Hours later, the smell of blood still clung to Seigi's hands. No amount of scrubbing in the cracked basin at the Guild safehouse had erased it. His knuckles were split, his shirt torn, and though Aya had healed most of the damage, the ache ran deeper than bruises.
The lounge was an old storage room retrofitted into something like comfort. Cedar panels had been nailed over the damp walls, mismatched furniture arranged around an iron hearth. The grate was warped, the chimney half-blocked, but someone had coaxed a fire to life. Flames licked low, shadows stretching across plaster that bore old cracks like scars.
Seigi sank into a chair that creaked beneath his weight. His chest was still tight from the fight, ears ringing faintly with echoes of breaking stone. The firelight felt unreal after the chaos—too soft, too human.
Riku sprawled across from him, chair tipped onto two legs. He stared up at the beams overhead, his usual smirk nowhere to be found. "I lifted the car," he said suddenly. His voice was quieter than Seigi had ever heard it. "Didn't even know I could. It was on fire. I thought I was imagining my sister's scream until I wasn't." He dragged a hand down his face. "After that night, I could never lift anything like that again. Not without… feeling it first. Guess the thread thought it was funny to weld that memory into my bones."
Aya sat curled in an armchair, sleeves rolled up, hands cupped around a steaming mug. Her eyes reflected the firelight, softer than usual. "For me, it was belief," she said quietly. "A boy on an operating table—stabbed in the lung, bleeding out. The doctors had already given up. I didn't. I told myself he would live, and I refused to accept anything else. The thread moved. He lived. But sometimes I wonder if it was my faith… or if the thread just borrowed it like collateral."
"Collateral," Riku muttered, dropping his chair legs with a thunk. "Yeah. Trauma pays faster."
Hana had been silent until then, her gaze fixed on the flames. "My mentor died in front of me." Her voice was soft, but the words cut sharp. "I tried to pull him back, to force the thread to obey. It gave me something else instead. Something I never asked for." Her hands tightened around her mug, knuckles whitening. "The thread doesn't give. It trades."
The fire snapped, sparks spiraling briefly into the air.
Seigi leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He hadn't planned to speak, but their confessions pulled something loose in him. "Mine started as make-believe," he admitted. "I believed so hard the world slowed down, because I couldn't accept anything else. Not noble. Just stubborn. Sometimes I wonder if that makes my power flimsy. Like I'm only pretending harder than most."
At that, Hana finally looked up. The faintest smile ghosted across her face. "Stubbornness," she said, "is a kind of faith."
Hana studied him for a long moment, firelight flickering in her dark eyes. "It isn't just stubbornness," she said finally. "Some people are born with threads buried deeper in their blood. Veins that remember. I wondered if yours might be like that."
Seigi blinked, unsettled. "You're talking like it's… inherited?"
She only sipped her tea and didn't answer.
The words landed heavier than Seigi expected. He sat back, exhaling slowly.
Silence lingered. Not the brittle silence of the battlefield, but a gentler one, filled with the crackle of the fire and the faint hum of Tokyo somewhere far above.
Riku broke it first, smirking weakly. "When we go again, you're not just dragging bodies out, Hero Boy. We'll teach you to hit without getting hit."
Aya's eyes warmed. "And to heal without touching."
Hana rose, her silhouette long in the firelight. She extended her hand toward Seigi, palm steady, fingers scarred. "And to feel before thinking."
Seigi looked at her hand for a moment, then clasped it. Her grip was firm, grounding. "Tomorrow," he said.
"Tomorrow," Hana echoed.
The fire sank lower, glowing embers collapsing softly into themselves. Seigi sat back, letting the warmth seep into him. His mind replayed the shattered safehouse, the photo slipping from the operative's pocket—children smiling at a man who was no longer human. The memory gnawed at him.
And yet, sitting here, he realized something else: he couldn't live in shadows alone. Not yet. Not without something to remind him what he was fighting for.
His parents' faces flickered in his thoughts—his mother's smile, his father's too-loud voice at dinner. Normal things. Human things. Things that could tether him before the thread pulled him too far.
Tomorrow, he promised himself, he would go home.
Not to escape the war. But to remember why it mattered.
---
From the corridor beyond, unseen by the four, Kurogami stood in silence. The firelight's glow touched the edge of his coat but not his face. His eyes lingered on Seigi, sharp as blades and heavy as stone.
A faint smile curved his mouth. Not joy. Not pity. Something closer to inevitability.
"Good," he murmured to himself, voice too soft to carry. "He's learning where to anchor."
And then he turned, vanishing back into the deeper dark, leaving the fire to burn low behind him.