Days Later
Elysium was not whole.
It breathed, though.
The once perfect golden avenues were split and veined, patches of new light knitting broken masonry together. Scaffolds of solid radiance climbed shattered arches. Angels moved along them like careful surgeons, setting beams of inscription and singing quiet repairs into place. Some segments of sky were still raw and bruised, but others had begun to heal, clouds drifting through cracks that would one day be sealed.
In one of the quieter wings of the rebuilding realm, behind a door that still bore scorch marks, a small chamber held a single bed and a single life.
Raizo woke to the smell of rain on stone and daylight trying to be gentle. His first breath hurt. That was how he knew he was alive. Light pooled soft and steady across the threads of a plain blanket. No banners, no insignias. Just fabric and air. He turned his head, slow, as if the world might come apart if he moved too fast, and found Mercer sitting beside him.
The old hunter was exactly as he remembered and older than he had any right to be. Calm in a way that did not read as indifference. Shoulders relaxed but never slouched. The white in his hair had spread since the last quiet moment they shared, but his eyes were the same: steady, weighing, carrying the weight of too many histories and refusing to drop any.
"Welcome back," Mercer said. The words were simple. The way he said them was not. There was a roughness at the edges, a tired warmth that betrayed how long he had been sitting there listening to Raizo breathe.
"You had us worried."
Raizo swallowed. His throat felt dry, as if he had spent an age screaming without sound. He pushed his palms into the mattress, found muscles that trembled but obeyed, and pushed himself upright. His body felt lighter and heavier at once, as if something massive had been removed and something more subtle had been added.
"How is everyone," he asked. Mercer's gaze flicked over him, checking more than the surface. Then he let his shoulders drop by half a finger-width, the way he did when reporting something that was mostly good news.
"Those who fought are healing," he said. "The worst wounds have passed. The rest will close in time. Time will do its work."
He spoke like an archivist reading from a ledger written in scars.
"Ryuko and the Symphogears who followed her have already departed for Cocytus together with Akaro and Akatsuki," Mercer continued. "They will oversee the sentencing of the imprisoned Abyss Order members. Magane, Featherine, Acedia, and the rest. The Last Word will hold them until judgment is finished."
His gaze drifted toward the cracked window. Outside, distant construction hymns hummed like a city's pulse.
"Given our vacancies courtesy of the war," he went on, "Satsuki, Maria, and your companions have taken their place among our angels here. Guardians in all but name. Elysium has new swords."
Raizo let that sink in. Faces flashed through his mind: Satsuki's unflinching resolve, Maria's tempered grace, the others who had chosen to stay and stand watch where the sky had once split open.
"And the Tacet," he asked quietly. He remembered their shrieks, their impossible geometries, their hunger.
"The Tacet are no more," Mercer said.
The words landed with a clean weight.
"They died with Perdition's design. Monsters from the Outer Darkness still rage in their absence. The void does not leave its stage unattended. But Pariah and his newfound ally Kurai have taken the reins of that theater. Together they keep the True Void stable, mending the walls between realms and choking out the worst leaks."
"As for the worlds that suffered under the Abyss Order but still resist," Mercer added, his tone dropping a shade, "their recovery will take an age. Some wounds are deeper than we can see. But the worst of it is behind us."
A hand, scarred and reliable, settled on Raizo's shoulder.
"And you," Mercer said, quieter now. "You have grown in ways I did not think I would live to see. You overcame an enemy I could not defeat in my prime. That will not be forgotten. Not here. Not anywhere the story reaches."
Raizo looked down at his hands. Callused. Bruised knuckles. Old scars courtesy of training halls and younger battles. New ones from this war. Hands that had killed and saved in equal measure and still shook slightly as if the fight had not entirely left his body.
"Only because of everyone," he said. "I would have failed if I had stood alone. Sivanah's training. Musashi's drills. My family's strength. Kimiko's faith. Akaro, Adena, Vesta, Reina, all of them. They pushed me up the stairs."
Mercer watched him for a moment longer, then nodded.
"Perhaps," he allowed. "But it was still your feet that walked those steps. Your hands on the sword. Your choice to stand when another man would have asked for a different hero."
Raizo drew in a breath that did not hurt as much as the first. He swung his legs over the side of the bed. His feet met cool stone. He pushed himself up. The room swayed once, then steadied. He rolled his shoulders experimentally. They protested. His ribs ached under the wrap of bandages and healing sigils. There was a hollow place at his back, a phantom weight he almost tried to adjust.
He frowned.
Mercer saw the motion and answered before he could speak.
"Janus is gone," he said. "The armor died with you when you forced it past its design. It broke fighting to keep you standing. A good death for a good tool."
Raizo exhaled softly. The absence was strange. Janus had been a second skin for so long that its demise felt like losing a limb. Yet underneath that, there was a sense of relief. Less metal between him and the world.
"And my blades…" he asked.
Mercer's mouth turned up by a fraction.
"Alexis has them," he said. "Or what is left of them. Morana, Nirvana,and Soteria. She pried them out of the rubble herself, cursing your name very lovingly. She is mending them now. Be patient. When she returns them, they will be better than new and twice as temperamental."
Raizo's lips curved.
"That is fine," he said. "I will not need them where I am going."
Mercer arched a brow. He rose as well, joints protesting more audibly than Raizo's.
"And where might that be, son," he asked.
Raizo stepped toward the doorway where light spilled in, thin and clean. The kind of light that belonged to a day after a storm, when the clouds were still remembering how to move.
"Back home," he said. "To deal with unfinished business."
Mercer did not pretend not to understand.
"The Deva Gods," he said. No question. A fact laid alongside others. "Durga and her kin. That chapter is not closed."
Raizo nodded once.
"This time," he said, "I will not leave anyone behind. No sacrifices swept under the rug so the story reads cleaner. No convenient disappearances. We all see this through, or I do not call it a victory."
Mercer's eyes glinted with something that might have been approval and might have been fear for the boy who kept signing up to hold worlds on his shoulders.
"Then go when you are ready," he said. "You have earned the right to choose your next war."
Raizo dipped his head in a small, old-fashioned bow of respect.
"I will come back," he said.
Mercer's smile was small and real.
"I will be here," he answered. "One way or another, I always am."
He stepped aside, letting Raizo walk out into Elysium's broken light. The gates of Heaven had been shattered days ago. Now they gleamed again, not perfect, but whole enough. Great doors of luminous metal had been re-forged where Perdition's corruption had once spread. The surrounding arch was patched with newer gold, the seams still visible, like bones that had been set and were healing clean.
Raizo walked toward them. The realm stretched behind him: scaffolds on distant spires, broken plazas repurposed into triage camps, new gardens planted where Tacet carcasses had once sprawled. Laughter carried faintly from somewhere nearby, the unmistakable sound of children who had not yet learned what had almost taken them. Waiting just beyond the threshold, framed by the gate's light, were two figures he knew better than his own reflection.
Adena was the first to move when she saw him. Red hair tied up haphazardly out of habit, eyes a bright and fierce blue, posture loose in the way of someone who could go from lounging to lethal in a breath.
"You took your sweet time," she said.
She did not wait for him to answer. She closed the distance at a run, boots hammering lightly against the still-cracked stone. For a heartbeat she slowed, as if giving him a chance to brace. Then she collided with him in a full-bodied hug that lifted his breath out of his lungs. Before he could suck it back in, she stole it with a kiss.
It was not delicate. Adena never did anything by halves. Her mouth crashed into his with heat and relief and the frustration of someone who had watched him walk into the kind of fight that rarely leaves anything to welcome back. It lingered, long enough to remind him exactly what he had almost not returned to. When she finally pulled back, her grin was a little wobbly at the edges.
"Just confirming you are not a ghost," she said.
Vesta stepped in then, silver hair gathered in a loose bind that had mostly given up, strands cascading over one shoulder like moonlit water. Her expression was more controlled, but the tightness around her eyes gave her away. Composure cracked into something warmer as she reached for him.
"Move," she murmured to Adena without heat.
She slid into the space on his other side, one hand touching his jaw with a care that felt like a blessing. Her kiss was softer at first, lips resting against his as if confirming their shape. Then something shifted. A pressure under her skin, a pulse from the star she carried that should not have belonged to anyone, flared.
Her fingers tightened.
The kiss deepened, control slipping for a second. Power rippled through her body, not outward, but inward, as if some part of her other nature responded to proximity and the electric fact that he was alive. Her mouth pressed harder, her breath catching as she fought to keep that other thing in her from pushing itself into the moment.
She pulled back before it could. Color touched her cheeks. Her eyes were bright, a little wild, but steady.
"Sorry," she said, voice low.
"Never apologize for that," Raizo answered, equally low. They stood close, one on each side of him, heat and cool, fire and silver, two lives he had chosen and who had chosen him back. He looked at them with a softness he rarely let anyone see. The fatigue in his bones did not matter as much with their weight leaning into his.
"I am coming home," he said. The words were not dramatic. They did not need to be. They sat between the three of them like a promise finally cashed.
Adena punched his arm lightly.
"Oh you will be coming alright," she said, that grin returning, sharper. "You owe us. You are not allowed to run off to another apocalyptic boss fight without a proper debrief first."
Vesta chuckled.
"There is much to discuss," she said, nestling into his other side, sliding an arm around his waist as if to test if he would really hold his own weight. "And much to plan. I will not miss another storm because you decided to face it alone."
Raizo let himself breathe in the moment. For a few seconds all those looming threats stepped back into the wings. Onstage, there were just three people who had pulled each other out of fire too many times to count, standing in a doorway between worlds.
A soft shift in the air signaled the arrival of someone who never quite walked.
Altair's presence slid into the scene like an ink stroke at the edge of a finished painting. She manifested a few paces away, the lines of her form sketching themselves in silver animations before solidifying. Cloak drifting in a breeze that did not touch anyone else. Eyes holding that strange combination of detachment and fondness that belonged only to those who knew they were half in and half out of the story they inhabited.
"Congratulations," Altair said.
"Your story reached its climax," she went on, "and yet this is only the beginning."
Her gaze slid over Raizo, taking in the posture, the scars, the way his aura had settled. The way his shadow now seemed to have its own opinion about how he stood.
"I will be returning to my own world," she said. "I have work of my own to tidy. But do not misunderstand. I will always be a reader of yours. Consider me your most devoted audience member, even when I am not on your stage."
She stepped closer, a small, knowing smile playing on her lips. Before Adena could interject, before Vesta could calculate whether to protest on etiquette grounds, Altair reached up, cupped Raizo's face briefly, and pressed a kiss to his lips. It was light compared to the earlier ones, but charged. A punctuation mark more than a paragraph. Admiration, acknowledgment, a quiet thank you for being a protagonist worth watching.
By the time Adena's eyes narrowed and Vesta's eyebrows shot up, Altair was already dissolving into particles of light and drifting script, her form unraveling into the medium she had always called home. She left behind only a playful wink, hanging for a heartbeat where her face had been.
Adena threw her hands up.
"Of course she steals a kiss too," she said. "Typical."
Vesta sighed, long and dramatic, silver hair shivering with the motion.
"Typical," she agreed. Their annoyance was theater. The smiles they could not quite fight down were not. Raizo shook his head, amused, and pulled them both in closer for a moment.
"Alright," he said. "Let us go home before someone else decides I am a public monument and starts climbing."
They had barely turned when a voice like a velvet-wrapped blade cut in from the side.
"And where," Sivanah asked, "do you think you are going without saying goodbye."
She stood just inside the gate's shadow, arms folded loosely, black hair falling in a careless cascade that had taken hours to look that effortless. Her eyes were half lidded, but the glint under the lashes was sharp. Reina was beside her. No folded arms, no slouching, posture straight enough to serve as a standard. The Sovereign of Cocytus wore the same attire she had donned after the final battles: practical, unadorned, and somehow still regal. The faintest of smiles lifted one corner of her mouth, though it did not quite reach her eyes yet. Musashi leaned on the gate's frame with her shoulder, one hand resting on the hilt of a sword that was currently disguised as nothing more threatening than a plain wooden sheathed blade. Her look said she had been there for a while, enjoying the show.
Adena leaned close to Raizo's ear and whispered, "You are in trouble."
Vesta's arm tightened around his other side.
"Technically he is in recovery," she said. "Which makes this an intervention."
Raizo bowed his head in the particular way that belonged to men who knew they were caught and were trying to look contrite without giving up their pride.
"I was going to leave a note," he said.
Sivanah snorted.
"Mm," she said. "And I did not ask. Come now."
They approached in a small triangle: mentor, sovereign, swordswoman. Each carried a different color of authority. Each had their own claim on him. The gate hummed softly underfoot, attuned to departures and arrivals. Beyond it, the path home waited. Behind them, Elysium continued to rebuild.
"You were going home," Reina said.
"I am going home," Raizo answered, meeting her eyes. No heat. No challenge. Just a truth offered for inspection.
Sivanah cocked her head.
"And what shall home be precisely," she asked. "The place that made you. Or the people who will unmake you into something better."
Adena did not wait.
"Easy riddle," she said. "The answer is us."
"Bold," Musashi observed, amused. "Correct though."
Reina's gaze softened by a degree most would not notice.
"Elysium does not hold you indebted," she said. "It holds you as its hero. But there is something the wise do before they leave the place that saw them die and rise."
She glanced up at the cracked horizon, at the patchwork light.
"There must be a rite."
Adena winced theatrically. "I was afraid you would say that," she muttered. Not because she opposed it. Because she understood what rites cost.
Vesta nodded slowly. "We owe them names," she said.
"We owe them the right names," Musashi added. "And the name of the thing we killed in ourselves to survive this."
Raizo exhaled. There it was. The last work before the next war.
"Then let us do it right," he said.
The Hall of Returning Light had survived, but barely.
A long fissure split it down the center, running along the nave like a lightning scar. Where the roof had collapsed, angels had raised scaffolds of filigreed gold and glowing lattice. The supports looked like wings spreading from wounded stone, catching dust motes in their glow. Lanterns of distilled radiance hung above the central dais in a loose constellation. Each lamp's flame was made of captured hymns and old prayers. They lit the hall not with harsh brilliance but with a warm, steady glow that reminded everyone of kitchens and chapels, of shared meals after long nights. In the middle of the hall stood a slab. It was not marble. It was a light given shape, a solid rectangle of pale brilliance anchored in the floor, humming with quiet possibility. It waited, blank, knowing it would not stay that way.
Reina stepped forward first. She set her hand against the surface. The slab warmed under her palm. Golden points kindled there, gathering into lines, lines into curves, curves into a single sigil that hung above her hand like a hovering crown.
Remembrance.
"By the old Law of the Obsidian Wolves," Reina said, voice filling the hall without raising, "I name the fallen of Cocytus' ranks and bind their courage to the living as instruction and legacy."
Images flickered for those who had the eyes to see them: the faces of her dead, soldiers who had stood at her side in the cold and refused to break.
"And I name the ones we did not love but fought," she added, eyes hardening. "The demons, the traitors, the Abyss Order. May their ends be an end to the rot that made them, not a seed for its return."
She removed her hand. The sigil stayed, pulsing softly on the slab.
Adena stepped in next. She stared at the light for a long second, jaw tight.
"I name Bellona," she said. "Not because I forgive her. She hurt people I love. She chose wrong every time she stood at a fork. I name her because I refuse to let my grief rot down into hate and nothing else. She was what I could have been if I had stopped choosing to get better. I will not forget that."
She set her fist against the slab. A second sigil burned to life beside Reina's, shaped like a spark mid leap.
"I choose hope," she finished. Vesta approached with the hush of a light rain.
"I name those we lost in the worlds afflicted by the abyss," she said. Her voice was quieter than the others, but the hall leaned in to hear it. Visions of burning cities, broken skies, shattered altars brushed her mind and those of the others, then faded back.
"Whole populations erased," she continued. "Families were broken. Souls scattered. Let this be an end to their suffering." She touched the slab with her fingertips. A symbol like a raindrop falling into a pool spread, then froze, marking her vow.
Musashi moved up next. She shrugged off her haori, folded it with care, and set it neatly over her arm. Even small actions were ritual with her.
"I name the death of cowardice," she said. Her grin undercut the hardness of the word, turned it into something she would fight without hating.
"Mine," she clarified. "Every time I told myself a duel could wait. Every time I let myself be bested and blamed the day instead of my own edge."
She tapped two fingers against the slab. A line cut itself into the light, then split into a cross-hatching pattern like sword strokes on flesh.
"I will be stronger next time," she said. "A new woman, not a recycled one."
Sivanah rolled her shoulders, a little theatrically.
"I name pettiness," she said. "Mine. Yours. The universe's. It deserves to be dunked here as much as any of the things we killed with steel."
She bent down and spat, delicately, at the base of the slab. The light rippled, absorbing the offering as if it were incense.
"I will, against all my instincts," she said, "practice patience with children."
Adena cleared her throat. "Define children," she said.
"Anyone younger than me," Sivanah said, "or too old to know better."
"So basically everyone," Adena concluded.
"Especially you," Sivanah purred. Laughter rolled through the hall, raw and honest. It hurt in the way that made healing possible.
Raizo stepped up last. He laid his palm flat on the slab. It warmed under his skin like a living cheek. For a second he saw flashes of everything they had done here: their first arrival, the siege, Perdition on the Throne, the storm that had ended him. He breathed through it and spoke.
"I name the part of me that thought I had to carry our fight alone," he said. "The man who did not trust anyone else to hold the knife with him. I bury him here. I refuse him."
He lifted his gaze to the circle around him: Reina, Musashi, Sivanah, Adena, Vesta. People who had reshaped the outline of his life. He pressed his hand in. A sigil formed, not an image, just a line that curled back on itself and then opened, like a road that no longer bent into a noose.
"I name the worlds we just saved," he added, "and the work we have not done yet. I swear to do it with you, not ahead of you."
The hall took that in. The lanterns overhead brightened briefly, then steadied. The slab glowed once, then the light lifted off its surface, motes rising like seeds caught in an updraft. They drifted upward through the cracked vault, out into the wounded sky, carrying the vows with them.
Reina's mouth moved by a fraction. "Acceptable," she said. From her, it was high praise.
Sivanah clapped her hands together.
"The ceremony is complete," she said. "Tea then."
"Seconded," Adena said, hand already halfway up.
"Thirded," Musashi added, producing a sake gourd from somewhere around her sleeve with all the showmanship of a street magician. The smell of rice and time rolled out as she uncapped it, soft and comforting. She poured into cups that did not exist until she needed them. Reina took hers without comment. Sivanah inhaled, nodded in approval. Adena lifted her cup toward the ceiling. Vesta accepted hers with both hands. Raizo held his and did not drink immediately. He tipped a little onto the floor.
"For those who cannot be here," he said.
Six cups tilted. Six small libations hissed as they touched the slab and vanished into its light.
"And for those who will come after us," Raizo added.
This time, they all drank.
The terrace jutted from Elysium's side like a broken jawbone, overlooking the city's reconstruction. Sivanah rested her elbows on the balustrade, looking out.
"You were nearly the King of Inferno," she said. It sounded like an idle remark, but Raizo heard the test in it. He placed his hand on the stone, feeling its cool texture, then his chest, over the place where Infernal Authority had once brushed, testing him.
"You taught me how not to lose myself to titles like that; The power is still there, but I'll find someone it suits better," he answered.
"Mm," she said. "Do not get sentimental on me. I am proud of you. It is bad for my image."
Adena saluted with her empty cup.
"Too late," she said. "You are everyone's favorite terrifying aunty."
"I prefer divine mischief mother," Sivanah replied. "But we can workshop it."
She straightened, looking at him not as the trickster, but as the teacher who had broken his bones on purpose.
"You are not the same boy who begged me to teach him how to punch above his weight," she said.
"I still want to," Raizo replied.
"Good," she tapped his chest. "Always strive for more."
He nodded.
"And if you forget," Sivanah added lightly, "I will cross worlds to slap you."
"Duly noted," Raizo said.
"Excellent," she said. "Then accept this and be off before I start monologuing."
She produced a slim bronze ring from the pocket between moments. Its surface was etched with nine feathers, each unique, and a tenth carved broken, the line interrupted. Tengu work: spare, elegant, quietly dangerous.
"A key to the domain of the Tengu," she said. "If you need my door, tell it the truth. If you lie, it eats your hand. Fair?"
Raizo took the ring reverently. He bowed, properly, the old way students bowed to masters that had not killed them yet.
"Thank you," he said, and he meant it for the bruises as much as the gift.
"Up," Sivanah said, flicking his forehead lightly. Her eyes shone too bright for a heartbeat, then hid it behind a smirk. "Try not to die stupidly."
"The plan is to not die at all!" Adena remarked.
"Ambitious," Sivanah replied. "I approve."
Reina waited until the teasing subsided. Then she stepped closer.
"The Tacet are gone," she said, echoing Mercer's report. "But monsters tuck themselves into absences as easily as into shadow. Pariah and my daughter will keep the True Void busy. They are competent, but even so."
She paused.
"When something slips through," she continued, "the first will come to me. The second will go looking for you."
"I will answer it," Raizo said.
Reina nodded.
"Elysium releases you," she said. "Not as errant son. As an Envoy. Go with sanction. And if you meet trouble you cannot cut, bring it to me."
Adena's eyes shone.
"That was almost sweet," she said. Reina did not look at her.
"I am frequently sweet," she said. "I am simply efficient at hiding it."
"Noted," Vesta murmured, smiling.
Musashi drifted in, leaning back against the balustrade, eyes on the sky.
"Your armor died gloriously," she said. "Good. You are lighter. I can hear it when you walk."
Raizo rolled his shoulders.
"I keep reaching for it," he admitted. "The body forgets what the mind has thrown away."
"Bodies are conservative," Musashi said. "They hate change. Give it time."
She glanced at him sidelong.
"Your blades are in Alexis' clutches," she added. "As are all blades eventually. Bring her a bottle when you go to collect them. She will drink it, complain that it is not as good as the last war's, and double the polish on your weapons to spite her own standards."
A grin, sharp and fond all at once.
"Until then," she said, "use the weapon you tempered fighting Perdition."
"My Law," Raizo said.
"Yourself," Musashi corrected. "The Law is just an extra."
She stepped to a circle marked at the terrace's edge where the stone had been worn smooth by testing blades. She produced two bamboo swords from nowhere. They were light in the hand, but the weight in the air changed as she tossed one to him.
He caught it automatically.
They bowed to each other.
Then she came at him.
It was not like the fights he had just survived. It was quick and clean, movements stripped to fundamentals. She pressed, testing his balance, the way he anchored himself without the crutch of Janus. Each strike demanded attention, but none carried killing intent. He cut air, and the air responded. The bamboo cracked against bamboo, the sound sharp and satisfying. He moved in his new skin, feeling where his Law had settled in his body, how his refusal to be written over had changed the way he pivoted, stepped, breathed.
Adena whistled low. Vesta watched angles, cataloguing. Sivanah stole Reina's cup. Reina stole it back without looking.
Musashi laughed once, softly, when he let a strike land on his wrist on purpose rather than twist into an awkward block. She answered with one to his shoulder she could have turned away. They stopped in the same breath.
"Acceptable," she said.
"Good," Sivanah cut in. "Now bow and go eat. You are intolerable when hungry."
"Finally someone says it," Adena declared.
"I say it daily," Vesta replied.
"You say it poetically," Adena told her. "She said it straight up."
"Lunch," Sivanah decided.
The sky-market had been rebuilt between two broken arches that no one had the heart to completely restore. Stalls lined the cobblestones, each one a small universe of color and smell.
They ate standing at a vendor's stall that looked like it had been cobbled together from three different kitchens. The bread came out of the oven singing, crust crackling as they tore it apart with both hands. Steam rolled up in fragrant waves: wheat and butter and something that tasted like relief.
The stew in their bowls was thick and honest. Meat that had been seared with intention, vegetables that had not seen ash. The skewers dripped fat and spice. Fruit had been cut into shapes that delighted the children and amused the adults.
Noise washed over them. Hammers. Shouted orders. Snippets of hymns. Laughter. The living sound of a city not just surviving but insisting on joy. They stood shoulder to shoulder and did the most sacred thing survivors ever do: they talked nonsense.
"Altair did steal a kiss," Adena said, still pretending to be outraged between bites. "She teleported her lips. That is cheating."
"She asked a question with it," Vesta said thoughtfully. "It was a well phrased question."
Adena narrowed her eyes.
"And the answer?" she asked.
Vesta took a long, contemplative drink from Musashi's gourd, then handed it back.
"Yes," she said simply.
She leaned into Raizo's side as if the conversation was over.
The vendor tried to refuse payment, horrified at the idea of charging the man who had killed the monster that had nearly ended Heaven. Reina left a coin anyway, placing it where the woman could see it and decide what to do with it when her hands stopped shaking.
When they had eaten enough that their bodies stopped trying to fold under them, Vesta tilted her face into the breeze. The wind shifted in answer, a small respectful bow.
"The gate is still open," she said.
"Home is tugging," Adena translated.
She hooked her arm through Raizo's again.
"I assume you planned on going alone because you are an adorable idiot," she said.
"Guilty," Raizo admitted.
"Overruled," Reina said immediately.
Sivanah nodded.
"Go with your tempest and your fire," she said. "The Tengu are not so cruel as to demand you face your past alone."
Musashi clapped Raizo on the backside with friendly force.
"When we next meet," she said, "I expect a proper duel. Or at least a very entertaining lie about one."
"Deal," he said.
They made their way back to the gate together. Adena stood on his left, red hair catching every sunbeam and threatening to outshine it. Vesta stood on his right, one hand on his arm.
"We take the first steps," Adena said.
Reina lifted her chin.
"Envoy," she said.
The word settled in him like a new joint. Not a burden. A function.
"Go."
The road beyond the gate was not a road. It was a set of choices waiting to be made. Raizo turned back to the three who would remain. "Thank you," he said.
No speech. No list of debts. Just gratitude.
Sivanah flicked his ear.
"Go before I start crying," she said. "I have a reputation to maintain."
Musashi tipped her head back and drained the last of the sake.
"I will see you soon, kiddo," she said. Reina stepped in, just close enough to press a brief kiss to his lips.
"Be careful," she said. After a heartbeat she added, "And be victorious."
He nodded and turned. Adena and Vesta turned with him. They stepped through the gate, into light that stretched and bent and reassembled itself into whatever world they had chosen to face next.
Sivanah watched until even the afterimage faded.
"Idiots," she said, affection laid over every letter.
Musashi leaned against the gate's frame and looked up at the sky. Reina said nothing. She watched the empty air where they had vanished. Somewhere below them.
Time would do its work.
So would they.
Elysium, bruised and breathing, seemed to watch the empty gate and, if such a thing were possible for a place, quietly smile.