Radeon could feel his arms the way a man feels a mouthful of nails. Each middle grade spirit stone was no bigger than a thumb, yet packed beneath skin they turned his limbs heavy and wrong.
If anyone looked close, they would see the slight bulge along the etched lines, the flesh rising where it should have lain flat.
He told himself it did not matter. He had already chosen the shape of his escape.
Either the cult won or it lost. Either way he would walk out clean.
A small price to pay, to wear Giovanni's name all the way to the Hemal Tithe Cult's main headquarters on the central continent, like a borrowed robe no one dared tug at.
But for now he was not even a millionth of what he used to be. That truth sat on his shoulders heavier than the stones under his skin.
Radeon was not new to keeping his head low.
'Endure it. Hard work's the entry fee,' he reminded himself.
He meant to reconstruct his body in time. This was only a temporary ugliness.
As he turned the next steps over in his mind, his gaze kept sliding back to the pile he had set aside.
Windstone. Hoverstones. Fifty strips of hundred year bamboo plank, each cut to a foot in length. The alabaster array core meant for flight, dull as bone until it was woken.
Radeon spread his cloak on the floor and laid the pieces along it, measuring in silence.
Everything had to fit inside without changing the way the cloth fell on his shoulders.
A bulge in the wrong place would invite a hand, and a hand would invite questions.
He took the alabaster first. The sword's edge kissed it in careful lines, carving channels for where the power would run.
He stroked the copper ink into the cuts. Every line was measured, even with his left hand doing the work.
Four middle grade spirit stones already socketed into the frame.
For distance, that was enough.
The problem was not how far he meant to go, but how far he could still go once the chaos started.
With only his left hand left to him, Radeon worked the bamboo like a patient butcher.
He pinned the stalks against his knee, steadied the sword with his forearm, and shaved joints into shape.
Small cuts, careful cuts. Just enough that one piece could bite into the next without splitting.
The glider frame began to hold its own weight, grudging as an old mule.
He set the sword aside and took up the brush. The copper ink clung thick to the bristles, ready to be dragged into lines that might fool the wind.
He had barely touched tip to bamboo when a ringing found him.
It was faint. Not a chime, not a bell. More like metal searching for the right note and refusing every wrong one.
Radeon stilled. He turned his head, listening the way a hunted man listens. Then he leaned close and put his ear to the flat of the blade.
The sound lived inside the sword. Radeon knew it at once, and his blood went cold.
'Will of Swords. Blades don't sing like that for just anyone.'
They only answered a true master, the kind even steel learned to obey. Radeon's mouth went dry.
The righteous cultivators were here.
Radeon did not think. He only moved. He snatched up the spare sword and hurled it into the dark as hard as his left arm could manage.
It spun end over end and vanished beyond his sight. For half a breath, he hoped the night would swallow it.
The ringing answered instead.
It swelled, not from the blade he still held, but from everywhere.
Steel all around the camp began to sing in thin, eager tones, as if a thousand throats had found one master note.
Radeon felt it in his teeth. Every sword had turned traitor. Each one a bright finger pointing back at the hand that carried it.
Voices rose with it.
"Oi, why's my sword ringing like that?"
"What's going on? Has it gone and turned into an artefact?"
The younger ones held their weapons up, faces lit with stupid wonder, turning the blades to catch what little light there was.
They laughed like children showing off a new toy, as if Branch Leader or Master Jekyll had gifted them a miracle.
The ones with gilded cores did not laugh.
They moved like men who had heard an executioner clear his throat.
A heavy palm cracked across a youngster's face. Another was shoved so hard he stumbled into the dirt, still clutching his ringing sword.
"Drop it, now! Get it away from here, you fool!"
"You bloody fools! That's a swordmaster's trick you're playing with!"
The seniors tried to smother the panic before it could become a stampede. They barked orders, struck hands away from hilts, kicked ringing blades into the dirt.
One by one the younger cultists went quiet, not from understanding, but from fear.
Then the air changed.
The smell of iron pushed up from underfoot, hot and wet, as if the ground itself had been cut and was bleeding.
It thickened fast, crawling into throats and sinuses until every breath tasted like a bitten tongue.
Radeon felt the hairs on his neck lift. The night did not feel empty anymore. It felt watched.
A heartbeat later, a single set of words struck the Ashlime Crag.
"Blood. Heed thy call."
It struck every man with a heart, a hard jolt that stole a breath and made palms slick.
Then it settled, not as comfort, but as a cold, measured calm.
The cultists went still. Somewhere out in the dark, the uncertain enemy did too.
Then, the ground began to tremble under his feet. Dust sifted from the bamboo joints and danced in the copper lines he had not finished.
Radeon kept his eyes on the glider anyway. He did not lunge for it. He did not botch it in a rush.
This was his trump card, the one thing he could not afford to waste on a panic.