The tunnel swallowed their light in the first three steps. Rock closed in around Radeon's shoulders so tight he felt his heartbeat in the stone. The air smelled of wet clay, cold water slicked the floor under his boots.

"Easy now, one at a time. The walls won't run off," Piero called, slipping in front of him with a grin.

Luca looked back at Radeon, leaning in until their noses almost touched. Radeon caught a blast of his hot, sour breath right in his face.

"We'll be walking in from here for an hour and a half."

Piero tapped the right wall with his bronze ring at every third arch, the quiet rhythm of a man keeping tally instead of praying.

After an hour beneath nothing but wooden beams, with only the soft hiss of their lantern for company, their legs had begun to ache.

"Heads up, boy. Your old master's waddling over. Give him a fine, deep bow," Piero said, meant for Radeon but loud enough that the far-off guard would catch every word.

Along the narrow path they came upon the guard. His hood was lowered and his eyes were shut, as if sleep had taken him on his feet.

"We pay our respects, senior," the three of them said together.

The lantern light brushed his face and found it smooth and untroubled, serene in a place that had no right to be calm.

"Were halfway there now."

Radeon glanced around, then up. Above the man a small hole pierced the stone, a pale circle where he could glimpse clouds sliding past.

With every slow breath the guard drew, a thin draft slipped down into the cave, cool air threading along the narrow path.

Radeon realized the man was feeding the tunnel with outside wind, keeping the way from baking in its own stale heat.

After a while Luca and Piero both drew out cloths and tied them over their faces. Thick wool and linen pressed to mouth and nose.

Whatever waited ahead, they meant to block it out as much as they could.

Radeon pulled one of the spare cloths he had taken from the camp and covered his own face. He gave them a brief nod and they moved on.

Soon the air filled with muffled sounds. Wet, bloody grunts. The slow, deliberate crunch of bone and flesh. The cloth dulled it but could not hide it.

Radeon did not scare easily, yet on either side of him Luca and Piero shivered, their eyes fixed ahead, their minds already recoiling from whatever made those noises.

The stench hit next. Piss and excrement soaked the stone, the reek of bodies that had lost control to terror long before Piero and Luca laid hands on them.

"Eager to start, are you two? Now, now," the cultist in charge said with a crooked smile. "And you've even let our little star in here. What are you up to, Giovanni?"

"Curiosity, nothing more, ser," Radeon said. "I thought I'd look around and see if there was anything here to teach me."

"Aye, you will, sure enough," he said. "No need to dirty your hands. Walk around, have a look. The job's filthy, but you won't walk off at a loss."

Piero and Luca looked to the man in charge, fear shining plain in their eyes. One cold nod from him was all it took.

They moved to the nearest bodies and began to haul them, men and women first, then children and the old, every one of them carrying the faint weight of cultivation.

The work had the same blunt routine as a slaughterhouse, hundreds of bodies drained with the same mundanity as farm cows after the knife.

Bones had already been broken. Limbs hung at wrong angles. Necks were twisted, jaws slack and ruined so no scream could rise, yet their eyes remained clear and aware, spiritual roots still clinging to life deep inside them.

The man's assistant moved down the line with practiced ease.

He pried slack jaws open and shoved in mouthfuls of pills, fingers working fast, then tipped water past cracked lips to force it all down.

One body after another. No pause. No prayer.

A quiet factory of horror, stripping living cultivators of honor, dignity, and their very being.

'This blood's going somewhere. Either a cauldron for a peerless brew, or an artifact that drinks it.'

Radeon tapped one of the cultivators on the shoulder. The man barely stirred. His body looked carved from stone.

Thick cords of muscle swelled along his arms and chest, legs packed tight with veined strength that spoke of long years on the training floor.

His eyes ruined it. They floated, unfocused, dull as river silt. Whatever lived behind them had been scraped out.

Radeon had seen that look before. The slack gaze of a soul that had been gouged out again and again.

He moved back to the assistant's bucket and plucked one of the pills from the ladle. It was a dull gray thing that left a chalk smear on his fingertips.

Radeon lifted it to his nose and drew in the scent. Bitter herbs. Wheat essence. Nothing of the shredding cold that came with soul killers.

'Not the pills' he thought. 'Something else broke them first.'

Radeon moved to the woman they had just fixed into the array. The first thing he saw was her eyes.

Wide and bloodshot. Veins crawled across her skin, swelling along her neck and arms as if her whole body strained to scream.

No sound left her throat, yet anyone could see she drowned in pain.

'Something's wrong. Forced blood essence extraction didn't need to hurt. Not like this. The array was built to do the tormenting.'

He laid his fingers on the carved lines near her feet. A soft warmth rose through his skin, seeping into his chest until a faint cheerfulness tugged at the corners of his mood.

Radeon pulled back and moved to the next body. A man who glared at him with raw hatred.

When Radeon touched the array on the man's side, the warmth changed. It burned hotter, thick and sweltering, like swallowing a mouthful of strong liquor.

'Blood and soul extraction arrays. So they do know soul cultivation.'

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