Radeon only smiled. Biscuit was already waiting, shifting on his feet, the look of a man who had been standing too long and thinking too hard.

Radeon did not leave him hanging. He reached into his cloak and took out two pouches, each heavy with a hundred spirit stones.

"Sorry for the trouble," he said.

Another fifty went on top as a quiet extra. Biscuit did not fuss over it.

He only watched as Radeon carried the cabinets back and set them on their axles as if the weight meant nothing.

Biscuit's mind spun the way it always did when gold and spirit stones showed themselves.

This was a merchant, or close enough. There were always angles. Maybe he could sell him ore straight from the mine.

Maybe old swords, broken tools, scrap iron nobody wanted until it became ingots. Hearsay too, news that carried value.

"Sky sailor, might you be needing any other service?" he ventured, careful not to press too hard.

Radeon had given him surplus on purpose, for this moment exactly. A fat pocket bred closeness, and closeness loosened mouths.

"None so far. But hear this, I've been divined by an esteemed Reader of Heaven," Radeon said while watching his expression.

"They said this place would disappear. So I came and smelted everything I had. Where else do you rent a kiln this cheap?" He sighed, his wrinkled Sail Knife skin creasing as he looked up, gloomy.

Biscuit was a man past forty. He did not swallow wild claims easily. But a diviner was different.

Across the continent, diviners did not sit in the same basket as ordinary learned men.

They carried something closer to an edict. A verdict delivered by whatever listened behind the veil.

People laughed at rumors, but they did not dismiss a diviner's words. Not if they had anyone to lose.

For this occasion, Biscuit was ready to pay. He had tens of children and hundreds grandchildren.

He had a little hold on the mine, enough to feel proud when the year went well.

Yet what did any of it matter if the man in front of him spoke true. In that moment, money turned to lint in his eyes.

Biscuit lifted his hand and signaled one of his men with three sharp flaps, ordering him to fetch an offering.

"This diviner you speak of, sky-sailor. If you'll pardon me asking..." Biscuit chose his words with care. "Who does he stand with?"

Radeon knew the power of names. A sect's name was not something to toss around with a crude tongue.

Names carried weight. They carried attention. So he shook his head.

The cursed markings along his bones were already stirring, waking to obscure the heaven above that had given him the curse itself.

He did not want to be seen. He wanted even less to be tracked through the movements of heaven's energy by the diviners whose name he meant to use.

"The name. I can't say it. The secrets, I can," Radeon said. He went on, voice cryptic. "You haven't paid their price. Not straight into their palms."

"Name. Not. Not to be said." Biscuit worked the words out slowly. "Pa. Palms..." Sweat beaded at his brow as he murmured it.

Biscuit knew the sort of sect a man did not name without paying for it. His single eye inspected Radeon with care.

The clothes were still clean. The hair still thick. No sour stink clung to him, not even after days near furnaces and slag.

This was not a liar begging coin. This was a man who could afford truth.

Radeon watched understanding spread across Biscuit's face. The clenched, trembling hands were the part Radeon had waited for.

Not fear alone. A misunderstanding turning into belief.

For a kilnkeeper in an age of decline, Biscuit was unnervingly well read.

He was checking for the five signs of decay, the marks of misfortune that followed a doomed house like flies.

Radeon had already seen four of those signs on Biscuit and on the men he kept close.

A last chance, then. Radeon let horror crawl onto his face.

He copied the exact path of Biscuit's gaze, looking himself up as if he feared what he might find.

Then he fell silent and let sweat bead on his upper lip, thickening, matting, like a man holding back words that would damn everyone who heard them.

Both men understood each other without a single word spoken.

Biscuit signaled again, five sharp flaps this time.

His aide, already nearby with a chest, took one look at the signal and ran.

He moved faster with every step, as if death itself had started walking behind him.

"Esteemed sky sailor," Biscuit said, his voice turning careful and low with respect. "Please. If there's aught to be done, see my family spared."

Biscuit, a head taller than Radeon, dropped to a knee. He lowered his head and torso before Radeon as if the stone itself had ordered him down.

The men hauling ore saw it first. Then the sight ran through the mine faster than any shouted warning.

Hammering began to falter. Pick strikes slowed, then stopped in pockets.

In the span of a dozen breaths the whole place leaned toward silence.

Other managers, mortal families with their own small kingdoms of dust and coin, stared hard at the scene.

Their faces tightened. Biscuit had never bowed to anyone, not even cultivators. That was why he had lost an eye.

Now his eyes were closed. Sweat mixed with tears along his cheek, a hot shine that meant more than grief.

It meant decision. A man willing to throw his pride as high as heaven did not kneel for nothing.

Signals rippled throughout. Hand signs flashed. Red flags lifted and dipped.

Peculiar hums carried down shafts, tones meant to travel where words would not.

Radeon watched it all without blinking. This was the cultivation world.

Mortals spoke of heroes and monsters splitting mountain ranges with a glance or a wave.

Their ancestors, or even distant blood relatives, had seen calamity fall from the sky and claim kingdoms of millions in a single night, without granting them even a single scream.

What was a mine that ran a mere hundred kilometers end to end?

Down below, movement began. Carts rolled. Radeon's gaze cut through them and counted what mattered.

Clothes bundled tight. Rations stacked for years. Children yanked along by the arm, crying loud enough to shake pity loose, yet still dragged as if pity had become a luxury no one could afford.

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