx.
Calyx t that stare and forced his breath into order. He understood the shape of the road in front of him.
If he wanted vengeance on enemies from beyond, if he wanted even a chance to strike upward at what had crushed six realms, then Radeon was not just useful. He was a key.
"Please continue," Calyx said.
Radeon gave a small nod. He chose his next words with care, setting them down like stones over a pit.
"They’re still making the seeds," he said. "Right now. In our ti."
A beat passed. The pavilion felt colder.
"The good news," Radeon said, "is a large organization kept it going, right up to today."
Oisin’s hands clenched. Elsin’s jaw tightened until it creaked. Maeron’s eyes sharpened, and Ewan’s shoulders rose as if bracing for impact.
Even Calyx, who had already been broken open once, felt sothing boil up from deep inside. Fighting spirit.
"I divined it," he said. "In a few days, one of them will co here."
Radeon pointed upward. He smiled, then shook his head, a gesture that carried a warning without needing words.
Calyx and the others understood at once.
The clouds above the pavilion had been boiling for half an incense worth now, dark mass rolling over dark mass, spreading until it blanketed a dozen of miles.
Thunder crawled through it like sothing alive. The pressure pressed at the skin, at the teeth, at the marrow.
Radeon asured it with the ease of long habit. For now it was still within the bounds of the passable.
A tribulation fit for a gilded core, common enough that most would glance once and keep walking.
But if it swelled further, if it climbed beyond what the world considered ordinary, eyes would turn. Curiosity would follow.
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