Kori stood barefoot at center of the weaponized combat bay. Two white knives the length of her forearm hung from the ends of a long white chain wrapped around her arms.
Mina watched from behind her monitors with her arms folded tight, tense.
Raizen and Hikari circled in. Their Luminite weapons pulsed faintly.
Raizen's grip was lower, better than before, elbows close, stance flawless.
"You've gotten better these few weeks since your duel with Keahi and Arashi" Kori nodded in approval. "Your weight is finally where it's supposed to be."
Hikari raised a brow "We can draw out a total of two percent multiplier from our weapons now. Like Mina said"
"Two percent and you look this pleased?" Kori said, making an amused face. "It matters, I have to admit. At two percent the luminite starts to consider you. "
Raizen exhaled. "Then don't hold back. Not with me."
"Top five - no, top three - worst decisions you could ever make in your life…" Mina muttered.
Kori's eyes shined for a second. She eased the chains from around her wrists and let them fall to the floor with a sound like coins.
"Mina, relax. I will not do anything that… Uh... Cannot be undone."
"That's not comforting at all" Mina sighed, her hand unconsciously touching the emergency button.
Raizen and Hikari moved better because of the stones.
Their swings ended where they actually meant to end, their balance recovered out of instinct.
Kori let them come. She turned her shoulder and a strike slid past. She lifted a wrist, throwing a knife and a chain effortlessly wrapped around Hikari's staff, and pulled so hard it completely snatched it out of her steady hands.
When Raizen stepped inside her space, Kori stepped out. When he spun, she already lazily drew circles with one of the chained knives.
"Stop defending!" Raizen protested, sweat at his temples. "Fight."
"What do you actually want?" Kori asked, raising her eyebrows.
"I want to see what's real. Don't hold back. I want your real power."
"Very well." Kori smiled.
"OH NO-" Mina shouted.
Raizen literally blinked and Kori wasn't in his field of view anymore. It wasn't a trick. There was no smoke and no magic, only a movement made faster than his body or eyes could understand. Then, he felt something.
One arm wrapped him around his chest in a casual hug. One chin resting on his shoulder. Cold steel kissing his throat. One of the white knives was one idea away of cutting into his neck.
He didn't know when he had stopped breathing.
It was the kind of speed that looked more like teleportation.
Kori's cheek touched his. She whispered right into his ear:
"This is my real."
Hikari hadn't moved. Her eyes were on Kori, then the chain, then on Raizen, trying to process what just happened.
Kori let Raizen go and the knife withdrew, chain dragging back across the floor.
"You're lucky" she said, completely unrelated to what just happened. "The stones in your weapons like you. They resonate nicely. That doesn't really happen often. So don't waste it."
Raizen swallowed, angry at his own surprise and angrier at the part of him that wanted to be impressed. "Then tell me how to make two percent mean something."
"But it already does, obviously!" Kori said. "Two percent is just proof. Just keep at it, and the rest will come."
Then, she let out a wide grin. "Hey, Mina! Tell them what the clankers read on my end, just for reference!"
Mina exhaled, visibly disappointed. "Let me see… 5987% Multiplier… Not your best numbers, Kori... Enough for today, personal advice. Before someone ends up in the walls."
✦ ✦ ✦
They walked home quietly. Not because they didn't have what to say, of course, but because the exhaustion pulled them down. The corridor outside Takeshi's place was the same as always - a cracked tile that clicked underfoot, the door that wouldn't open if you didn't lift a bit as you pushed.
But inside, the table was neater than how they left it. No bowl out of place. No rag left wrung and forgotten, like they usually existed. The workbench was empty, everything tidy and organized.
A single envelope lay at the center, edges squared, paper the color white, like pure snow.
Their names, Raizen, Hikari, sat on it, in Takeshi's elegant handwriting.
Raizen picked it up, and gently broke the seal. The letter inside was thick, with expensive paper, the folds… Too careful.
He slid next to Hikari and held it between them so they could both see.
The letter read:
To Raizen and Hikari,
If you're holding this, I wasn't brave enough to say these words out loud.
So I'll write them the way I live - plain, honest, and not pretty at all. You deserve the truth, not the lies people use to feel less guilty.
I found them. The Moirai. Or as close as a man like me can get.
I don't know if you'll ever see their faces. I hope you never do.
And I don't expect to make it out from this, but I'm… Fine with that. Death isn't the part that scares me. I've seen things from the wrong part of the blade for too many times.
I need you to understand who I was, because you only met what was left.
Before the patch and the metal, before the quiet, I was loud. Fast. Proud in the stupid way young men confuse for strength. People down here even used to say I was the strongest in the Underworks.
That sounds good in drunk mouths. I believed it, too.
Then the world proved how small those thoughts were.
I had a family.
Read that again if you need to. I don't say it often.
A wife who laughed with her whole face and wouldn't let a day end without a joke. A daughter with quick hands and quicker excuses, who sometimes stole pickled plums and swore it was the cat. She even practiced the innocent face in a mirror. Terrible at it.
They were my best part. The only part of me that ever got soft without feeling ashamed.
I couldn't protect them.
That night, I was not fast enough. Not smart enough. Not strong enough. Just a man, bleeding and reaching for something already gone.
The silence after is what I remember most. The way a room can still smell like tea and warm bread while your whole world is missing.
You should know what the Underworks was supposed to be.
When the Nyx attacks were at their worst, before the Phalanx, Neoshima built another city beneath its own bones. A bunker with gardens grown under lamps. Stores, workshops, power lines - everything meant to keep people alive until the world above stopped dying.
That place was - is - our Underworks.
But time did what it always does. The lamps got dimmer. The maps got torn. The people with money forgot the stairs. What was meant to shelter us became the place they threw anything that made the surface ugly. Outcasts. Fighters. The loud, the poor, the inconvenient.
The Moirai – powerful families with assassin origins - stepped into that forgetting and wore it like a crown. Men with masks came through doors that shouldn't have opened, and only silence remained after.
Finally, my door, too. I fought. I bled. I lost an eye and a hand. They left me names to bury.
They thought that would end me.
I stayed alive. The price was becoming what was left.
Revenge lived in me so long I stopped knowing where it ended and I began. It's like a small animal that eats you from the inside. It doesn't know what to do in a warm room. It doesn't understand laughter. And it can never satisfy its hunger.
Then I found the two of you in the dirt.
I wasn't looking for anyone to care about. All I wanted was a quiet corner where nobody would ask me what I was hunting next.
But without meaning to, I remembered things.
I remembered how a house sounds when people come home at different hours and leave things in the wrong places. How a table looks with three cups, not just one. How someone can say your name from another room without spite. How laughter sounds when it isn't followed by wounds.
So listen. Because these are the parts that matter.
You will want to follow me.
Don't.
Not because you're weak. But because if you follow, I will look back. And the second I look back, I die faster.
I have watched men sell everything for a cleaner strike. For implants. For power they didn't understand. I have seen people experiment on orphans like spare parts. Power will come whether you earn it or not. That's the danger.
If you let revenge teach you how to hold it, one day you'll wake up and realize you kept nothing but your blade.
You don't beat darkness by becoming it. You beat it by staying upright while it tries to make you fall.
Hikari - I saw how fast the world tries to move you. Don't let anyone convince you that being careful is the same as being weak. A steady hand ends more nightmares than a powerful one.
Raizen - I watched you fail better than men twice your age succeed. Take that as a compliment. And listen to this, because you'll hate it: protecting isn't the same as bleeding for every stranger who asks. You don't throw yourself overboard to make the boat lighter. Learn the difference.
If I don't return, here is what I ask.
Keep the world lit.
Teach people to climb the stairs both ways. Wear down the line between above and below, not with speeches, but with feet going both directions, every day, on purpose.
If you can spare a life, do it. If you can't, don't be proud for stealing it. Live long enough to be kind when it's inconvenient. Live long enough to be happy for no specific reason.
If you wonder whether I loved you, I'll write it once so you don't have to guess.
I did. I do.
It's there in the cups I washed because you forgot. In the chair I fixed when you didn't know it was broken. In the stupid way I learned to make noodles because I noticed my horrible stew wasn't eaten by me alone.
I'm sorry I kept it quiet for so long.
Now I'm going to see if those masks bleed.
Forgive me if you can. If you can't, don't look back.
Keep the world lit.
~ Takeshi, the one who wished to be called your father.