Radeon hung above the blood pool and went still. The ripple of the cracking sound was too thin for mortal ears, yet the cleaners below were cultivators.

Weak ones, yes, but years of scrubbing this place had sharpened their senses. Any stray noise here would itch at them.

"Hear that crack? Which one of you little whelps is breaking things this time?" the eldest errand boy snapped, eyes narrowing.

Their silent hierarchy within the cleaning crew was clear, he was the one calling the shots.

"Senior, nothing's broken here," the nearer boy said quickly.

"Same here, senior cleaner. All in order," chimed in another, eager to agree.

Radeon slipped to the back the moment roll call began. The man he had knocked asleep lay where he had left him.

If that name went unanswered, suspicion would bloom.

He crouched and pressed two fingers to the man's throat.

His qi slipped into slack flesh, tracing cords and tongue, mapping how sound should rise.

In his mind the answer formed, the voice this man would use when he was called.

"Senior... it was me," Radeon said, forcing his voice to sound strained. "The coal wasn't finished. It went soft and collapsed on its own."

Someone owned the blame for the oddity and the eldest cleaner gave a short harumph, pleased enough.

He went back to worrying his half spent pipe, smoke curling around his jaw as if nothing more was wrong.

While their attention sagged, Radeon was already slipping toward the blood pool's core array, fingers fishing materials from his bag as he swung through the cavernous ceiling.

He did not start at once. He could shape arrays a hundred times more complex than the crude thing before him, but time was not on his side tonight.

'Three command runes. Five minutes. Best play is a synergistic rune, non-invasive.'

The stolen camp brush drank the copper ink. Radeon dragged the bristles slow along the rim of the pot, not letting a single drop escape.

His qi lifted the lid like core array and drew a tight new rune just behind the main pattern so it faced the yellow solution.

The ink gleamed and burned its mark fast, settling into the alabaster stone.

That new runes had a simple task, harden the pooled blood into a seed that would drink the pit dry in three days.

'Three days. Enough for the siege to cover them in noise. The righteous cultivators should be close.'

He was already planning his return, gambling that the chaos outside the walls would be loud enough to hide this quiet theft.

'That'll do.'

As soon as the last stroke set, the array shivered and a new vortex stirred at its center.

Radeon spotted it at once. A dot no larger than a grain of sand hung above the lines and turned slowly in the still air.

He slid the array core back where it belonged and locked it in place.

Then Radeon gathered the congealed blood piece by piece, patting it back along the carved channels until every clot and smear looked the same as before.

To any crew sent in for an emergency check, nothing here would seem touched at all.

When he reached the trapdoor that led back to the alchemic room, he reminded himself this was not the time to stir trouble.

He did not want the whole cult snapping to high alert. So he chose the quiet path. He slapped the man at the base of the neck.

The cultist jolted and blinked, rousing as if from a heavy stupor.

"Disappear."

The youngest cleaner blinked and scrubbed at his eyes as his vision cleared.

Radeon was already thinning into nothing in front of him, edges blurring like heat over stone.

Just before he vanished, Radeon gave him a thin, sinister smile that sent a shiver rattling through the boy.

"Ghost! There's a ghost, Senior, help me!" the youngest boy cried.

The gilded core cultists patrolling in the distance paused. They did not let talk of disturbances pass so easily.

A tide of spiritual sense rushed out from them and swept through the corridor.

The air turned thick and heavy, as if every breath now belonged to someone else.

By then Radeon was already well beyond its reach.

Finding nothing out of place, they clicked their tongues and scoffed.

To them it was only a junior with a weak Dao heart, spooked by his own shadow and crying about ghosts.

They laughed it off and traded low jokes at his expense as they moved on.

"Behind you, boy. Buddha's right at your back," one of the gilded core hissed.

"Aye, the Celestial Emperor's haunting you, lad," another gilded cultist cackled. "Come to grant you a peerless inheritance, he has."

The eldest of the errand boys wore a mask of anger. He had only just gotten his pipe lit when another commotion rolled through the corridor.

Cursing under his breath, he strode toward the alchemic room where the youngest was still shouting himself hoarse.

He hit the door hard enough to make it jump in its frame and stormed inside.

What he saw stopped him. The boy's face was flushed an unhealthy pink, eyes bloodshot and wild. His fingers were locked tight around a crushed sprig of some herb.

Without ceremony the eldest cleaner cracked him across the cheek, then again, until the hysteria snapped and the boy toppled to the floor in a dazed heap.

While tempers and rumors churned in that cramped room, Radeon was already slipping away, bound for the old quarters where Giovanni had stayed.

'What's worth all this on a dead peak with thin qi? Maybe something underneath. Something fed with blood.'

Out of sight of everyone, he slowly shed the old skin of the sky sailor, letting his features smooth back into the youthful face the cult knew as Giovanni.

He meant to learn what this siege was truly for and what kind of treasure could drag a great sect into such a reckless mobilization.

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