Fay was swamped by the angry mob. Food scraps and rotten vegetables flew at her.

Someone clipped her shoulder with a clod of dirt. Another rock skittered past her foot.

Shame crawled up her throat and sat there.

Radeon had always asked her before what martial arts she needed.

She had always said she had enough. That she wanted to carve her own path.

Now she looked at the wreckage and felt her hands go cold. Her heart hammered with blame that was not all hers.

Fay turned and ran for her master's tent.

Radeon was already inside.

She crashed into him and clung. Then she broke. Bawling.

Her fingers knotted in his robe like she could anchor herself there.

She had done her best. She had. She had tried to do the right thing. She had.

Radeon let the tears fall. He had heard sect members joke about her before, calling her odd, calling her too much, but never like this.

In the Everwritten Archivists Court, people dodged trouble with cordial smiles.

Out here, when personal benefits were threatened, gratefulness was nothing but sand castles fools clung to.

Fay pulled back just enough to look at him, eyes red and searching.

"Why should we even save them, Master?" Fay said, voice tight. "They show no gratitude. Would it not all be a waste of time?"

Even as she spoke, her heart tugged toward one thing only. To hear Radeon take her side.

Radeon smiled, and said nothing. He wanted her to arrive at it herself.

Still, he made an exception this time and gave her a hint.

"Men are born with the spiritual energy of heaven and earth," he said. "Their hearts carry light, darkness, and everything grey in between called morals."

He sat her down and took a comb. He began working the dirt out of her hair. His fingers did not shake.

"You know what people are like now," he said. "So what do you do next?"

Fay tried to answer and found only noise in her head. She stared at his hands instead.

The comb caught on a snag. Radeon eased it free without pulling. Then Fay looked up in his eyes, still searching.

Radeon chuckled as he plucked the last bit of litter loose.

"Fay," he said. "Let me ask you something. If you reach immortality and then you find a small flaw in your cultivation that stalls you for hundreds of thousands of years.Would you end up hating me?"

"No! I will never," Fay blurted, too fast, too fierce.

Radeon shook his head, then beckoned her to look outside. Men hovered with sharper wants, and greed dressed up as concern.

They were already preparing to confront him with veiled insinuations.

"As I said," Radeon murmured. He tapped two fingers against the center of her chest. "What I heard just now was only your light speaking, Fay."

Radeon let her sit with the thought while he tended to the frogs he had captured.

Fay understood what he meant. She had no ill intent toward Radeon. She never had. She would not dare.

Yet she thought back to the Everwritten Archivists Court. It had been only a little more than a couple of months since they left, and already her life had flipped more than once.

People changed. Needs changed. Fear changed. Even devotion could sour if it was fed wrong and she knew that.

Still, she looked at how Radeon treated her. He had never made her feel she relied on him too much.

Not because Radeon made her think she could carry everything alone, but because he did not let her feel like a burden.

He was like an arm lent for a while, firm, present, and never pretending it would last forever.

Meanwhile, Radeon looked at the fortune threads of men through his eyes and saw it again.

Fortune flickering gold, then turning grey when mouths began to count what they thought they were owed.

In the end it was the people who wrote their fate. Not heaven. Not another man.

However sour it was, Radeon still had a mission. He needed to find the child of heaven in this sea of bodies.

He was certain the one he sought would have something extraordinary within, even if they could not yet grasp heaven at all.

As soon as they left the Ironbuck Mine's vicinity, Radeon was already reading fate through divination.

He had marked bright points among the young ones, sparks that did not belong to ordinary children.

The problem was numbers. It was not a handful. It was still at least a hundred.

Radeon could not peel every thread and measure every detail without losing time he did not have, and time was the one resource that never came back.

So he thought of Fay. Give her a job of her own. A mission. Investigate each candidate, or find documents that could say what eyes could not.

He could retrieve them himself, as easy as breathing air, but for Fay this was another peerless opportunity to learn.

He began listing names, sketching portraits from memory and from quick glances. His brush moved steady. His mind stayed colder than the night.

Miners kept staring at him, trying to read meaning into every stroke. Radeon ignored it. If he reacted now it would turn into a long, fruitless conversation.

Soon they looked away. No one confronted him. The pressure that came off Radeon was not some gilded core.

They just wanted to probe his stance on what had happened, to see if he would punish, compensate, or abandon them.

When they got nothing from him, they turned to what they could control.

Salvage. Rebuild carts. Mend tents. Calm the bucks still spooked from the boar's rampage.

Radeon called Fay over.

She came with tear stains still on her face, eyes puffy and swollen, but her steps were steadier than before.

Radeon handed her a document, a tight list of the eighteen families that held the largest sway in the refugees.

Biscuit. Crust. Then more.

"I need these people investigated," Radeon said. "Sneak in fast. Get out quickly."

Fay nodded at once.

Radeon reached up and wiped at her cheek with his thumb, then chuckled.

"I thought you were not a child," he said. "Look at you. Still tears and snot."

Fay brushed his hand away, irritated and embarrassed. She took the papers, tucked them close, and nodded again.

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