They didn't climb higher into the Tangle. Obi led them down, onto broader bridges and steadier stairs.
"Well... field trip's been fun!" he said, already walking backward with that grin of his. "But it would be a better idea to leave now. You never know who lurks around the corner."
Raizen blinked. "Ohh, your bravery suddenly disappeared?"
"Better to be safe than sorry." Obi tapped his temple. "I'm Obi, remember? And if anyone gives you trouble later, tell them you know the loudest smith in the Underworks."
Raizen almost smiled. "That's not a rank."
"It is if I say it is." Obi winked, then spun and disappeared into the crowd.
✦ ✦ ✦
Left on their own, Raizen and Hikari drifted along the perimeter of the market.
They turned a corner, and the noise thinned. Ahead, a group of people had formed a circle. Raizen felt the tension before he understood it.
Two Wardens flanked a man, batons hooked at their belts. On the ground, a thin man knelt on both knees, palms up and empty, his cheeks hollowed by hunger. A girl clung to his sleeve, too young to understand what was happening.
"You're late again" the ledger-man said, his tone mocking. "And less. Again."
"I'll make up for it" the kneeling man whispered. "Work's been bad, but please, another week..."
"You had another week." The Warden glanced at the crowd - at how most of them looked away. "Debt grows when you don't pay it."
Hikari took a step forward before she knew she had. Raizen's hand grabbed her wrist. Gentle, but enough to be a warning. He shook his head in disaprooval.
Her fingers had curled into fists without her noticing. "Nobody's going to help...?" Her voice was barely a whisper.
Raizen's bandaged hand twitched uselessly against his side. He didn't have an answer.
The Wardens collected what they came for and moved on. The kneeling man stayed where he was, the girl still gripping his sleeve. Nobody helped him up.
Raizen pulled Hikari away. They walked back toward Takeshi's in silence, and neither of them looked back.
✦ ✦ ✦
Takeshi sat at the workbench, as he always did, distracting himself with small gadgets and trinkets.
He scanned them with one look: the dust on the new boots he'd bought them, the way their shoulders had dropped.
"So. You saw enough?"
"Mmm… Enough, yeah" Raizen answered.
Takeshi pointed toward the table with his chin. Two bowls of cold stew waited - clearly his work, judging by the mushy consistency.
Neither reached for them. They just sat in silence, carrying everything they'd seen.
Finally, Takeshi spoke.
"So. What is it you want?"
"Huh?" Raizen flinched.
"What do you want to do? In the future, I mean."
Raizen had been carrying the answer since the night his village burned.
"I want to kill them" he said. His voice surprised him with how steady it was. "All of them."
Takeshi didn't blink. "Who?"
"The Nyxes. Every last one."
He expected argument. Laughter. A long lecture about impossible things. But Takeshi only watched him, unmoving.
"And you?" Takeshi asked Hikari.
She stood frozen for a few seconds, thinking.
"I'll... Follow him."
Takeshi sighed, wrapping the metal fingers of his prosthetic around the edge of the table.
"First, you want to live long enough to even try touching a Nyx" he said at last. "Then you need more than anger and luck. You need to be torn down and built back in the right order."
He pushed his chair back and stood. He reached for a thick cloak from a peg and threw it around his shoulders, the hood shadowing half the eyepatch and the scar that ran beneath it.
"I know a place..."
Hikari looked from Raizen to Takeshi. "Where?"
Takeshi's mouth thinned into a faint smile. "Somewhere that's not on maps."
✦ ✦ ✦
They followed him into a strange corridor. The Underworks always echoed, but Takeshi's path found the spaces where everything seemed silent.
Past the market's edge, down a closed tunnel. Chalk marks on the walls - warnings - caught the dim lamplight and vanished again.
"Is this...Legal?" Raizen asked, more to fill the silence than to get an answer.
Takeshi's shoulders didn't move. "Legal is a word the people above don't use when they come below."
They reached a junction where three tunnels split. Takeshi chose the narrowest, one that bent sooner than it should have, and didn't attract any kind of attention. The floor changed under their feet - rough stone to metal grate, then to something that felt like solid, rusted steel.
Takeshi stopped before a wall.
To anyone else, it was just a wall where the paint had faded with time.
He rested his live palm against a rectangle of rusty metal no bigger than a book. Under his hand, a thin line of light breathed once, then disappeared.
Somewhere within the wall, a lock woke up. A faint, ominous whirring.
"Before the Wardens..." he said, and his voice carried a different weight now. A history. "Before half the gangs that think they own these halls, a different kind of order trained here. Not good. Not bad. Simply... Useful."
He paused.
"I was part of it, once."
The seam split with a mechanical sigh, and the door slid aside.
Cold air flowed from inside - smooth and sterile, nothing like the Underworks. A shiver crawled down Raizen's spine. Hikari's shoulder brushed his.
Takeshi stepped aside. Not in invitation.
In warning.
"You told me what you want" he said. "This place will ask you what you're willing to lose to get it."
Cold air curled around their ankles.
"Welcome to the Rust Room."