Fay's thoughts snapped into place fast. If she could not see, could not hear, and her other senses felt clean and unobscured, then only one thing made sense.

A domain array. Her mind spun further. If it was a domain, then was it illusion? No.

A large scale illusion would be rare, and she had read enough in the manual Radeon gave her to trust that.

Illusions at this size cost too much and left too many seams. Then it had to be simpler. A color array.

An array that chose one color and pushed it deeper, obscuring what wore it. Black made blacker. Shadow made thicker.

She drew her buckler inward, angling the glassy surface so it caught what little light the night offered.

The reflection gave her what her eyes could not. Shapes behind her, moving in the dark.

Fay gulped and forced her face to stay calm. She pretended not to notice.

She walked forward. Slow. Measured. Heart beating hard, but steps steady. She could not see them, but she could estimate.

Five. Four. Three meters.

When she felt she was within a meter, she swung.

The whip snapped out and bit the night. Bone and vine caught flesh.

Three men were taken by surprise, bodies jerking as the lash wrapped and cut.

Fay did not wait to confirm kills. She did not want kills. She wanted time.

Radeon could take the treasure if she stalled them.

She made herself visible on purpose. Instead of drawing energy inward, she pushed it out.

Flame spilled from her whip. Teal fire danced along the bone length and leapt onto cloth and skin.

The three men she had caught flailed, their screams muffled by the array's trickery, but their burning shapes were hard to hide.

Then Fay saw more. Visages in motion, ten more cultivators closing, their outlines smeared by the darkness that obeyed them.

Fay did not try to fight the whole pack. She turned and ran for higher ground, back toward the mountain face she had slid down earlier.

Feet light, breath tight, whip trailing fire to make sure they could keep track of her.

Radeon understood the purpose. Fay was delaying. He did not idle.

He brought the bull down hard near the swordsman camp. Hooves hit stone.

Wings folded with a snap. He pulled the great shield close, using it as cover, taking the first scattered strikes on leather and arrayed frame.

Then with wild abandon he drove the bison forward, letting the shield charge like a battering ram into the men forming their line.

he impact broke spacing. It forced blades to reset. It bought a heartbeat. Then another.

Radeon moved past the confusion and headed for the cave abode.

Five men waited near the entrance, all at the peak of cornerstone setting.

Their swords were ready. Their eyes were trained. They charged him together.

Radeon answered with needles. Ten shots in the dark, flicked with a motion too small to read.

Three men managed to dodge or parry, blades sparking. Two were hit almost at once.

Sleeping and paralysis had been fed into the steel. Radeon did not want to kill.

He did not have time to spare. This was cleaner.

One swordsman closed the distance.

Radeon redirected the sword flow, turning the man's force aside, and seized him by the neck.

Five needles punched into that grip point, quick and precise. The man's body went slack.

The remaining two hesitated and lowered their weapons, seeing the line they were about to cross.

Radeon did not let them flee. He sent five needles into each, controlled, deliberate.

Both folded, breath stolen, limbs refusing orders.

At his belt, ten spools retracted on threads pulled by qi, drawing the needles back into place with a faint whir and tug.

His new weapon. Threads from mineral swallowing gu, spools, and needles forged from cold steel alloy.

Radeon faced the next stone door and felt the difference at once. This one was tighter. More deliberate.

The array on it did not accept any qi that happened to fit. It obeyed one qi alone, a single signature pressed into the mechanism like a thumbprint.

He did not waste time arguing with it. Radeon took the hilt from the fallen man's blade.

Radeon did not swing it. He studied it. He read the wear. He read the balance.

Then he let his mind slip into the pattern of how that old man had moved, how his qi would have flowed through his grip.

Rough. Heavy. Like a mountain deciding to fall. Radeon matched the flow as best he could, then pressed the dead man's hilt to the vault stone.

A click answered. Radeon whistled, sharp and hard, and the bull was already there, hooves finding stone with practiced calm.

Radeon's threads snapped out next. Needles and lines flicked in clean arcs as he began tossing the haul inside, loading fast and silent.

This was a lesser find. Not chests of shining coin. What lay inside were ores, old blades, half finished weapons, rusted pieces that still held hints of craft.

Enough to make Radeon certain the owner had been an avid fan of swords. He took it anyway. Metal was always useful. Metal always became something.

He rose back into the night sky. Below, he saw Fay on all fours, surrounded. Dark clothed men ringed her, moving like shadows made solid.

Radeon did not descend with slaughter. He simply tossed coins. Each one punched through muscle and tendon without taking lives, dropping bodies into writhing pain.

A clean disable. He had a plan for those men later. It would be wasteful to throw away such manpower.

Then Radeon took flight for the next vault. Fay arrived a little later, breath hard, eyes bright with stubborn fury.

No one barred their way this time. Inside, Radeon knew at once it was not a vault.

It was an altar. A black statue stood at the center, hulking, holding a club. Not a man.

Something closer to a demon carved from night. The air around it felt wrong, heavy with old attention.

Radeon beckoned Fay closer to watch. Lines began to form across the statue, faint at first, then brighter, as if the stone itself was drawing an array on its own skin.

Fay started to point, eager, beginning to explain how she would decipher something so intricate, how she would find the logic and pry it apart.

Radeon used his threads instead. Needles spun and rotated in tight controlled patterns.

They touched points Fay would never have guessed, then pulled away, then returned, each motion building pressure in the array.

Fay swallowed down her troubled heart and forced herself to focus. She watched every rotation. Every pull. Every small correction.

The statue came apart. Not cracking. Not breaking. Unraveling, as if it had been woven rather than carved.

Within its center sat a dark stone, dense and quiet, the kind of object that made the room feel smaller just by existing.

Radeon wrapped it in cloth and took it into his hands without touching it directly.

Then he beckoned Fay again.

"Carry the rest," he said.

He meant the statue pieces. The shell. The false body. Fay obeyed, lifting what she could.

His nonchalant attitude unsettled Fay more than the demon shape had.

This was enemy ground, and Radeon strolled through it as if nothing in the world could reach him.

Fay felt a strange pull in her chest. Not fear. Not admiration alone.

This was what she wanted.

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