Takeshi had fallen asleep in his chair, chin tilted toward the ceiling as if listening for a sound only he could hear.
A stub of graphite rested between two fingers. A thread for his map hung from the pin he'd meant to place. The prosthetic lay on the bench beside him, quiet and open.
He snored once - soft, surprised - then settled.
Raizen gently closed the door behind him.
The Underworks' night wasn't a real night, but it did a good imitation. A few pipes hissed in the distance. Fewer voices echoed from streets below. Lamplight flickered in windows that never saw stars.
Raizen let the sounds fill his mind as he slipped down a corridor that looked like a dead end. But it wasn't. He pushed hard against a rusted hatch.
He came out in a room that had forgotten its purpose. Empty shelves lined the walls, pipes ran overhead like frozen veins, and the concrete floor was scuffed clean in a circle around a thick pillar - worn smooth where his feet had stepped a hundred times before.
Maybe it had been a storeroom once. Now it was just his.
A single lamp sat high on a pipe, dim but enough.
He wrapped his fists in torn cloth, pulled it tight with his teeth, and started to work.
Jab - snap, not shove. Cross - hip first.
He hit the stone pillar with combinations Kori had burned into him until they were only motion, not strategy. Instinct.
His breath came in sharp bursts he didn't bother counting. Blood began to seep through the cloth at the knuckles, then spread.
He kept going. That's what he was best at.
Again.
He didn't say it out loud. He didn't have to. The word was already spoken by his movements. The lamp buzzed. His shoulder ached. He didn't care.
His mind tried to hand him pictures - Hikari at the Maw, the barrel's dark ring against her temple, his mother's voice breaking on his name.
He refused them, one after another, until there were no pictures left and only rhythm – knuckles, kicks, breath.
He didn't hear the hatch open.
Hikari leaned in the frame, small in the lamp's circle. She watched him grunt on a breath and hold another back on the next. She watched the way his shoulders squared, ready for the next hit. She watched the cloth on his knuckles darken to the color of poppies.
At first, she just stood there. Watching. Observing. Flinching every time his knuckles met stone.
Then she walked to him without announcing her steps.
He was too focused to feel her presence. His interrupted breath was the only sound. Preparing a strike that would have made Kori smile, he pulled his hand back.
Hikari stepped forward and slid her arms around him from behind.
The next hit never landed.
His fist halted an inch from the pillar and just hung there, suspended.
He just stood there, forgetting how to breathe.
Hikari rested her forehead between his shoulder blades. Her cheek pressed on the seam of his shirt. He hadn't noticed how cold the room was until then.
She didn't say "you're scaring me." She didn't say "don't break yourself." She didn't say any of the things that would have made him put his armor back on.
"Please, Raizen," she whispered. "Rest."
It wasn't a command. It was a quieter place she offered him. A safer place.
His hands fell to his sides, guard completely off.
She stayed where she was, holding him gently, as if one wrong move would shatter something precious.
"You're bleeding," she added after a long time, which was her way of saying I care without risking that he'd dodge.
He looked at his hands properly. Cloth cut through with rust-dark spots that weren't rust.
"Yeah," he said, with a laugh that sounded more like a cough. "But it's a price I'm willing to pay."
She let him go, but only enough to reach for his wrist. He didn't pull away. She took his hand and turned it gently. The lamp was dim, but enough to show the damage.
"You saved me," she said quietly. "Earlier. At the Maw."
"I don't know what I was," he admitted. It felt like confessing to stone. "I didn't feel like myself-"
"You felt like someone who didn't want to let me die," she said simply. "That's enough."
He leaned his back against the pillar and slid down until he sat. The floor was colder down there, but he didn't mind. Hikari crouched beside him and laid her head on his shoulder. Her hair fell over his chest like a curtain between him and the rest of the world.
They stayed that way for some time. Silent understanding.
His eyes fell shut without permission.
✦ ✦ ✦
The forge woke up at a different hour than everyone else.
Obi was already there, head full of intentions, sweat on his brow before the fire even started.
He shouldered the doors wide and the smell rushed out - old ash, steel dust, the ghost of a thousand hammered projects.
He flicked the light switches one by one, praying the ancient bulbs wouldn't blow. Workbenches sprawled in organized chaos that only made sense to him - tools exactly where he'd left them, half-finished projects stacked like old promises that he'd one day finish them.
He dragged a long table to the center, wiped it with an old rag that deserved retirement, and slapped a chalk line down its length.
"Right," he told the empty room. "We're building miracles."
He lined hammers by weight and temper across the bench: round-head, straight-peen, cross-peen, and one rubber mallet he didn't remember acquiring.
From the only nice cabinet in the shop, he brought two bars of silvery steel - clean, straight, silvery, with the ring of good, quality ore when he tapped them with a knuckle. He remembered all the stress he had to go through a half a year ago, when he smuggled them from a filthy rich vendor from Haldor.
"Sing for me, beauties" he told each one.
On the far table he cleared space and laid out black leather for grips - high-quality stuff he'd bought the night before. The price tag had made him wince, but these weren't practice pieces.
He unrolled a sheet of paper and sketched without hesitating.
For Hikari: He paused. His pencil circled for a minute, tying ideas together.
Staff? Spear?
A grin spread across his face. "You know what? Both."
Time blurred as he designed something that shouldn't work but would - a staff and a spear, both in the same weapon. Bladed at one end, balanced for spinning or striking. The blue crescent would live in the other end, amplifying control and flow. Granny Louissa gave him specific instructions, blabbling about some "Eon abilities" you could use, if the Luminite gems were socketed right.
For Raizen: twin blades that favored speed over show. Straight spine, perfect balance. No spikes, no dragon heads, no decorative uselessness. The spheres would live in the center of mass, not the hilts - he wanted the cut to carry the energy, not the grip.
The blueprints took shape, his mind flooding with ideas - stupid ones and genius ones. He kept both.
Then he hit a problem.
The yellow sphere was one piece. Raizen's design needed two blades. Two cores.
He stared at the gem for a long time, watching the golden lightning coil inside. Luminite was rare. Pure Luminite like this? Almost priceless. You didn't just... cut it.
Most smiths wouldn't even consider it. The gem could shatter. The light could die. Years of formation could crack into worthless dust under one wrong strike.
But Obi wasn't most smiths.
He picked up the sphere, held it to the light, studied the patterns. The lightning moved in symmetrical loops - mirrored, balanced. Like it wanted to be two in the first place.
…Or that was just what Obi imagined, too excited by his own ideas.
"Alright," he whispered to the gem. "Let's see if you're as brave as I am."
He was going to split it. Into two perfect halves.
He'd split gems before - small ones, cheap ones, practice pieces that didn't matter. But never anything like this. Never something that could mean the difference between life and death for people he cared about.
His hands were steady. They always were in the forge.
"Either this works," he told the empty forge, "or I'm buying Raizen a stupidly expensive apology gift."