The door gave its usual tired click, and the Underworks came in with them. Obi slipped through first, with his usual mocking spirit hidden.
Hikari followed, one hand on the small of the compact black case.. Raizen came last and shut the door with more care than it needed.
Takeshi was at the bench, doing... He knew what. Sleeves rolled. Shoulder loose.
A driver lay near his left hand and the prosthetic's forearm panel sat beside it, arm itself resting on a cloth, covering something.
As they stepped in, his flesh hand hid it inside a pocket.
"Welcome back" he said, and the relief was there without being performed. "Any trouble?"
"Define trouble" Obi said, grinning too quickly.
Raizen didn't say a word, and placed the sidearm on his workbench and then sat on the floor, with a thoughtful look on his face. He could still feel its weight ghosting along his forearm where he'd rolled it.
He flexed his fingers. They obeyed. Good. He was not a weapon. Not always.
Hikari set the case on the table. The room seemed to lean toward it.
Obi got impatient. "Permission to ruin the suspense?"
Hikari nodded, then startled a little at herself, as if her throat could never work.
Obi slid the case toward him. He didn't want to wait any longer, so he quite literally cracked the lock open. He tipped the lid.
Light didn't pour out. It looked like it gathered from inside.
Nestled in dark foam were two gems. One was a pale yellow sphere, glass-smooth, with something like a thread of golden lighting locked in glass.
The other was a crescent of blue, thin as a shard and curved, taking the shape of a beautiful crescent moon. The color of cold water lit from within.
Both of them held light instead of reflecting it; the light breathed in slow, patient pulses.
Nobody spoke. Even Obi shut up. Rare, but even his jaw dropped.
Raizen leaned in. The yellow caught his attention. A quiet recognition. Hikari's fingers hovered over the blue crescent and the light, impossibly, seemed to brighten like a cat deciding a particular lap was safe.
Takeshi was the first to move. He didn't touch them. He didn't have to.
"Luminite…" he said softly, and for the first time the word sounded like something he knew too well.
Obi's smile snapped back, wider and realer than anything he'd worn since the Maw. He clapped once, then choked the sound into his sleeve.
"Okay. Okay. I know I said I don't cry, but-" He pointed, reverent. "Sphere wants to sit in a socket. Blade core for sure. Blue crescent… Hilt spine? Or a channel. Or - no, listen - A spear. Or a staff."
He realized he was talking too fast and apologized quickly.
"Calm down" Hikari giggled. Her eyes were on the crescent. "We'll get to that part too… Eventually…"
Obi bounded to the door. "I'm getting Louissa. Nobody breathes on these until Granny says you're allowed to exist near them."
"Obi-" Takeshi began.
But the young smith was already halfway down the hall, the door banging behind him, his laughter echoing like a promise he meant to keep.
Takeshi stood up, gently. He poured tea. This kind was different from all others. It had a more exotic fragrance. The steam put a little life back in the air. He set a cup by Raizen's hand and pushed it a bit closer. "Don't even tell me what happened. You did what you had to."
Raizen didn't look up. "What if that becomes who I am?"
Takeshi took his own cup, left it untouched. "Then you learn when to put it down. Or kill it."
"The Rust Room built it" Raizen said. He hated how small the words sounded. "It built a… weapon."
Takeshi's mouth tugged in a way that wasn't quite a smile. "Weapons do what hands tell them. You're not lost, Raizen. You're sharpened. It's not the same."
Hikari's shoulder touched Raizen's for the briefest time, a ghost of a lean. "You saved me" she whispered, very simply, so only he could hear. "That is… not lost."
His breath shook once. After that, it stopped.
The door swung in and Obi came through it like a storm of good intentions, Louissa behind.
"Before you say anything" Obi announced, "I didn't lick the gems."
"No one was going to accuse you" Louissa said, already stepping to the table, already seeing everything there was to see. She took one look at the sphere and crescent and her face did a peculiar softening - respect first, then something like old affection.
"Ah" she said. "You were lucky."
"Skilled" Obi corrected. "Unbelievably skilled."
"Lucky" Louissa repeated, eyes still on the gems. She reached into her basket and brought out a strip of woven cloth, old and clean. She laid it beside the case. "May I?"
Everyone nodded at the same time.
Louissa lifted the yellow sphere with the cloth, not skin, and held it up to the lamp. It woke brighter, as if it had been waiting to be invited, and a faint honey-colored halo hummed along her fingers.
"Purity's nice" she said. "Pretty high. It'll answer a strong body without burning it away. It wants heat, yes, but it won't be bossed by it."
She set it down, picked up the blue crescent in the same careful way. The light inside it rippled - like a pond's answer to a thrown pebble.
"And this?" she said with a small, pleased exhale, "Is rarer in this shape. Good for control. It listens more than it shouts. Blade or staff, spear… this beauty can handle multiple fronts at a time ."
Obi nodded so hard his curls nearly leapt off. "I said staff! I literally said staff! Granny, tell them I said staff."
"Obi said staff..." Louissa sighed gravely. "The world is improved by the record."
Then her voice turned a tone Raizen had only ever heard when she'd reached over a flame to move a pot with her bare hands. "Now listen to the warning you came here to collect without knowing you came."
They listened.
"With Luminite, you don't just make a weapon" Louissa said. "You let it help you. Where you cut with it, your path will open. Where you refuse to cut, it will close. And most wicked of all - if you let the gem teach you only the parts of yourself that hurt, it will carve you to that shape and keep carving."
"Hmm..."
"Luminite will amplify whatever you already are. So decide who you are before you draw it." She went on, folding the cloth back over the stones.
"Take them. Use them. But choose very carefully how you're going to use them. Rage obeys quickly, yes. So does fear. Courage, patience and hope are slower. But it holds thousands of times more."
The word hope hung there. Raizen could feel it - small, stubborn, unwilling to leave.
"We need sockets" Obi said, already moving again, hands sketching lines the air was kind enough to keep for him.
"Temper baths. I'll pull the ore slag from the last batch and start fresh. We'll bring steel that sings names back to them. Grip scales for him, balance and speed. For her… Hmm…"
"We'll decide later" Hikari interrupted his thinking
Takeshi had said very little, and yet everything he needed had been heard. He reached to the bench, closed the prosthetic's panel with a practiced snap, and flexed the fingers.
Whirr, lock, release. Behind him, under his desk now, the rag where he'd hidden the object in cloth sat innocently. No one looked. It was fine. Hidden.
Hikari's palm hovered over the crescent again. The light inside it answered like the first time.
Raizen put one finger from his two hands near the sphere and felt warmth climb his arm - not heat, not burn - just the sense of waking muscles and small shock.
He was still afraid of what he had been in the Maw. But this? This felt like choosing.
Obi clapped his hands once, a smith's prayer disguised as impatience. "I'll start at dawn. And when I say dawn, I mean as soon as I wake up. I'll clear the forge, bribe the fan, kick the soot out of the flue, and tell the anvil to mind its posture."
"Tell it twice" Takeshi said, deadpan.
"Oh, I always do! You know me" Obi sketched a bow, which somehow, on him, looked like swagger trying to behave. Then he sobered, for just a breath.
"You two bring yourselves rested. I can hammer out metal. I can't hammer out sleep. Or maybe I can... Dunno! Never triedhammering my sleept customers!"
Hikari smiled at him, small and grateful.
They didn't open the case again. The light leaked through the seam anyway, just a little, like dawn sneaking through a curtain.
And somewhere beneath the bench, hidden under a folded rag, an old, red gem waited - the shape of a secret Takeshi wasn't finished telling.