The Underworks had a way of swallowing sound. Tonight it did more than that. It chewed on it and left only a metallic aftertaste.
Pipes sweated along the ceiling, dripping into a crooked line of buckets someone had laid beneath the leaks. Somewhere deeper, a generator coughed and then caught, a sick animal trying to remember how to breathe. The market stalls that never truly closed had their shutters half down, their lanterns stained with smoke. People moved softer, eyes on the ground, as if loud footsteps might wake something that preferred to sleep.
Takeshi sat alone at a scarred wooden table outside the Rust Room.
The pistol from Marcus was all edges and patience, a compact predator resting in his palm. When he slid the rag over the slide, the seam where metal met something finer gleamed for a heartbeat and then went dull again. A faint hum lived inside the thing, like an annoying mosquito only he could hear. He thumbed the magazine release, checked the feed, pressed the mag back in until it clicked. His left arm, the mechanical one, worked with quiet, sure movements, each finger adjusting the angle of the gun by small degrees. He held it tightly, like he was fearing that it would disappear from his hands.
He breathed through his nose. In. Out. In. The air smelled like citrus and something sharper. It pulled him back to nights that did not exist anymore. A kitchen lantern. Two small bowls on a wooden floor. Laughter. His daughter stealing pickled plums and swearing it was the cat. His wife's hands, stained with tea, and a huge smile across her face.
The lantern had gone out that night and never come back.
Footsteps approached, not hiding themselves. No shuffle, no swagger. Just forward. Takeshi did not look up.
Raizen stopped a respectful distance away. The boy had grown broader across the shoulders from the weeks in the pit. The Rust Room did that. It fed you more than your own limits and asked if you wanted seconds. Raizen had said yes more often than he should have. His dirty blond hair grew over time, tied at the back of his head.
He cleared his throat. Waited. When Takeshi did not offer an opening, he made one.
"I thought Marcus kept that pistol locked," Raizen said. No accusation. Just a line cast into deep water.
"He liked to think he does," Takeshi said.
Raizen shifted his weight. "You planning to take a trip I should know about?"
Takeshi set the rag down, turned the pistol sideways, and checked the sight again. "Planning to clean a tool that needs it."
"Tools are for jobs," Raizen said.
"Sharp eyes," Takeshi answered. He glanced past the boy into the hallway.
The sounds from outside stitched a steady line through the silence.
"People are talking," Raizen finally opened his mouth. "About the Moirai."
"People talk when they are bored or afraid. Sometimes both."
"You believe they exist."
Takeshi rotated the pistol, pressed the slide, listened to the sound it made. Clean.
"I believe in results. I believe in acts."
Takeshi's left hand paused. The rag held still. He did not lift his eyes.
The lantern goes out, he thought. Not because the wind took it. Because someone wanted the dark.
He set the pistol down carefully and folded the rag twice. When he spoke, the words came out level.
"I think men with masks came through a door that should not have opened," he said. "I think they walked past the old dog without waking him. I think they moved like a memory and left like a secret. They came to show they could. They came to silence the voice that wanted freedom"
Raizen's jaw tightened. He had that way of getting angry that made him quiet.
"You were there," he said.
"Yes."
"You fought."
"I bled," Takeshi said. His thumb hovered above the place where the metal of his arm met skin. "I bled a lot. They took my eye and my left."
"The eyepatch," Raizen said softly.
"A reminder does not heal you," Takeshi answered. "It teaches you not to forget."
Raizen stepped closer to the edge of the table. His eyes flicked to the gun and back. "If they are what the whispers say, if they are untouchable, you cannot go alone."
Takeshi's mouth curved, a line that did not reach his eyes. "You should tell the sea not to be wet while you are at it."
"I am serious," Raizen said.
"So am I."
Silence took a chair with them. The generator coughed again. Water ticked in the buckets.
Raizen tried another angle. "Granny says the Moirai are a story people use to explain what they cannot stop. Maybe they are a mask for a dozen groups. Maybe they are smoke."
"Maybe," Takeshi said. "Maybe I put my blade in the smoke and find the hand holding it up."
"You want me to ask you to let me come," Raizen said. "You want me to force it, so you can refuse and make it simple."
Takeshi met his eyes for the first time. The boy saw more than most. That was going to be a problem for him later. Or it would save him. It was hard to tell which.
"This is my mission," Takeshi said. "My blood, my fight. The debt is written in my handwriting. I cannot ask you to sign it."
Raizen's fingers curled. He had not yet learned the comfort of a lie, and Takeshi did not want him to learn it. "Fine. But I won't forget you if you die"
Takeshi got up, and started walking towards Louissa's. He whispered, to himself. Raizen's ears did not catch it. "I wish I could say that I don't need your forgiveness…"
They silently arrived at Louissa's small room. Obi and Hikari went to the market to get whatever Granny sent them after.
"Boy," she said to Raizen, not taking her gaze from Takeshi. "Fetch the kettle. The strong leaves. And the small cups."
Raizen hesitated. She did not repeat herself. He went.
When he had gone, Louisa pulled the stool closer and sat. The old wood protested and then accepted her.
"I am not your conscience," she said, conversational, like discussing the price of noodles. "If I were, you would not listen anyway."
"True," Takeshi said.
"I remember you before the patch," she went on. "A fast one. Too proud to be careful. Good at leaving without saying goodbye. Bad at coming back the same shape you left."
Takeshi did not answer.
"I have also seen boys who took on battles that were not theirs," she said. "They got taller. Their shadows did not.
He almost smiled. "You are letting me decide I am wrong without calling me it."
"I am letting you hear your own reasons out loud," Louisa said. "Sometimes the echo tells you something the voice did not."
Raizen returned with a battered kettle and three cups that did not match. Steam braided above the spout. The smell of the strong leaves was a promise and a warning.
Louisa poured for Takeshi first. His left took the cup without spilling. He did not drink yet.
Raizen remained standing. "If you go," he said, "and you do not come back, no one will even know which door to knock on. They will say the Moirai took another rumor. That is not a better ending than the one you are writing."
Takeshi watched the steam rise. In it, the kitchen lantern returned for a second. His sister's finger pressed to her lips, daring him to laugh. His mother's hand pushing hair from his eyes. His father's quiet hum as he checked the latch at night.
The steam unwound and was gone.
"I am not writing an ending," Takeshi said. "I am cutting out a sentence that should not have been there."
Louisa sipped her tea. "Be precise then," she said. "Imprecise cuts bleed longer."
He finished his cup in two swallows. It burned in a way that told him he was still made of flesh somewhere.
Raizen put his cup down untouched. "I will not ask to come," he said. It cost him something to say it. "But I will not pretend to be asleep."
Takeshi stood. The chair legs barked against the stone and then were silent. He slid the pistol deeper under his coat. He looked at Raizen and found the boy's stubborn light almost funny. He looked at Louisa and found her patience like a wall someone had painted to look like a garden.
"I have been many things," he said. "Good at very few of them. I can be good at this one."
Louisa nodded as if he had told her the market was out of rice. "Old bones do not chase. They wait and listen. If you come back, I will still be here to hear the parts you want to say."
"And if I do not come back?" Takeshi wanted to say, but the thought was stuck in his throat. He turned toward the corridor.
Raizen followed him to the doorway. He did not touch his arm. Neither did he talk.
He took two steps into the corridor. The Underworks exhaled. He could feel the map of the tunnels under his feet, the way a blind man feels the shape of a room with his knuckles. He would take the north run first. Through the pipes that sang, across the broken grate, up the short ladder with the rungs too far apart. He had walked that path so many times in his head that the floor had memorized him.
He paused.
It was a small thing. A catch in the rhythm of a man who usually moved like music.
Raizen saw it. Louisa did too, though she pretended to press a wrinkle from her shawl.
Takeshi's face did not change much. The corner of his mouth softened, a notch that could have been tiredness. His eyes went far for a heartbeat and then returned. The look was not fear and not quite doubt. It was the weight of a name said only in dreams.
Then the notch was gone. His covered by his cloak again.
He lifted his collar against the wet and walked into the noise. The corridor accepted him, and the Underworks swallowed the edges of his coat as if it had been cut to fit the dark. Raizen stood in the doorway until the sound of footsteps vanished.
In the hall, the generator coughed once and settled. Water counted something only it understood in the buckets. The Rust Room's ropes swayed a finger's width and then were still.
The city breathed. Somewhere, the dark thought it was alone.
Takeshi kept walking.
At the end of the corridor he paused. For the first time that night he glanced back. His cloak hid his mouth, but his eyes betrayed him - carrying a weight heavier than steel, older than scars. They spoke of nights that would never return, of faces long gone.
The door groaned shut, and the shadows kept his silence.