The streets were empty, drained of color, soaked in silence. Ren's breath fogged in the air, even though it wasn't cold. Not really. But something about the city tonight felt dead. Like it had been hollowed out.
Kazuki walked ahead of him without speaking, his coat fluttering behind him like wings made of shadow.
Ren's legs burned from keeping pace, but he didn't ask Kazuki to slow down. He couldn't. Not now.
Not with Kyouko gone.
Not with the scent of blood still in his throat.
Not when he'd seen fear in Kazuki's eyes for the first time.
"Where are we going?" Ren asked finally.
Kazuki didn't turn around. "Below the city. The hidden clan keeps their prison tunnels beneath the Old Quarter."
"You're sure that's where they took her?"
"I'm not guessing."
Ren paused. "Because you've been there before."
Kazuki nodded once. "I was made there."
They reached a rusted stairwell hidden behind an abandoned meat shop. Kazuki peeled open the old cellar doors, and a gust of sour air rushed up like breath from a buried corpse.
Ren hesitated.
Kazuki looked back at him. "You don't have to come."
"I do," Ren said.
"Why?"
"Because she's all I have left."
Kazuki's gaze flickered, and for just a second, something human bled through.
"I know the feeling," he said.
The stairwell led to a tunnel — wide, wet, and quiet.
Ren's boots splashed in shallow water. The walls wept. A thick scent hung in the air—iron and something fouler.
"Don't speak unless I say," Kazuki murmured. "And don't let them smell your fear."
Ren forced his jaw shut.
Kazuki led the way through three winding corridors, pausing only to press his hand to strange glyphs carved into the stone. They pulsed faintly under his fingers, as if remembering him.
Ren noticed. "Those symbols—what do they mean?"
"They mark loyalty," Kazuki said. "Or ownership."
Ren's stomach twisted. "You were branded?"
Kazuki gave a bitter smile. "Still am."
They reached the final hall.
Ren felt it before he saw anything: a pulse of wrongness in the air, like a migraine just beneath his skin.
And then he heard her.
Kyouko's voice—raspy, furious—echoed down the stone.
"Get your bony hands off me or I swear to god I will rip your spine out with my teeth."
Ren bolted ahead.
"Ren—wait!" Kazuki hissed.
Too late.
He rounded the corner—
And stopped cold.
Kyouko was chained to a wall, blood drying at the edge of her mouth, one eye swollen.
And standing over her was a tall, cloaked figure.
Wearing a bone mask.
Its voice cut through the gloom, low and feminine.
"You should not have come."
Kazuki stopped beside Ren, breath frozen in his chest. His hand trembled as he reached for his blade.
"No," he whispered. "It can't be you."
The figure tilted her head, studying Kazuki through the mask's hollow sockets.
"You left us, little ghost," she said. "But we never left you."
Ren's throat tightened. "Kazuki… who is that?"
Kazuki's lips barely moved.
"…My maker."