The forge was cold.
The anvil looked larger when it wasn't used.
Raizen sat on a low stool with his forearms on his knees, Luminite blade across his thighs. Hikari was right behind him, leaning on his back.
Her fingers held the edge of a cloth pouch, holding a shard of a white mask.
Neither spoke.
Obi was aimlessly walking around the room.
"He knew" Obi said finally, to the air. "He knew and he walked out anyway."
No one answered.
Obi stopped and went on. "He could have told me. A word. A look. An "Hey Obi, I am going." Anything. Do you know what it feels to wake up in a room and knowing they chose to make you find an empty chair!? He was not alone. He made himself that way."
Raizen lifted his head.
Obi's mouth kept moving. "He taught me which hammer to use by watching how my wrist set, and he couldn't tell me he was going to fight twenty men who make knives fly with their minds? He thought I would be in the way, is that it? He thought I would break the distraction by breathing too loud? What the hell!?"
"Obi." Raizen cut him off
The blacksmith raked a hand through his hair and left it there. The line between his eyebrows deepened. "No. Let me be angry for one minute, Raizen. Let me have the minute he took."
Raizen stood, one blade still across his palms. He set it on the workbench, gently. Then he faced Obi and stepped into the space between words.
"He knew you would follow" he said.
Obi blinked. "And?"
"And that would have killed him faster." Raizen did not raise his voice. The new line in his face did not come from anger.
"I understand why he left us out. I wanted to be there too. As much as you did. Maybe even more."
"Oh! So we just sit here and be clever about it after he's gone, huh?"
"No." Raizen held his eyes. The forge light put a faint sheen on his cheekbones. The cut at the corner of his mouth had healed into a pale mark that made him look older.
"We stand where we are and carry it forward. That was the choice he couldn't make. That's what he wanted us to do."
Obi's protest returned, smaller. "He should have let me try…"
Hikari looked up from the white shard. Her eyes were steady.
"Takeshi believed your life is not something to uselessly spend" she said. "That is why he didn't ask."
Obi turned his head away, jaw clenched. He picked up a small hammer just to put it down again. "I hate that it makes sense."
Raizen closed his hand once, then opened it. "He left a better world. We don't let it go to waste."
Obi looked at him then - stared, really.
Something in the boy's posture had changed since the night of the letter. Straighter, stronger.
The change lived lower, like a weight had moved and finally found its place.
"You sound like him" Obi mumbled.
"I don't want to sound like him" Raizen said. "I want to honor him. That's different."
A soft knock came at the door and then opened without waiting for an answer.
Louissa stepped into the room. She wore a shawl that made her look even smaller.
"It is done"
Obi's fingers curled. Raizen's chin dipped once, a slight nod.
Louissa looked at each of them, one at a time.
"Every trace of the Moirai is gone" she said. "Their door, their masks, their little red lights, everything. They're all dead."
Obi's voice came out like a metal pipe dropped on a stone floor. "Takeshi, too."
Louissa didn't soften her mouth to make the truth comfortable. "He did what men like him do best."
Obi moved as if to leave the room, stopped, and stayed. The hammer's handle had left a smear of black on his palm. He wiped it on his new black pants.
Hikari's gaze tracked a curl of metal shaving that lay on the floor near her foot.
When she spoke, her voice was small.
"He did what he believed only he could do" she said. "He was wrong about that. But I'm glad he finally made his dream come true."
Louissa nodded. "He was stubborn. It kept him alive longer than it should have. And killed him sooner than we wanted. Most strengths are like that."
Obi swiped at his face with the heel of his hand, hard enough to hurt.
"Was he…" he started, then did not finish.
Louissa's eyes moved to a far place.
"He left with his jaw set and ended with his mouth softened" she said. "That is enough of an answer for me."
No one tried to make a joke. No one tried to turn grief into a lesson. This kind of silence held people together.
Louissa took one step closer to Raizen and Hikari. "Listen to me now" she said gently. "A thing ends. We honor it by deciding what begins."
Obi let out an annoyed breath. "Begin what!?"
It was not defiance. It was a real question asked by someone whose hands needed a shape.
Louissa tipped her head at Raizen's blade on the bench, at the pouch in Hikari's hand, at the cold forge waiting. "You have a path whether you like it or not. You two have trained a lot. Now you know what you can do. Approximately. You have learned to pull two percent of the right kind of power and not let it burn you. People like me and Kori have watched your center move to where it belongs."
Hikari's fingers stilled. "Are we ready…?" she asked, not out of pride, but out of respect for the question.
"Not quite, but close to as ready as anyone could get" Louissa answered. "The Lotus Academy asks for perfection. It asks for endurance and the willingness to be better than everyone else."
Then she let out a small grin:
"That's in the first phase. Until you join a Vanguard branch"
Obi snorted, smile finally returning to his dumb face. "They're going to break your favorite rules, gran"
Louissa's smile was now even wider. "They already have. But some rules are simply made to be broken."
Obi wiped his hands again, this time on a clean rag he found in a drawer. He looked at Raizen and, for the first time since he had paced the first triangle, the line between his eyebrows eased.
"If you need a blade rebalanced, you bring it now" he said. "I ain't letting you stand in a place that judges without perfect steel."
Raizen nodded once. "Thanks"
Louissa moved to the door and paused with her hand on the frame. "One more thing" she said without turning. "When you walk in there, don't forget that mercy is a kind of strength. Your time there might try to teach you otherwise."
"So uh... Be impolite and refuse the lesson!!" Obi's smile came back.
Raizen stuck a finger in his ear. "Alright, Obi... No need to shout"
Hikari's profile held the smallest nod.
Outside, the Underworks got ready for another morning. A cart wheel squeaked past.
The city did not stop. It never could. People had learned to move inside of it, no matter what.
Louissa stepped out into the hall. Over her shoulder, to the three figures, she added a last line:
"You are ready. Not because you are strong. Because you are just at the beginning."
Raizen picked up the blades again. Hikari tied the pouch back to her hip.
Obi leaned, lit from below, putting coal on the first fire of the day, and with a grand smile on his face, he said:
"I think... You're ready. I mean, ready enough!"