Kori stood barefoot at center of the weaponized combat bay. Two white knives the length of a forearm hung from the ends of a long chain that wound around her wrists like silver vines.
Mina watched from behind her monitors with her arms folded tight, tense.
Raizen and Hikari circled in. Their Luminite weapons pulsed faintly, a heartbeat in metal.
Raizen's grip was lower, better than before, elbows close, footwork clean. Hikari's stance was smaller, efficient.
"You've gotten better these few weeks since your duel with Keahi and Arashi" Kori nodded, voice even. "Your weight is finally where your feet think it is."
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 a funny face. "It matters, I have to admit. At two percent the luminite starts to consider. "
Raizen exhaled. "Then don't hold back. Not with me."
"Top five - no, top tree - 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 hovering over the emergency button.
The first exchange belonged to Raizen and Hikari. They moved better because of the stones. The Luminite in their weapons loved them the way certain instruments love certain hands.
Their swings ended where they meant to end.
Their balance recovered before it needed to.
Two percent looked like crisp edges on the same blade.
Kori let them come. She turned a shoulder and a strike slid past. She lifted a wrist and a chain took Hikari's momentum, tossed it aside.
Her eyes counted, not worried. When Hikari stepped inside, Kori stepped out. When Raizen spun, she had already decided where not to be.
"Stop reading and defending!" Raizen protested, sweat at his temples. "Fight."
"You want the truth of it?" Kori asked.
"I want what is real."
"Very well."
"OH NO-" Mina started.
Raizen literally blinked and Kori wasn't in his field of view anymore. It was not a trick. There was no smoke and no magic, only a movement made faster than his body or eyes could understand.
One arm snared him around his chest in a casual hug.
Cold kissed his throat. One of the white knives were one idea away of cutting his neck. He did not know when he had stopped breathing.
It was the kind of speed that looked more like teleportation.
Kori's chin touched his cheek. She whispered:
"This is my real."
Hikari had not moved. Her eyes were on Kori, then the chain, then the other hand, trying to process what just happened.
Kori let Raizen go and the knife withdrew, chain whispering back across the floor.
"You're lucky" she said, and for once there was something like approval in it. "The stones in your weapons like you. A lot. That does not 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."
"It already does" Kori said. "Two percent is proof. Just keep at it. The rest will come."
Then, she let out a wide grin. "Hey, Mina! Tell them what the machines 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 in a quiet that did not need words. The corridor outside Takeshi's place was the same as always - a cracked tile that clicked underfoot, a door that wouldn't open if you didn't lift a bit as you pushed.
But inside, the table was neat when it shouldn't have been. No bowl out of place. No rag left wrung and forgotten. The workbench was empty, everything tidy and organized.
A single envelope lay at the center, edges squared, paper the color of pure snow.
Their names, Raizen, Hikari, sat on it, in Takeshi's unpracticed hand.
Raizen broke the seal. The letter inside was thick, the folds… Too careful.
He held it between them so they could both see, and he read.
To Raizen and Hikari,
If you are holding this, I was not brave enough to say these words out loud. I will write this the way I live - plain and not pretty. You deserve the truth, not the show.
I have found them. Or as close to them as anyone like me can get.
The Moirai.
I do not know if you will ever see their faces. I hope you do not.
I was not always the man you met. Before the patch and the metal, before the quiet, I was very loud.
I was Takeshi, the errand nobody wanted to chase. People said I was the strongest in the Underworks.
That sounds good in a drunk mouth. It gets you free tea and bad sleep. Back then I thought strength meant arriving first and leaving last. I thought it meant a weapon that knew your grip better than your own fingers did.
I had a family. Read that again if you need to. It is not a word I used often.
A wife who laughed with her whole face and would not let a day end without a joke. A daughter with quick hands and quicker excuses, who swore the cat had learned to open jars.
They... They were my better part. My best part. The only part of me that got soft.
Neoshima once promised that softness could live. When the Nyx attacks were worst, even before the Phalanx, the city built a place under its own bones.
A bunker with beautiful gardens grown under lamps, a map of the city copied below. Thriving factories that supplied everyone with everything they ever needed. People were meant to wait there until the world above stopped dying.
That place is – was, our Underworks.
Time did what it does. The lamps went dimmer. The maps got torn. The people with money forgot the stairs below.
What was meant to shelter us became the place they exiled anyone who made the surface ugly to look at.
The Moirai stepped into that forgetting and learned to control in the dark.
The night my lantern went out, I learned the shape of their hands.
Men with masks came through a door that should not have opened.
I fought. I bled. I lost an eye and a hand. They left me a name to bury. They thought they had done it for me.
But they were wrong. I was still alive, with the price of becoming what's left. For a long time that meant only a list of places where shadows gather and a list of names I could not say without shaking.
Then I met the two of you.
I was not looking for new blood to tend. I was looking for a corner of the room where nobody would ask me if I was still breathing. You did not ask. You assumed I was and told me to teach you how to keep living too. Brave children are a problem. But the truth is that they are also a cure.
I will not lie to you.
Revenge has lived in me so long that I do not know where it ends and I begin.
It's a small animal that eats you from the inside. It does not know what to do with a warm room or a hand on its head. I tried to starve it by drowning myself in work. The work ended up tasting like revenge too.
In the time we have shared, I remembered how a house sounds when people come home at different hours and leave shoes in the wrong place.
I remembered how a table looks with three cups and not one. I remembered that someone can say your name from another room and mean it kindly. For almost a year now, you made me feel like the word "father" could sit in my mouth without choking me.
I am writing now because the same old shadow is back at the door I thought I escaped.
I believe I know where to cut to make it bleed. If I am wrong, the dark will laugh at me and that will be the last sound I hear. If I am right, the dark will still laugh, but it will have less to say.
You will want to follow.
Don't.
I know you think you are obligated to stand in front of the people you care for, when the knives come. I am asking you to stand where you are and don't look back. If you follow me, I will look back, and that will kill me faster than any blade.
I am ashamed to admit this, but I am also relieved I can write it instead of saying it - I am afraid for you.
I have watched men sell everything they ever had for the promise of a cleaner strike. For lifeless limbs. I have watched them come back empty or not at all.
I even saw some that experimented on orphans, implanting pure luminite into the poor children's bodies. You have something I didn't carry when I was your age. You have a reason that is not your own name.
Listen to me, both of you. Eon and Luminite will answer the hand that asks without hate. Power will come whether you earn it or not. If you let revenge teach you how to hold it, it will own you. It will break you. You will wake up one morning and find that you kept nothing but your blade.
Do not become the killers this city tries to make of you. Let your strength be filled with kindness. Let it embarrass the men who call cruelty a plan. If you must cut, cut clean and for the living, not for the ghosts. Keep the world lit. Bring light in the darkest corners.
Hikari, I saw how fast the world wants to move in you. It is a beautiful thing, but a dangerous one, too. Do not let anyone make you believe that being careful is the same as being weak. The stone in your hand chose you. It chose your stubborn gentleness. Keep it.
Raizen, I have watched you fail better than men twice your age succeed. That is a compliment.
You do not throw people overboard to make the boat lighter. Do not start. Protecting is not the same as bleeding for every stranger who asks. Learn the difference without learning to be cold.
I wanted to drag a line through the floor between Neoshima and the Underworks and tell everyone to step over it.
No one would have listened. I understand that now. Lines are not erased with speeches. They are worn away by feet going back and forth until the paint gives up.
If I do not return, wear the line down for me. Teach people to climb the stairs both directions. Keep the world lit.
If you wonder whether I loved you, I will write this once so you do not have to guess. I did. I do. I am not good at saying it and even worse at showing it.
But it is there, in the cups I washed because you forgot, in the stupid way I learned to make noodles because I was concerned you didn't like my horrible stew, in the chair I fixed when you did not know it was broken.
Fatherly love... Is a quiet thing until it is gone. I am sorry I kept it quiet for so long.
I have sharpened the only thing I know how to sharpen. I am going to see if those masks bleed. If they do, the city will breathe easier. If it does not, breathe for it. Keep the world lit.
Live long enough to be kind when it is inconvenient. Live long enough to be happy on purpose. Live long enough to become the people I would have been proud to stand behind.
There is one more thing I should say because men like me pretend it does not matter.
Forgive me if you can. If you cannot, keep walking anyway. Look forward. Forgiveness is a door you do not need to open to leave a room.
And if I do not come back, let that be enough.
I really only have one wish. Purge the shadows without being thirsty for blood. Become strong, so you can help those in need. Bring light into this dark world.
Keep the world lit.
~Takeshi, the one who wished to be called your father