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 memory 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 came 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 meant to hold a storm.

He thickened what mattered. He reinforced what would take impact. He built his frame so it would not fragment even if shattered.

After that came the meridians, the hidden roads where power flowed.

Radeon opened them wide. Then wider. He invited the elements in, all of them, because he had learned what it meant to climb with half a sky missing.

The basic five came first, familiar as old bruises. Then the others followed, unwanted by cautious men 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 unwelcome. 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 same 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 moments stretch, as if time itself hesitated to keep up with him.

And he did one more thing. Something mean. Something 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 meters tall.

It towered beside him, only a meter shorter than the crystal that was being his womb and prison.

Its petals gave off a faint warmth, and the air around it smelled of clean and divine. Radeon could feel the heavens blessing settling into her like embers into dry kindling.

Holy flame and the power of nature. Radeon did not covet it. Not this time. The blessing did not feel like a coin to steal.

It felt like a mouth. If he reached, he would become 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 streamed 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 become 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. Time 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 same beauty remained, but her demeanor 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 men 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 me as your disciple," Fay said. "It is shameless of me, a mere 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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