Radeon watched her work. Flickers of flames moved first, teal and holy, threading through her like ribboned fire.

Nature followed, green yet sparce. Then the ghostly energy came, cold, thick, and dead. Unliving unlike yin energy.

All of it became qi in Fay, and she took it in with unsettling ease. Too easily.

Fay slipped toward immersion, toward that sweet blind place where power feels like a promise and nothing else matters.

The next strand of qi was already curling toward her dantian, eager to settle, eager to become permanent.

Radeon reached out and stopped it. He pulled her back with a touch and a word.

The moment Fay's focus wavered, he deflated the qi that was about to enter her dantian.

The gathered power thinned under his control, breaking apart like mist under a strong wind.

The room felt emptier at once. Fay blinked, startled, and looked at him.

Excitement still flickered in her eyes, held down by discipline she was forcing into place.

She did not speak, but her expression demanded it. What is wrong? Why stop her now?

"Cultivation's balance. You've only forced a thin nature element, so you can't just pack yourself with ghost energy. Your body needs something stable to hold it." Radeon said it patiently.

Fay's gaze darted past him. Around the edge of his cloak she saw a small pile of stones, each a different color.

Some dull as river pebbles. Some bright enough to catch the cave light and throw it back.

They sat there as if Radeon had been sorting them by instinct, or by a rule she did not yet know.

Fay looked up at him with pleading eyes, hoping to coax some resources out of Radeon.

It did not move his heart even a fraction.

Radeon's face stayed calm. His eyes stayed gray and measured. Whatever he felt, he did not spend it on pity.

"These are mine. I need some cultivation first." Radeon said, then mimicked Fay's voice. "Senior. We don't need that much treasure," he teased.

Fay's face flushed again, she had not spoken aloud. She had only thought it. Was she that easy to read?

Fay forced herself to breathe, then let a smile return, small and careful.

This was a side of Radeon she had never seen.

He looked unburdened, almost relaxed, as if the reconstruction had taken a weight off his shoulders and not merely replaced his skin.

"Go ask the elf outside. He might hand you some." Radeon half-joked, half serious.

Fay did not think it through. She turned toward the exit and took a step.

Radeon's hand caught her before she could take a second.

"What, you trying to barter skin now? With the lichkin?" Radeon's voice stayed flat as he shoved her robe up to cover her chest. "Get dressed."

Fay gathered her clothes with shaking hands and dressed in a hurry.

She drew a deep breath, then another, trying to make room inside her chest for everything that had happened.

She could cultivate. Radeon had become her master. They were inside a sect that felt older than stories.

It should have been enough to make anyone dizzy. It was enough to make her mind cloudy.

Still, she knew shame. She sat, took a stick of coal and a thin pen, and began to write.

A note of debt. She asked for the largest amount she dared and then swore an oath beneath it.

Radeon let her be. He kept his attention on their transport, on the work that would get them out alive.

He had asked for materials earlier and traded spirit stones for cultivation resources and crafting at a core disciple's price.

Radeon had not been sure the Ossuary Necropolis Court would honor it, not for him alone.

Thinking back, Radeon figured his display had pleased something that watched this place, the guarding deity he had lit himself up for.

That was why a sect token lay near his cloak. What unsettled him was the exchange hall itself.

Too much emptiness. Too many shelves were clean yet looked untouched.

His eyes had drifted to the expensive herbs. His fingers had almost followed. He stopped himself.

Stealing at a friend's house was one thing. Stealing in an enemy's den was another.

He laid out his new materials instead. Sky blue drake wing leather, lesser than dragon, but he had not seen a dragon here.

Radeon started with the frame, lightning tempered bamboo, purple as bruised dusk.

It still bent with a living flex, yet it could withstand a gilded core's strike without splintering.

He was halfway through fitting the ribs when Fay barged in, covered in sweat.

Three peaks away was no small walk. Her breath came fast. Qi clung to her skin in restless spirals.

She met his eyes, and he met hers, both of them understanding the same thing at once.

Fay opened her mouth, breath still too fast, ready to spill everything she was holding back.

Radeon saw it coming and waved it off without looking up.

"You've still got treasure tucked in your cloak. Use that." Radeon said.

No lecture. No reassurance. No explanation.

His hands stayed on the frame, fingers steady on the lightning tempered bamboo as he bound it, measured it, made it obey.

The work went on like a heartbeat. Fay stood there and watched, and the numbers in her head started to shout.

Over two thousand spirit stones. Treated like loose change. Like a tool you picked up and set down without thought.

She had worked for the sect since she was eight and had only ever managed to scrape together a hundred and twenty.

A decade of errands, bruises, swallowed pride, and that was all she had to show for it.

"Aren't you eager to cultivate? Go on." Radeon said, still focused on his work.

Radeon knew it was a good start. Her mind was eager and noisy.

Full of questions, full of hunger, full of that dangerous belief that cultivators should have.

Because in the next few days, Radeon would teach Fay what hell looked like.

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