As soon as Fay squeezed into the narrow passage, Radeon moved.

Threads snapped from his fingers and shot down the throat of the corridor.

They did not stop at stone. They sewed through it. Filaments bit into rock and vanished, then reappeared in tight angles, crossing and recrossing until the passage became an intricate maze of traps.

One layer. Five. Ten. Twenty. His chant held steady while his hands worked. When he finished, his spools were bare.

"Hold the entrance," he sent to Fay through silent qi. "I'll look around."

Fay nodded and watched Radeon. She braced for contempt, for the familiar disdain, for the cold look that made her small.

It did not come. His face was still hard, still his, but the edge of disgust was not there. Not now.

The absence of it loosened something in her chest. Relief came first, then guilt for feeling it.

She took a stance. Teal soul flame licked at her fingertips, ready to erupt.

Radeon drew out a spirit stone and sparked its energy. A small clean light flared in his palm, temporary, but enough to show what the dark had been hiding.

A small altar. Iron chains hung in tangles. Heavy wooden pillories were stacked and piled on both sides, a tall mound, as if a jail had been emptied into a shrine.

In the center sat a huge bone carved from some large animal, turned into both table and arch.

The curves of it suggested ribs. The pale surface let Radeon knew its antiquity.

And at the heart of it, a broken statue. Radeon stepped toward it. The Preta arrived before he could touch stone.

A hiss. The hungry ghost shoved itself into the passage mouth and began to worry at the threads, untangling them with frantic fingers and tongue, trying to open a way in.

Radeon did not let it. He dashed forward, got within range, and ran his devouring art.

He drew at the ghost's essence in a hard pull. The Preta hissed louder, pain and outrage twisting its face.

It changed tactics. It began to pummel the side walls, fist after fist, trying to break another entrance into the passage and bypass his maze.

Radeon measured the rhythm of the blows. He knew it would take time.

He ran back to the altar and dropped to the broken statue, light held low.

His eyes searched cracks and missing pieces, reading damage and wear.

Immortal essence clung to it still, thin as old perfume. But something had eaten it.

Not the hungry ghost. Not any denizen native to the six realms.

Eldritch essence. A wrongness that did not belong in air or stone. Something you only saw in the void.

The Preta's fists boomed behind him, shaking dust loose from the ceiling. Fay heard the wall groaning as it gave way by inches.

She kept her stance, flames trembling, eyes flicking between the thread maze and Radeon's back.

Radeon reached down. A fallen head lay on the ground, broken clean at the neck. His hand glowed faintly as he touched it.

The surface was corroded, not chipped. The face looked eaten by nothing.

He fit the head to the body in his mind, turning it once, twice, and recognition struck.

White Impertinence. A temple of fortune, here in the Realm of Ghosts. Not a shrine that should exist near human soil.

These stones did not belong in the human realm. Their presence was a message. This Samsara was breaking apart.

Just to make sure, he formed a phantom sword from his energy and drove the point at the statue, testing.

The blade's piercing force could have punched through a meter of steel. The statue did not flinch.

Behind him, the Preta's pounding gained ground. A quarter of the wall was already broken, cracks webbing outward like lightning.

"Master," Fay called, her voice tight. "Are we to depart now?"

Her flames danced at her fingertips, begging to be thrown.

Radeon did not answer. He picked up the fallen head and set it back where it belonged.

The moment it clicked into place, the Preta stopped.

Silence dropped hard.

The hungry ghost stared, wet eyeballs fixed on Radeon's hands. Hunger held it still like a leash.

Radeon met the creature's gaze and understood. The Preta had encountered an eldritch influence before.

It knew the taste of it. It feared it, and it wanted it, and it did not know which mattered more.

Radeon knew what the other side was trying to do.

Existence erasure.

Not killing. Replacing. A method used to swap a denizen of a civilization with a hivemind, sliding past the notice of ordinary consciousness until the world accepted the new shape as if it had always been there.

Radeon had employed such methods during invasions, back when he took destroyed worlds and realms at the height of the cosmic war.

It gave him advantages that felt like cheating. That was why he liked it.

Radeon pushed the memory down and forced his eyes back to the altar.

If there was an invasion, there was always a back up plan. Old monsters rarely left empty handed.

Some left inheritances out of spite, gifts meant to rot the descendants of their enemies.

And a conflict of this scale would not end with a clean victory or a clean retreat.

He lowered the spirit light and leaned closer to the statue's base.

Behind its feet, half hidden by shadow and bone dust, a copper bowl was embedded in the stone.

At the statue's feet sat a copper bowl. Its shimmer was old, dulled to amber, yet the usual green corrosion had not eaten it.

That absence was its own kind of mark. It was an artifact. Radeon knew what it was for.

He did not smile, but the thought behind his eyes sharpened all the same.

A plan took shape, cold and practical, and it reached outward beyond this cavern.

It involved the people of the Ironbuck Mines. He retreated a step from the shrine, mind moving fast.

That absence was its own kind of mark, an artifact. Radeon knew what it was for.

He did not smile, but something behind his eyes still sharpened.

A plan took shape, cold and practical, and reached outward beyond this cavern.

It involved the people of the Ironbuck Mines. He retreated a step from the shrine, thoughts already counting.

The Preta leaned in without attacking. Its wet eyes brushed so close that one kissed Radeon's cheek, slick as spit. It only watched him breathe.

Fay held her stance, body burning, poised to move at the smallest twitch.

Radeon reached out, touched the monster's eye, and nudged it aside.

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