--- Takeshi's POV ---
Ialways thought being sharp would be enough.
Sharp opens doors. Sharp keeps choices small and obedient. Sharp feels like truth because it cuts.
I wore that like my most precious coat. I measured my life by what fell when my knife cut. I called that strength.
It was not. It was a hollow space filled by shallow victories.
I can laugh at that now - at my own expense. I confused a finished noise with a finished life.
The room here has learned to be quiet. Black walls. Broken red lines. Shards where fake white smiling masks pretended to be faces.
Plates in my arm ease by degrees, as I kept sitting, leaning on a wall.
Under my ribs a line burns, then cools, then burns again. The blood slowly pouring out is dark, purple-ish, even.
My legs feel like concrete.
None of it surprises me. I have watched endings from the other side of them long enough not to be shocked by my own.
Revenge is a small animal. It eats you from the inside. If you feed it long enough, it learns your anger better than you do.
It keeps you walking when sleep is deserved. It makes any door look like a target as long as pain waits behind it. It wears whatever name it must to be let in: Duty. Rebellion. Debt...
It shivers in warm rooms because it doen't belong there.
I fed it. I fueled it. It followed me here and did what it always wanted to do.
There was a time I thought that made me honest. At least I didn't pretend. At least I didn't lie. At least I didn't wrap hatred in beautiful packaging .
But you can be honest and still be wrong. You can be relentless and still be worthless.
There are people I see as clearly as if they were here, in front of my blurry eyes.
A boy with a heart that refuses to trade kindness for power. Anger that would rather break its own teeth than bite.
He will spmetimes fail. But he will fail until failure has nowhere to live near him, and only perfection can replace that space.
He will stand where he is and protect. He will hate that it's s slow. But he'll do it anyway. When the ruthless call him soft, he will keep going. When victory is quiet and no one claps, he will keep going.
I just know that.
Then there's the girl who did not ask to be forged and learned to be careful anyway. Silence that hides mercy, not emptiness. She will be fast but still there when it counts.
She will learn the line between careful and afraid, and stand on the right side of it. That is a more difficult victory than any I ever finished.
I... I should have told them these things first. I wrote instead. Ink holds steadier than my voice. Paper doesn't mind when the truth arrives out of order.
Raizen, Hikari... Do not let your hands decide a life is cheap just because it is in reach. If you can win without taking a life, do that.
Cut the rope, not the throat. Break the weapon, not the one holding it. Every death costs the one who deals it.
It takes pieces you cannot get back. Even when you are right. Even when no one sees.
Spare more than I did. Leave room in the world for someone to change.
If you must end a life... Don't celebrate it. Don't make it a story you tell to feel taller. Carry the living forward instead.
Let mercy be the habit that outlives you.
There are enemies you can turn into people again.
Ateast try before you cut. I believed sharp was strength. But strength is knowing how not to use it.
Names keep rising and settling in my mind.
Louissa, who can seat chaos at the table and make it speak softly.
Obi, who turns scrap into shape and pretends not to care if anyone judges.
Kori, old friend. Strongest soul... And most merciful...
If there would be a perfect family... In my eyes, this is the one.
The hall behind me will be less hungry for whoever comes after. I just hope that will be enough.
Speaking of hope…
Hope used to feel like a trick for people who didn't know how to reach their goals.
Then I watched a copy city copy itself under its own bones and call it shelter.
Then I watched "forgetting" move in like a parasite. After that, I watched two children walk into the worst of it and insist on being themselves.
Hope survived that.
So I will say it plain.
Hope is not a story you tell yourself to sleep.
Hope is a hand that finds yours in the dark and doesn't let go even when it is tired.
Hope is a burning match that somehow stays dry.
Hope is the will to keep the world lit, one corner at a time, until the darkness runs out of corners.
The poison moves like a deadly thought. Warm and painful inside, cold and unnoticed outside. My steel arm hums one last time, then agrees to rest. The red glow is completely gone now.
I am not afraid. I have mistaken silence for safety before. It's not that.
This is… What finishing something, something big, something that we call...
Finishing a life.
There are things I want for them that I never thought to want for myself.
I want the boy to see the day he doesn't have to choose between being good and being strong.
I want someone to say his name from another room and mean it kindly.
I want him to hold a weight and feel it lift not because he let it down, but because others reached in and took their share.
I want someone stubborn to stand beside the girl.
I want her warmth to be seen not as a weakness, but as mercy.
I want her to discover that she can keep the blade and still set it down without hurting anyone.
I want their shadows to be taller than their enemies.
I want the want the world to be kinder because of them.
I want their laughter to arrive in rooms where people had forgotten what laughter sounded like.
Throughout my entire life, I've been called many things.
Killer.
Ghost.
Even strongest in the Underworks.
But none of those had room for laughter. None had room for being called "father" and not get followed by weird looks.
But there is a kind of peace people do not talk about because it doesn't sell joyful songs or stories of mighty heroes. It doesn't sell anything at all.
It's not loud. It's not the victory men try to hold up and make immortal.
It's the quiet that arrives when you put your last tool down and the job is truly finished in your hands.
It's the breath you don't realize you have been holding for years.
It's the way the room looks the same and but doesn't feel the same.
I can understand that now.
I know where I am going, there's only one path. A very straight one. I used to laugh at men who said the same thing.
If this is the last thing I learn, I am thankful. If the last thing I did was get rid of a hungry shadow for the people I love, I am thankful.
Breath goes out and comes back and goes out again, less and less. The room stays quiet.
If I could leave one last thing, it wouldn't be a weapon. That wouldn't help them too much.
It would be this: The decision to forgive when someone's life is in your hands
The choice to build without needing to be seen.
The habit of aiming higher than you expect and then higher again.
The refusal to let the world talk you out, or forcing you not to be kind.
In the darkness behind my eyes, the one growing bigger, swallowing my vision...
The lantern I thought had gone out is waiting.
Waiting for me.
The room fell still.
The man who kept the world lit finally ran out of light.
And above this darkness...
A new vow was starting to forge the brightest spark the world has ever seen.