The Luminite gem in his arm was already awake.
It sat in the cradle of his prosthetic like a small red heart, humming beneath the metal. Light leaked through the seams in thin lines, and heat crawled up his forearm in slow pulses that felt almost alive.
This was the path he'd chosen.
Takeshi walked through the Underworks without hiding, without pulling his hood up, without pretending he was only passing through.
People moved out of his way like they always did.
A card game went still. A man suddenly remembered he had somewhere else to be and ran off. A laugh died mid-breath and returned smaller, forced. Nobody looked up long enough to get caught staring.
Takeshi didn't look at any of them. He knew every pipe and crack down here, every corridor that hid beggars where it ended, every shadow that never belonged to the lamps.
This had once been his own world. He once ruled this place.
His mind wouldn't leave him alone. Memories kept replaying. His daughter. His wife. Raizen. Hikari. Even Louissa and Obi.
He turned into a smaller corridor and passed a streetlamp. A poster was pinned to it.
THE VANGUARDS DID IT AGAIN!Family Reunites Safely—
His steel arm snapped forward.
The metal pole bent, folded, and crashed to the ground with a screech of tortured metal.
The now-darkened corridor seemed to end in a bare brick wall.
It didn't.
His metal fingers found a small steel plate in the center - the kind you'd miss unless you already knew it existed. But when it didn't want to activate to his metal fingers, he stuck his hand in the wall, brick dust scattering everywhere, and ripped the whole keypad out. A thin red line lit around the edges and a keypad slid out. Black glass. Red symbols. Too modern for the Underworks.
Old anger rose. He remembered the white masks.
He raised Marcus's pistol and fired. The shot cracked the keypad open. Glass shattered. Sparks spat outward. The red light stuttered, flickered like a dying heartbeat, then went dead.
For a breath, nothing happened. Then stone shifted and the wall slid sideways.
Takeshi silently stepped through, without hesitation.
The corridor inside had no rust, no stains, no dripping water, no Underworks smell. Smooth black walls, black ceiling, black floor. Thin red strips ran along the edges like veins under skin. Filtered air.
The red gem pulsed harder. Heat climbed through the metal into his elbow and shoulder. The first wave hurt - like sparks under the skin. He grunted through it. The second wave hurt less. The third only stung.
Plates in his forearm shifted with soft clicks, locking into tighter alignment. When his fingers curled, he couldn't fully feel the grip anymore.
Power never comes for free.
The gem pulsed again, and this time the heat wasn't just warmth - it was hunger. It wanted blood. Wanted bone to crack under metal fingers. Wanted flesh to give way.
Takeshi's breathing went shallow. The arm felt less like his and more like something wearing him.
"Keep the world lit, huh…?" he murmured to himself.
Masks hung on the walls at intervals like art pieces. Plain white. Smiling.
He didn't slow down to look at them. He knew them too well. The corridor ran straight, then turned in different directions. All of them leading to different rooms, for different cursed uses.
Behind dark glass, the entire Underworks became scrolling data - red lines, numbers, sectors, names, coordinates. Patrol schedules. Routes. Missing people logged like accounting mistakes.
Someone was watching everything.
Takeshi looked around for a while, then went with the widest hall. He thought of the letter he'd left behind. He'd written the lines he could admit, but left the ugliest truth in his throat. He couldn't write…
Forgive me if I die and leave you alone.
The gem throbbed violently, and for a second the heat felt less like strength and more like a blade that wanted to swing by itself.
A sliding door at the end opened before he even got close to it.
Something wanted him here.
Something was waiting.
Takeshi stepped inside anyway.
The room beyond was large, cold, and expensive in a way that made the entire Underworks feel like a joke. A long black table sat in the middle, polished enough to mirror his reflection. Chairs lined both sides in perfect order, thin red lines tracing their edges in elegant patterns.
The far wall was glass filled with red text and graphs. Lines going up and down for any metric they could use. Casualty numbers. Kill counts. Recent activity. All of it drifting past in neat columns, as if life itself was only numbers.
Takeshi set his flesh hand on the table.
The surface was ice cold. His reflection stared back - one eye, one metal arm, no room left for softness.
Suddenly, a quiet shift to his left.
He looked up.
A figure stood in the corner. Clean black suit, straight posture, white smiling mask watching him.
Another stood to the right.
A third farther back.
They'd been here the whole time, and he didn't even see them. His arm pulsed brighter, red veins of light leaking over the plates. The gem pushed more strength into him - enough to crush stone with a flick.
He took one step along the table, measuring distance and angles. Counting exits. Counting bullets. Counting how long he could keep the gun working before he had to let the metal arm do what it he built it to do.
More shapes loosened from the darkness.
Two more to his left. One behind him now, close enough that the air at his neck felt colder. Maybe more beyond his sight, tucked into places the lights didn't reach.
Seven masks he could see.
Enough.
Then something moved at the far end of the room.
A man in a black suit stood up behind the chair at the head of the table, as if the room had been built around his presence. His clothes were finer than the others - silver lining at his cuffs and collar. The same white smile sat on his face like a lie that never got tired.
But this mask was different. Older. The paint had tiny cracks around the edges, like it had been worn for decades.
It tilted a fraction.
"It's been a while, Takeshi."
The voice was calm. Human. Not deep, not distorted, not trying to sound monstrous. That made it worse somehow.
Takeshi kept his face unreadable.
The mask's head tipped again, almost curious.
"We wondered if you were actually dead. For years, you know. The Legendary Assassin we couldn't finish." The masked man even gestured in the air with his hands. "When the Underworks stopped whispering your name, we assumed you finally bled out in a corner like everyone else."
The man made a final gesture with his hands, almost dismissive.
"And yet... here you are."
Takeshi adjusted his stance. A body prepared for violence.
"What you did," he said, voice low and controlled, "wasn't silencing me. It was murder."
The mask tilted the other way, amused.
"You're still clinging to that word? After everything you've done down here?"
"I was better." The rage climbed behind his words. "At least I stopped when people begged. I had mercy."
His steel arm throbbed again, and the Luminite answered like it loved anger more than anything. The heat was getting worse now - more insistent. He could feel the mechanism in his forearm tightening, as if the metal itself wanted to fight.
"Better?" The man laughed - a genuine sound that felt wrong in this cold room. "You were everything I wanted to be, Takeshi. The Assassin nobody could touch. The man who made the whole Underworks tremble with a name, not a mask!"
He leaned forward slightly.
"I studied every kill. Every "mercy" you showed. Every choice you made. You were my hero. Wanting to make the Underworks and Neoshima one, aaalways talking about freedom."
Takeshi's jaw tightened.
"And then I realized something." The mask's voice went quieter, more intimate. "You were weak. Mercy isn't strength, Takeshi. It's hesitation wearing a noble face. Every time you spared someone, you planted a seed that grew into worse violence later."
"That's not—"
"Oh, you think it isn't?" The mask interrupted. "How many people did you spare who came back with knives? How many "second chances" turned into third bodies? You wanted to feel forgiven. We wanted the city to stop creating more rats."
"You're wrong," Takeshi said, forcing his voice steady despite the heat crawling up his arm. "I spared people because they deserved a chance to choose differently. You bury them because you're too afraid to let anyone choose at all."
The mask tilted, considering.
"Choice?" He said the word like it was a disease. "You gave them choice, and they chose to tear each other apart. Freedom doesn't keep cities strong, Takeshi. You cut chains and called it mercy. We buried the rodents you left breathing."
He spread his hands, presenting the glass wall and its red streams of data like proof. "Every door you opened should have stayed shut. Every chain you broke made this city weaker. We rule the Underworks because nobody else can. Humans need structure. They are built for leadership. They need someone strong enough to make the hard choices. Don't you think?"
Takeshi thought of his wife's smile. His daughter's hands.
Then Raizen's stubborn eyes. Hikari's quiet trust. Obi's laughter.
"You call massacre strength?" His voice came out harder now. "That's not leadership. That's cowardice hiding behind a mask."
"And what you did was arrogance hiding behind mercy," The man shot back. "You saved lives after ending countless others and called it humanity. You should've died. You should've stayed dead! Instead, you come crawling back with a stolen pistol and a broken arm you stuffed a shiny rock into."
The Luminite screamed in Takeshi's arm. Heat lanced up to his shoulder. The gem wanted him to move, to strike, to crush the mask into the table until the face beneath stopped breathing.
"You're wrong about one thing," Takeshi said quietly.
"Oh?"
"I didn't come here for forgiveness." His pistol rose, aim settling on the mask at the head of the table. "I came here to make sure you can't kill anyone else."
The man didn't move. Didn't even flinch. "Before you pull that trigger," he said calmly, "you should know - the kids you left behind? We've been watching them. Raizen. Hikari. Such promising young fighters. But if you kill me, they won't see the day when they'll become Gravers-"
"No." Takeshi cut him off.
"I beg your pardon?"
"They won't become Gravers." A small pause. "I know that."
The other masks shifted slightly. Ready to move.
"But as I was saying, if you walk away now," The man continued, voice almost gentle, "we'll forget this happened… Out of mutual respect." The man stopped leaning on the table. "You go back to your corner, we go back to our corners. You stay safe… Everyone wins."
The Moiraian waited.
Takeshi made his choice.
"Then coming here to end you was the right choice."
He pulled the trigger.