Calyx felt the new message land in his sight like a bittersweet memory from distant battles. The words jogged his memory.

[Preta's an ally. Trust him. Run. I'll handle the rest.]

Radeon's hand was moving now. Calyx did not see the weapon. He only needed to put his faith in him.

Below, the bazaar was already turning. People converged on the pagoda from all directions, not only the cartel's men, but mortals too.

Pitchforks rose. Eyes shone red, hungry, with a feigned righteousness shaping their deceitful expressions.

They had smelled the factory. Vision crystals, the colored smokes, the sweet lies.

When men believed heaven was being made inside a building, they did not ask who was causing trouble.

The minds of mindless men ran only on how much they could get from the commotion.

Good Chip was still in front of Calyx, fists clenched on his sword's hilt, brave and stupid.

"Monster," he said. "Come, then. Cross blades with this young master for three hundred rounds."

Fay did not argue. She moved like a knife. Her palm cracked against the side of Good Chip's neck and he dropped without a sound, his knees folding, his head lolling.

A clean strike. No hesitation. Her eyes stayed on Calyx the whole time. She took one step toward the mouth that had just eaten three men.

Calyx understood. The trust between the living and dead. Something that transcends races. More memories tried to surface, but something was stopping it from within.

He focused instead and split himself, not into grains this time, but into function. His power reached for the two disciples inside him.

Calyx severed body from soul with a careful tug, a trick he had learned in older wars.

Fay and Good Chip went slack, then lighter, then gone. Their bodies vanished into the system's personal storage, stowed where knives and smoke could not touch them.

He cradled their living essence in smaller pieces of himself, tucked close, hidden from naked eyes and prying arrays.

The mob's roar grew louder. The pagoda shivered with it.

Calyx pulled himself into a new skin, the face of one of the men he had eaten.

Dirty robe. Twitchy eyes. Rotten teeth. A smell of chemical smoke and week-old unwashed sweat.

He stumbled out of the broken room into a corridor full of startled footsteps.

He ran with panic painted on his face, because panic was truth here. He did not run toward the exit.

Half an incense later, he reached the warehouse. People were already killing each other. Guards beat at buyers, and buyers clawed at guards.

Mortals swung pitchforks like spears. A man stabbed another over a pouch no bigger than a thumb. Someone screamed with laughter, then sobbed, then screamed again.

Calyx moved through it like a rat through a grain pile. He cut off his whole left arm and flung it toward a stack of prepared batches.

The crowd did not spare a glance for the thrown arm. Someone even copied him and grinned.

"That arm's coming back with those goodies, right?"

Calyx did not bother with the fool. He controlled his arm from afar, and it became a ghost with mouths that fed directly into his personal storage.

They sank into bundles and crates and jars. He ate what mattered. He swallowed pills and powders and the herbs that fed the production.

He did it fast, clean, and discreet, while he himself had already fled afar.

Outside, through the splinters of his scattered awareness, Calyx felt Oisin and Elsin holding their child shapes near the pagoda.

Their clean clothes drew eyes. Too clean. Too well fed. The kind of children men imagined could be sold for good coin.

Interest slid toward them, slow at first, then keener. A few faces turned. A few bodies shifted.

Then the air snapped without a sound. People toppled without warning, jaws knocked back, skulls smacked by hail from afar.

No shout. No blood. Just a sudden hush around each falling body.

Elsin began to run toward Cairnlight Barterhold, legs pumping, one of them a lie that stretched thinner with each stride.

Oisin held position, one hand on the ball while the other on his brother's leg, pretending to be dazed so Elsin could go farther.

Calyx, about to take the exit, stopped. He sent a message to the premier array casters.

[Maeron, Ewan. Out. Now. Withdraw at once.]

Far below, Maeron and Ewan had been waiting on the underground tenth floor, hoping to strip the alchemical instruments before fleeing.

They abandoned the tools and obeyed. They climbed fast, sliding through corridors and stairwells, moving toward the main chambers, tracking array for any hole. It could be traced back to the dead.

Calyx felt a rumble above. A shield was forming, a lid dropping into place. If it sealed, every inch inside would be inspected.

Every motion would be measured. A wraith could hide from eyes, but not from a net built for motion of energy and temperature.

[Make haste. There is no time left.]

Calyx would not gamble their last chance on arrogance.

Maeron and Ewan burst through a side passage where a small marble of Calyx waited like a sentry.

They all flew through the gap in the moment before the shield tightened. They spilled out into open air.

Oisin's ball opened quick, not a toy now, but a hollow that swallowed them inside, like a pocket.

Elsin felt the tug of Oisin. Elsin pulled his feet back, hauling the invisible stretched child shape.

Behind them, the pagoda groaned. Somewhere in the chaos, a familiar ugly voice called out, snorting, mocking.

Humphrey, the pig they had met before. A cluster of Tiyanak, turned into an array battery, giggled behind the empty wagon the beast pulled.

Calyx did not waste a glance on them.

"Bring the pagoda down," he said. "Now, Ewan."

Ewan did not delay. The pagoda had already been softened from outside by Oisin and Elsin's work. Now Ewan's decay arrays bit deep.

Steel rusted in a breath. The central pillar weakened like wet wood. Cracks raced along beams and floors.

Dust billowed outward. Stone sighed. The whole structure began to fold in on itself.

Humphrey ran, a startled farm animal made flesh, hauling an empty wagon.

When the pagoda finally fell behind them, no one looked back.

The five wraiths knew what they had done was not great, not even good.

All of them knew it was a failure that regressed Radeon's plan.

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