The man knelt without a word.
In his mind, the whisper kept replaying, over and over again, quiet but impossible to silence.
You failed your family once. Don't fail again.
He didn't know what that voice was, or why it spoke to him. Only that it knew too much. More than he wanted to remember.
His mechanical arm whirred softly as he slid it beneath the boy. Raizen folded over the cold metal, limp. His other arm - scarred but steady - hooked under the girl. Her golden hair spilled over his shoulder.
Between roots and steel, the wall had a secret. A thin seam, almost invisible. The man shifted his load, adjusted the weight of two bodies without strain, then pressed his steel fingers against the wall.
Something inside clicked. The seam opened and a narrow passage appeared, cold air sneaking out. He stood still for a single breath, listening. No footsteps. No guards or Wardens. He stepped through and the door sealed behind him with a quiet hiss.
The tunnel sloped downward, old bulbs burning a low orange glow. The air was heavy with oil, rust, and old smoke. The walls turned from patched metal to smooth stone, and then all at once, it opened.
The Underworks.
A whole world beneath Neoshima - an undercity for the unwanted, a place for those who couldn't find one above. Pipes and vents ran in every direction, tangled like veins. Scrap bridges stitched one level to another. Chains drooped from the unseen ceiling, holding lamps that flickered and buzzed with whatever electricity they had left.
Above, far above the market level, cables and suspension bridges crisscrossed the massive cavern like a spider's web. People moved across them - shortcuts, homes, hiding spots. The locals called it the Tangle. The man didn't look up. He knew what lived up there.
People moved everywhere below. Cloaks hunched against cold. Barefoot kids running between stalls that sold scraps of food, half-broken tools, and knives that had seen too much. Voices woven into a constant murmur - bargaining, swearing, laughing, crying, all together.
Life. Hard, ugly, stubborn life.
The man walked through it slowly. Eyes found him from every direction. The iron arm. The scars. The eyepatch. The way he carried two unconscious bodies without a flinch. People stepped aside out of instinct. Some looked away quickly, others stared too long. But nobody got in his way.
Next to a leaning street lamp, a cluster of kids huddled with their hands out, clothes three sizes too big and patched everywhere.
"Please, sir... just a coin... anything..."
A woman in the shadows stepped in quickly, trying to hush them, throwing nervous glances at the man as if fear could protect them. He stopped. His shadow fell over the kids and they shrank back. For a few seconds he simply stood there, as if deciding whether they still deserved kindness.
Then his real hand reached inside his cloak. A coin flashed in the weak light. Real gold. Not alloy or scrap. He flicked it and one boy snatched it out of the air, eyes going wide. He held the coin to his chest like it was something holy.
By the time he thought of thanking, the man was already gone.
The Underworks changed as he walked deeper. The market noise thinned. Lamps grew fewer. He passed an alcove where two men stood beside a covered table, voices low and tense. One glanced at him, then quickly away - like seeing him was a mistake he'd immediately regret.
Under the tarp, two pale chunks glowed faintly yellow-green and red. Chipped. Uneven. Cheap. Barely enough glow to be worth anything. Luminite - the kind Gravers bought when they couldn't afford anything better.
The man's eye flicked to the cart, then away. He'd seen that transaction a thousand times. Desperate people buying desperate tools to fight Nyxes - things they had no business fighting.
He kept walking.
A young man stumbled past, shoulder bandaged with torn cloth, a chipped blade slung across his back. The blade's core glowed a dull blue - Luminite, but weak, like a dying ember. His armor was scorched black in places. A Graver, fresh from a contract by the look of him. He didn't spare the man a glance, just limped toward a vendor selling questionable medical supplies. His hand shook as he counted coins.
The man watched him for half a second, then looked away. The Underworks ate people like that. Young, desperate, convinced a cheap weapon and a contract would save them. Most didn't come back.
He passed a poster bolted to the stone - four silhouettes against a lotus symbol, weapons raised. Bold letters proclaimed:
DIVISION ONE: NEOSHIMA'S SHIELD
Nearby, two men leaned against a wall, voices low.
"Division One got deployed east tonight," one muttered.
"Another Nyx attack?"
"Some small fishing village got hit. I heard it was bad."
The first man spat into the dirt. "Neoshima's shield, my arse. If they cared about us, we wouldn't be starving down here."
The man with the mechanical arm didn't slow. He stopped believing in shields a long time ago.
Symbols stained the walls - gang marks, warnings, drawings half rubbed away. Doorways appeared on buildings made of scrap metal or stone, barely holding together. He stopped at one. This door was different - reinforced metal, maintained, no gaps in the frame or rust on the hinges.
He unlocked it with a thick key from inside his coat.
The door opened onto a small, tidy room. Concrete walls patched with older plates. A workbench crowded with tools. A single mattress in the corner. Along one rack, blades of every length rested, clean and sharp. Next to them, all kinds of tools he needed for his metal arm.
The bulb overhead flickered once, then stayed on.
The man laid Raizen on the mattress, then lowered the girl beside him. Her breathing was shallow but steady.
He stood there for a long moment, watching, face unreadable. Then he pulled a chair to the workbench, set his elbow down, and began pulling his mechanical arm apart. Screws. Plates. Cable tendons and small rods.
✦ ✦ ✦
Time in the Underworks didn't move the way it did above. No sunrise, no sunset. Only the hiss of pipes and the tired buzz of lightbulbs.
Raizen gasped his way back to consciousness.
Pain came first. His arm burned, chest aching with every breath. His body felt like it had been crushed under something heavy for too long. For a second he thought he was back in the village - smoke, fire, screams, the Nyxes.
Then his eyes focused. A ceiling, not clouds. Thin pipes running across it. Somewhere out of sight, air hissed through vents. The smell of oil and metal pressed in around him.
He turned his head slowly. The girl lay close, still unconscious. Her face was turned toward him, hair fanned over the pillow. Her chest rose and fell in slow, small breaths.
But her face was way too close. Raizen looked away fast, cheeks warming. She was alright, and that's what mattered. His muscles loosened a fraction.
He tried to sit up but pain screamed across his ribs and arm. He grunted and fell back, teeth clenched.
The man sat at the workbench, coat off now. Raizen could see the scars running across his face, the eyepatch covering more than just the eye - half his cheek on the same side as his iron arm. Metal parts lay arranged in unorganized lines on the bench.
A soft creak from the mattress made the man's head tilt slightly. He put the tools aside and turned. His gaze met Raizen's - dark, steady, measuring. Then it flicked to the girl, to the fresh bandages on Raizen's chest, then back to his face.
"Surprised you're still alive, kid," he said finally. His voice was deep and resonant, the kind that commanded authority. He turned back to the bench.
Raizen looked at the bandages on his arm and chest properly this time. Someone had cleaned the wounds, wrapped them tightly. Someone had pulled him out of the dirt and given him another chance.
He dragged his gaze around the room, searching for answers.
That was when he saw the map.
It covered almost an entire wall. Paper layered on paper. Streets, tunnels, scribbled notes. Pins stabbed into it in clusters. Black-and-white photos - faces with red Xs drawn over them. Names crossed out. Dates. Times. Patterns. Red strings connected points into something like a web.
One word appeared again and again, written in sharp, practiced handwriting.
Moirai.
But underneath, in smaller script, other words: Three disappearances, eastern vents.Patrol never returned.Door unlocked from inside.
Questions, not answers. Threads waiting to connect.
On a small shelf under the map, a framed photo sat alone. The glass was cracked, the crack running straight across the woman's face, stealing her details.
The man's voice came again, low. "Rest. You'll need your strength. Tomorrow, you'll understand… more than you might want."
Raizen glanced at the girl one more time. Her breathing stayed slow and even. For now, he let his head drop back against the thin pillow and forced a tiny smile that no one saw. Darkness moved in at the edges of his vision. This time it didn't feel like the village night. It felt softer. Not safe, but less dangerous.
"Raizen..." he whispered, almost without meaning to. "My name is Raizen."
The man didn't turn from his work, but he answered, almost hiding a smile. "I'm Takeshi."
Raizen's eyes closed.
But the cold whisper didn't leave him alone. It curled up from the dark into his mind again.
Do not fail her...
Or I will choose someone else.