Outworld Liberators-Chapter 147: Through Memories that Saw the World Cave in

While the expansion proceeded with almost insulting smoothness, Radeon stood in the minting hall.

Gold ran in channels. Heat pressed on faces. The air tasted of metal and smoke.

He had taken much of the Vision Crystal and infused it with his own essence.

What had once carried dreams, pleasure, illusion, a seven colored glow that made men hungry, became something else in his hands.

The crystal darkened. Black and white. Dark crimson. Dark purple.

He sprinkled the powder into the molten alloy as if seasoning a stew.

Calyx watched from the side and shivered. His whole being screamed safety and danger at the same time.

The contradiction made him feel like his ghost nature did not know how to stand in its own skin.

The press came down and minted the first coin. Radeon picked it up while it was still warm.

On one face was a peaceful man with twelve arms. Each arm showed dark veins, like roots under skin.

On the other face were nine stars set inside an eclipsing sun and moon.

Words were engraved within the celestial sign, small enough to be intimate.

Riches Are Doubled Each One Nurtures.

It was a final touch that mortals and cultivators alike would keep in their hearts, because it promised the one thing every man wanted.

An automatic prayer to Radeon, a call to his name. It was a surveillance network created through the weave of faith, letting him eavesdrop on every conversation spoken by anyone near a coin.

The reason was simple. Radeon still needed to track down the other heaven’s chosen, and right now, Fay and Good Chip were only a few.

In his mind, an era would spawn at least ninety-nine of them if it was an era of abundance. In this era of strife, he expected at least six to nine, as heavenly dao would funnel its energy into them.

As night settled, no one stayed in the four cities of Spendworth Hills, Silvertoll Summits, Ledgegrove Bazaar, and Wordsworth Shortspires.

The living had been herded out long before dusk finished falling. Doors were left open.

Fires were left to die on their own. The streets went quiet in the way a battlefield went quiet, not peaceful, just emptied.

Then the ghosts began their work.

They drew in ghostly energy first, not from lanterns or talismans, but from the world’s unspent hatred.

The lingering resentment of the dead hung everywhere after the calamity.

Many had perished. They did not rise as clear ghosts with faces and voices.

Their energy was taken instead, siphoned and fed into the fragment of ghost realm buried under the mountain.

Fog billowed out of Cairnlight Barterhold and rolled into the four cities like a tide.

As it spread, more ghosts and wraiths spawned in its wake. Wandering souls were attracted by the commission, pulled toward the promise of shelter and purpose.

But the fog did not welcome all of them. Ghosts without spiritual intelligence were obliterated on contact, erased by the rolling green like insects struck by flame.

The Tiyanak group, a little less than two thousand before, quadrupled.

Heaven and earth helped discreetly, the way they always helped after slaughter.

Clouds gathered and rained black water. Massive death energy seeped out of the atmosphere as if the sky itself were sweating rot.

The water soaked into soil. The soil drank it. The fragment of ghost realm grew. Exponentially, hungrily, like mold finding a warm wall.

Below ground, more ghosts and wraiths were revived from their slumber, and none of them were allowed to idle.

Calyx directed them. His orders turned into tunnels. A massive underground catacomb. Networks of passages laced with confusion arrays and layered barriers.

A place to hide bodies. A place to hide truths. A place to move an army without the living ever seeing it.

As Calyx directed each move, he did not notice he was already at the underbelly of the Wordsworth Shortspires.

He stood and stared at the drag marks where the Aberrant had been hauled away.

Deep grooves. Broken stone. A trail of damage that told a story of revenge.

He could feel the emotions of the Silent Severance members who had dragged those very chains. It was pure, unadulterated rage.

Calyx stared at his hand and clenched it. He felt that everything they were doing was futile.

Looking at the state of the world now, he felt how far it had regressed.

It was beyond alien to him, like it was a budding civilization, unlike what he had been used to before.

Tools had been lost. Knowledge had been buried.

Now he understood what Radeon felt.

From what Calyx had surmised so far, Radeon had been awake the whole time, far longer than he had, watching every event unfold, eyes open through every death, every betrayal, every bargain.

If Calyx had been alone, he felt he could not have gone on. He would have let himself rot.

He frowned like an old man and stood too still.

That was when Oisin, Elsin, Maeron, and Ewan arrived with clubs in their hands.

They did not ask what he was thinking. They never did. They only saw the frown.

The first club caught him in the ribs.

Calyx yelped and tried to cover his head, and they hit him anyway.

"Calyx, things are finally turning our way, and you’re still pulling that sour face," Oisin said, breathless with spiteful laughter.

"You only wanted to dodge the labor," Maeron said, and drove the charge home with another thump. "That’s how I took it."

Calyx cursed and twisted away, but a ghost’s dignity did not stop a club.

They did not understand what he was carrying. They did not see the scale of the enemy he held in his thoughts.

But they knew one thing. Everything was stirring toward goodness.

Elsin leaned in close, voice sharp but not cruel.

"So we lose. So what? At least we had a go, eh."

Ewan nodded, club resting on his shoulder like a friendly threat.

"It’s a clean chance to start again, Calyx. Don’t squander it skulking and sulking in the corners."

Calyx breathed out. The pain anchored him to the moment. Their stupidity, their blunt insistence, their refusal to let despair be elegant, it worked better than comfort.

He gave them a wry look and rubbed his ribs.

"Very well," he said. "Let us proceed. This old fellow will concede he was wrong to brood."

As they exited, Radeon handed Calyx the new plan for the summit.

The paper was thick. The ink was fresh. The lines were too clean to be a dream. Calyx took it with both hands, as if it might bite, then spread it open.

Oisin, Elsin, Maeron, and Ewan crowded in at his shoulders. No one spoke for a moment.

Terraces. Gates. Arrays. Shrines. Markets. Lodgings laid out like a puzzle that wanted to become a cage.

Every path had a purpose. Every open space had a reason. Even the places meant for breathing looked designed to make men spend.

When it was finished, Cairnlight Barterhold would not just survive inside Goldkeep Crownmarkets.

It would choke it, and when people notice, it was too late to react.