Radeon and Fay walked back to their room. They did not have much, but they would not be coming back here any time soon

He handed Fay a set of new clothes. Black and white. Clean. Unpatched.

Fay looked down at her own robe, sky blue once, now faded and stitched until the fabric held more colors of thread than its own.

Everwritten Archivists Court colors. She gave a wry smile that did not reach her eyes.

Fay had knelt until her knees ached. She had pressed her forehead to the floor until the stone remembered the shape of her.

Still no one had accepted her. They said she had no talent. That she was crazy. That she was simply disliked.

Now she held new clothes in her hands. A weapon sat at her wrist.

For the first time, she felt like she belonged somewhere, even if she did not yet know what the price of belonging would be.

She started to undress, then hesitated and glanced at Radeon.

Curiosity tugged at her. Just curiosity. Nothing less. She wondered how he looked without clothes, what the reconstruction had truly made of him.

The thought barely formed before the clothing in Radeon's hands swapped onto his body with a soft rush.

Fay felt only a gust of wind and the brief brush of cloth settling into place.

Radeon did not turn. He knew she had been looking. He also knew what she had been curious about.

"If you want to learn it," he said, voice flat, "I can teach you later."

Fay smiled and nodded, cheeks warming. Radeon was not the kind of master who acted distant and cold.

He thought that was nonsense. The most wasteful time in a disciple's life was spent on hollow respect and tradition.

Bowing. Waiting. Permission for every breath. Half a life could be lost to it.

Then passed on as an endless cycle when the disciple became master.

Radeon had no use for that kind of waste.

He lifted the giant sky blue tower shield fashioned from drake wing leather, the same one he had been building with quiet care.

Fay wanted to ask about it. The question sat on her tongue. Instead she tightened her robe and followed him out.

The bison waited outside where the ground dipped and the wind had room to run. Radeon began fastening a massive leather saddle to its back.

Ten seats could be seen stitched into it, a blunt promise of company they did not yet have.

Thick belts cinched it tight under the bison's belly, leather creaking as it took the weight.

Radeon had taught the bull to cultivate. Emerald Gale Hooves, he remembered the folks in his old cosmos called it.

A method that made the beast lighter than a feather and let it thread the air as if wind were a road.

Then he drew three straps from the drake leather tower shield.

Two looped to the bison's horns. One cinched under its belly, locking shield to beast like a second spine.

Radeon channeled energy into the array set into the shield. Clicking started. Small mechanical sounds, precise, like joints finding their place.

The tower shield expanded horizontally, purple bamboo and locking plates with a rhythm.

It became wings. With a final whipping snap, the leather went taut and a ten meter wingspan opened wide.

Each meter of wing held embedded windstones. The frame carried ten hover stones, set with careful spacing.

With Radeon's array mastery binding it all together, the construct could be fitted into a vessel that carried fifty men and a hundred tons of cargo.

The weight of the bull, plus the weight of him and Fay, was nothing.

Radeon looked back at the Ossuary Necropolis Court one last time.

It was not often a man found welcome in a place so cold, so empty, so steeped in death that even breath felt borrowed.

His initial plan had been to go farther north, deeper into the mainland of Pale Cataclysms Continent. Claudius stopped him.

"There is nothing there but secrets that kill men," Claudius said.

He added another warning, quieter, as if the stones themselves might listen. His fellow elves lived there.

Radeon tried to press him for more, tried to pry the words loose. The half undead only gave him a wry smile.

Radeon understood the shape of it. Claudius, the elven lichkin, was looking out for him.

By not telling him, he was saving his life. And to Radeon, not claiming knowledge now was the same as claiming it later.

He was still weighing the north when the bison shivered. Not a simple tremor. Uncontrolled.

Its eyes bulged. It snorted loud enough to make dust jump from the ground, hooves scraping as it tried to back away.

It was looking at Claudius. Radeon dismounted, hand steady on the harness, and Claudius stepped closer.

He held out a scroll. Golden. Different from the letter Claudius had given him earlier.

"Here is what you need," Claudius said, his face tight as he held something back.

That letter had felt like a murderer waiting to serve only one master, meant for one pair of eyes alone.

This scroll felt like it made you kneel. Not from fear. From authority.

From the sense that doubting it would be a kind of blasphemy.

Reading it without permission would be a crime the world itself remembered.

A sect master decree. Radeon scrutinized its authenticity, smiled, and drew a scroll of his own.

"Looks good. Here's what you asked for," Radeon said, pulling a plain scroll from his sleeves.

He offered it in exchange, neat and immediate, as if the trade were as ordinary as salt for grain.

A cultivation method meant to mix death and life, tuned for someone who stood with one foot in each.

Best for Claudius, who had confessed a bottleneck that had lasted five millennia.

Claudius unrolled it and began to read. The atmosphere grew heavy, a breakthrough rising above the Mortal Apotheosis Stage.

The air thickened as if the cave mouth had closed around them. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

Then Claudius stopped, wrenching himself out of immersion on the spot. He looked up with a grin that showed too much satisfaction.

This was off the records. This was the kind of thing the courts pretended did not happen.

Radeon, a cosmic emperor once, did not shy from such dealings. He had lived by them.

And he would again, if he had to.

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