Radeon's consciousness began like a blade being set into a hilt.
The misfortune crystal and the living wood around it started to spin him a body on their own.
Veins first, then muscle, then bone, eager in their craft.
Radeon halted it. He took the reins, qi pressed in on him from every direction. He did not let it rush. He drew.
For veins, he refused the thin human lines the world expected. He reached for mory and for instinct, and he stole the pattern of the sturdiest beasts he had ever bled.
Thick channels that would not collapse under strain. Vessels that could take heat and cold and still carry life.
Muscle ca next. He did not choose strength alone, and he did not choose speed alone. Both had betrayed him before, each in its own way.
He balanced them and paid extra for flexibility, laying each strand longer and more resilient, like braided cord that could stretch without snapping.
Then bone. He did not accept what the crystal and wood offered. He wove each piece himself, fitting them together as if he were making a cage ant to hold a storm.
He thickened what mattered. He reinforced what would take impact. He built his fra so it would not fragnt even if shattered.
After that ca the ridians, the hidden roads where power flowed.
Radeon opened them wide. Then wider. He invited the elents in, all of them, because he had learned what it ant to climb with half a sky missing.
The basic five ca first, familiar as old bruises. Then the others followed, unwanted by cautious n and forbidden by proud sects.
Darkness and light. Wind that cut. Thunder that burned. Ice that stole warmth and left clean silence behind.
None was unwelco. At the early stages, he would cultivate like a cripple compared to those who specialized. He knew that. He accepted it.
He had already lived through the agony of ascending while lacking what the later realms demanded.
Radeon was no fool. He would not make the sa mistake twice.
His eyes were last.
The crystalline brain the Heavenly Dao had forced on him sat cold and sharp behind his thoughts, a gift given for the wrong reason.
It did not only let him see farther. It made him think faster. So fast he could feel monts stretch, as if ti itself hesitated to keep up with him.
And he did one more thing. Sothing an. Sothing necessary. He integrated the lingering curse of heaven into his bones.
Not the whole weight of it, not the part that would chew him hollow.
Just enough of the mark, enough of the taste, that if anyone tried to divine him, to read his intention, to offer guidance with hidden hooks, they would find only heaven's own handwriting and lose the thread.
When his sight returned fully, Radeon looked around. Beside him, a flower that held Fay was massive now, nearly two ters tall.
It towered beside him, only a ter shorter than the crystal that was being his womb and prison.
Its petals gave off a faint warmth, and the air around it slled of clean and divine. Radeon could feel the heavens blessing settling into her like embers into dry kindling.
Holy fla and the power of nature. Radeon did not covet it. Not this ti. The blessing did not feel like a coin to steal.
It felt like a mouth. If he reached, he would beco nutrient, and the flower would not even notice the difference.
Above them, the pressure of the Dao began to thin. Heaven was draining. Radeon felt it, the way a storm feels when it runs out of water.
The calculation did not stop, though. It shifted. Heaven chose another source.
Ghostly energy bled into the room, cold and thin, a taste like old coins held too long in the mouth.
It stread toward Fay and sank into the flower's throat. Radeon's focus tightened.
Alarm flickered in him, not fear for himself, but uncertainty. He did not know what Fay would beco with that kind of fuel poured into her fortune.
Still, he believed heaven would not hurt Fay. Not deliberately. The Dao rarely understood harm until after it had done it.
Radeon returned to his work. A week passed. Ti was strange inside the crystal.
He counted it by the rhythm of the qi and the slow, steady knitting of his new body.
When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was Fay.
She was leaning close, trying to peer through the crystal shell as if she could see him inside it.
The sa beauty remained, but her deanor had changed. There was a steadiness to her now.
Heaven had remade her in its own clumsy kindness, and Radeon did not frown upon the result.
Qi swirled around her like a veil that moved even when the air was still.
Now Radeon finished the last task, he absorbed the final essence of the crystal.
The large dark obsidian that had held him began to pale. Black went to gray. Gray went to a web of fractures.
The cracks crawled over it like frost over a pond. Then the shell broke, and Radeon stepped out into the air.
White hair fell long over his shoulders. Gray pupils caught the dim light and held it.
His face was chiseled, too composed, the kind of calm that made n reach for weapons.
Fay's eyes widened. Shock hit her like a slap. She looked him up and down, assessing the new shape he wore.
Radeon did not let it touch him. He thought of her as a child now, not in years, but in what she still did not understand.
He took his cloak and covered himself without hurry, then he turned toward the mouth of the seclusion abode.
He would not delay. The world outside would already be shifting to account for what he had done.
Fay moved first. She stepped into his path and blocked the way. Her posture held resolve.
"I beg you to accept as your disciple," Fay said. "It is shaless of , a re mortal, to make such a request. Yet I cannot let this chance pass."
She lowered herself to her knees and pressed her forehead to the stone floor.
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