Theo stopped burning eventually.
There wasn't much left of him that was recognizable. Ornn stood over what remained, the Sake Heart Steel ingot warm in his hand, and pressed his palm to it one final time.
[Sake Heart Steel with Devil's Power — 5/5]
The information settled in his mind like a completed sentence.
He looked at the ingot. The steel had darkened during the process — not in quality, but in character, the way old iron darkens with use. Something in its grain had changed. It felt heavier than its weight accounted for.
He wrapped it carefully and pocketed it. Took the key ring from the hook on the wall without looking back at the floor.
The factory's lower level held the craftsmen's cells — a long row of them, iron-barred, smelling of coal dust and too many bodies in too small a space. The faces that looked up at him when he arrived were the faces of people who had learned not to hope too hard at sudden changes.
He didn't make a speech. He unlocked the first cell, handed the keys to the man nearest the door, and said: "Get everyone out. There's a cargo ship at the dock. Get on it and go — don't stop, don't look back."
The man stared at him.
"Now," Ornn added.
The keys changed hands. He left them to it.
His workshop was where he'd left it — forge cooling, the familiar smell of carbon and hot metal. He took the hand hammer from the rack and hung it at his belt. It had been a good hammer. He'd earned it.
He scooped the remaining coal dust and carbon ash into his arms, as much as he could carry, and walked out.
The craftsmen were streaming toward the dock in a disorganized flood, some of them still not fully believing it, most of them past the point of questioning free exits. Ornn moved against the current, toward the back of the factory complex, until he found the door he was looking for.
The gunpowder magazine. Reinforced door, decent lock.
The hammer dealt with both in three strikes.
Inside: barrels. Rows of them, packed tight, the particular sweet-acrid smell of gunpowder that he associated with nothing good and considerable destructive potential. He stood in the doorway for a moment and thought about the weapons factory — the forge he'd been chained to, the warden's whip, the food that was never enough, seven days of hammering toward something that was finally, finally ready.
He thought about Kaido, sitting somewhere on this island in his throne, completely unaware that one of his craftsmen had just become something considerably more inconvenient.
"I hope you enjoy the gift, Teacher," he said quietly, in the tone of a student presenting work to a particularly unworthy instructor.
He scattered the carbon ash in a long, careful line — from the base of the nearest barrel, out through the magazine door, along the corridor, through the factory gate, out into the open air. A fuse of his own making, slow enough to give him the distance he needed.
He walked until the math was comfortable.
Turned. Flicked his fingers.
A small bead of magma arced through the air and landed on the near end of the carbon line.
The fire moved like it had somewhere to be.
He was already walking toward the shore when the island shook.
The explosion came up through his feet first, then through his chest, then the sound arrived — a concussive roll that swept out across the water and bounced off nothing. Behind him, a column of smoke and fire climbed above the factory's roofline, and a small, precise mushroom cloud opened against the night sky.
Ornn didn't look back. He'd already said his goodbye.
The shore was quiet when he reached it. The cargo ship was pulling away from the dock — craftsmen visible at the rail, the vessel riding higher than it should because it was carrying people instead of ore. Moving steadily away from Onigashima into the dark.
Behind the reef, where he'd positioned it two days ago, the small wooden escape boat waited in the shadow of the rocks.
He stepped onto it and picked up the oars.
From the direction of the torii gate came the sound of Yamato's combat — then, abruptly, the explosion registered on that end of the island too, and everything went briefly quiet before the shouting resumed.
A minute later she came down the beach at a dead sprint, mane wild, tail sweeping behind her, and pulled up short when she saw him.
"The ship—"
"Not ours." He nodded toward the boat. "This is."
She looked at the small wooden boat. Looked at the cargo ship diminishing in the distance. Looked back at the boat.
She jumped in.
Ornn put his back into the oars.
He'd raced dragon boats in his previous life — summer competitions on a river that no longer existed for him, his team's rhythm worn into his shoulders like a groove. The muscle memory came back easily. The oars bit the water in long, clean strokes, and the little boat moved with surprising purpose.
He kept pace with the cargo ship without appearing to chase it. From a distance, in poor light, through binoculars: a large vessel full of escaped craftsmen going one direction, and a lone shirtless man rowing a small boat going another. No sign of Yamato on either.
He heard the Beasts Pirates reaching the shore — the organized noise of a force trying to make decisions under pressure. Through the dark he could imagine the binoculars going up, the confusion, the arguments about which target to pursue.
They split. Two groups went for the ships. One went back to report to Kaido.
Good enough, Ornn thought, and kept rowing.
When the lights of Onigashima had shrunk to a dull orange smear on the horizon, Yamato unfolded herself from the bottom of the boat and sat up.
She was quiet for a while, watching the water. The smoke behind them was still visible — a dark column against the stars, the factory's obituary written in ash.
"Why not the big ship?"
Ornn kept rowing.
"The craftsmen needed it more than we did."
Yamato turned that over. He could see her working through it — not the obvious part, but the other part. The part she'd half-formed and stopped herself from finishing.
"You let them use it to..." She trailed off again.
"Draw attention? Yes."
Her expression shifted — not quite hurt, but something adjacent to it.
"How can you—"
"Think about what happens to them if they don't get on that ship." Ornn's voice was even. Not cold, but not soft either. "Your father's craftsmen who ran during an attack on his base. What does Kaido do with that?"
Yamato didn't answer.
"They were going to be hunted regardless. The ship gives them a chance — a real one, not a good one, but real. I put them on the water instead of leaving them on that island. What they do with the distance is up to them." He let the oars rest for a stroke. "I used them. I'm not going to pretend I didn't. But I also gave them the best option available."
"Kozuki Oden wouldn't have—"
"I know."
That stopped her.
Ornn looked at her steadily across the dark water.
"Oden danced. Half-naked, in public, for five years under Orochi — and the world called him a fool for it. His own people called him that." A pause. "You've spent fourteen years trying to become someone who's been dead for over two decades. Someone whose choices — whose specific choices — got him killed." He wasn't being cruel. He was being careful, the way you're careful with something that matters. "I'm not saying he was wrong to be who he was. I'm saying you don't have to measure every decision against a dead man's compass."
The boat moved quietly through the water.
Yamato stared at him. The tail had gone still.
"That's..." She stopped. Started again. "That's not something anyone has ever said to me."
"I know."
The stars were very clear out here, away from Onigashima's fires. The ocean spread wide and dark and full of everything that came next.
Ornn picked up the oars again.
"Oden was Oden," he said. "You're Yamato. Figure out what that means."