She reached up as though to smack him in the face, but seemed to remember who she was talking to, and pointed at him instead. “How much of that has he done, hm?”

Lindon started. He hadn't given much thought to what Fisher Gesha had been doing while he was training. He supposed he thought she just...worked all the time.

Like he did.

“He's spent more time underground than a mole. At least he's got Yerin with him, she's a good girl, but she wouldn't rest if someone killed her. You have to slow them down, you hear me? They're not Underlords.” She lowered her hand and sighed. “Not yet.”

Eithan's eyes were wide and his mouth slightly open. After a moment, his smile came back, but this time it was soft. “Honored grandmother, I will take your words to heart. I'm sorry for worrying you.” Then he pressed his fists together into a salute and bowed low.

Gesha cleared her throat and reddened slightly. “Well. So long as you know.”

Before Lindon could gather his thoughts, she'd already scooped up her chest and scurried out the door.

Eithan stared after her, chin in his hands. “You know,” he said, “I don't believe I've paid enough attention to her.”

“I apologize for her,” Lindon said, dipping his head slightly. “I have no complaints about my work over the past year. I know it was done for my benefit.”

“Not entirely for your benefit,” Eithan said. “I was initially hoping that Jai Long would serve as a motivation for you, of course, but the situation evolved as soon as Jai Daishou inserted himself. I was hoping to reap some benefits for the Arelius family, and though I didn't get everything I wanted, I still made some measurable progress. I'll chalk this whole thing up to a win, though we may have indirectly led to the destruction of the entire Empire.”

Lindon was meant to ask about the destruction part of that sentence, he knew. It was bait, set by Eithan, trying to capture Lindon's interest and attention. Normally, it would have worked.

This time, Lindon shrugged his right shoulder, drawing attention to his missing arm. “You could have finished off Jai Daishou immediately.”

Eithan's smile faded. “I could have, yes.”

“You drew it out. You were trying to get him to bring out that crystal ball.”

“The Archstone. It's a—”

Lindon cut him off. “He took my arm.”

Eithan clasped his hands behind his back and studied his disciple. Instead of deflecting or pointing out that technically Jai Long was the one who had removed the arm, which would be typical Eithan tactics, the Underlord simply nodded. “He did. If he hadn't given the order, Jai Long would have left you alone. If I hadn't put him under such pressure, he wouldn't have given the order.”

The admission both made Lindon feel better and much, much worse. It tore open the bandage he'd wrapped around his anger, and he could feel tears welling up in the corners of his eyes.

“Why?” he said. “Why did you have to push him? I just...want to know it was worth it.”

Eithan looked to the ceiling for a moment, considering, then looked back down to Lindon. “What do you know about the Dreadgods?”

“Nothing,” Lindon said. “I don't know that I've ever heard the word. Are they like dreadbeasts?”

“Yes. Yes, they are.” Eithan chewed on his words for a second, as though trying to gather his thoughts. Or trying to decide how much to tell Lindon. “They are...disasters. Four monsters, big enough to blot out the sky, hungry for destruction, and so powerful that the most advanced sacred artists in the world have to join forces to drive them off. Drive them off, you understand. None of the Dreadgods have ever been killed.”

“They're sacred beasts?”

“Corrupted ones. Like the dreadbeasts of the Desolate Wilds, they were warped and twisted by their own powers.”

“Where do they come from?” Lindon asked, caught up in the legend. He briefly wondered if this was another tactic to distract him...but if it was, it was working.

“They're scattered all over the world. They burrow into a secure location and wait for decades...but when they wake up, they're hungry. Fortunately for humanity, no two have woken at the same time in centuries.

“But the last time they did, they destroyed the original Blackflame Empire.”

From Orthos and Eithan, Lindon had heard of the fall of the Blackflame family. But from what he could piece together, even that family had taken over the remains of another, more powerful Empire.

And even that ancient nation had fallen to these Dreadgods.

“The original Empire was ruled by dragons, not men,” Eithan said, with a tone that suggested dragons building an empire was nothing unusual. “As they advanced as a culture, they began to study civilizations even older than theirs. And they stumbled on a...vast, underground complex. It was abandoned even then, and it was so massive and so dangerous that not even the greatest of the dragons could map it fully.”

That reminded Lindon of something, but before he could voice it, Eithan nodded to him. “You've seen one of the shallowest corners of this massive labyrinth in the Desolate Wilds. What they called the Transcendent Ruins was, in reality, just a corner of this huge maze that stretches all over the Empire. There are entrances all over, but to have seen one is your good fortune.”

“Two,” Lindon said. “There was one in my homeland.”

He remembered the ancestor's tomb in the Heaven's Glory sect, and a stone door marked with four beasts.

Now, that carving carried an eerie significance.

“Is that so?” Eithan asked, surprised. “Well, you're lucky indeed. And even luckier that you didn't explore too far inside. The dragons of the first Blackflame Empire found that out firsthand when they plundered weapons from the depths of the labyrinth. At first, they only took Highgold or Truegold devices, wanting to study them, but they became greedy for more when they learned that the weapons had such miraculous effects.”

“The Ancestor's Spear,” Lindon said.

“One of the weakest objects in the maze. The spear wasn’t even unique, you know, though it is enough to dazzle the eyes of anyone below Truegold.” Eithan stared longingly into the distance. “The labyrinth is a true treasure trove, but there's a reason we've left it undisturbed for so long, only nibbling at the corners every once in a while in places like the Desolate Wilds. Because when the dragons delved deeper, withdrawing Lord treasures like the Archstone...”

He paused, picking up from a different point. “You should understand that the dragons left the doors open for years as they explored the labyrinth, making war on one another and settling petty grudges with their new weaponry. They didn't realize that something in that place drew the Dreadgods like wolves to fresh meat.

“Records of that disaster are very spotty, as you might expect. But the warnings they left are clear. Most of this continent was reduced to a blasted wasteland, from which it has not entirely recovered even to this day. Billions of people and sacred beasts died, and the former Blackflame Empire was nothing more than a Remnant haunt for generations.”

Eithan slowly shook his head. “We can't know how many dragons survived, but it wasn't more than a handful. The survivors returned all their weapons to the labyrinth, leaving dire warnings to future generations. To delve past the shallows of this maze is to invite death. They destroyed as many of the entrances as they could, and sealed up the rest.”