The gunshot cracked like thunder in the cold room.
The nearest mask's forehead exploded - white porcelain fragmenting outward, red mist, body dropping with a wet thud that echoed off polished walls.
For half a second, nobody moved.
Then the other masks turned toward Takeshi in perfect unison.
Their hands rose. Fingers splayed.
Knives slid from sleeves and cuffs - small, elegant, each one seated around a purple Luminite core that pulsed with violet light.
Then they let go.
The blades didn't fall. They hovered, rotating slowly in the air like living things waiting for commands.
Takeshi's eyes cold. He recognized them. The Moirai's signature. How they'd killed his family.
A row of fingers twitched, and the first wave came fast:
Three knives snapped forward toward his chest, two dropped low for his knees, one drifted wide - waiting for wherever his body would try to dodge.
Takeshi's left arm came up. The red gem flared, and plates spun across his forearm with soft clicks, overlapping into a crude shield.
The first blade struck and skated off with a harsh scrape of metal on metal. The second bit deeper, half-burying itself between plates. The third slipped past the edge and opened a thin red line across his hip.
The wound burned wrong - not hot, but cold. Violet light seemed to cling to the edges.
Takeshi fired twice in response. A second mask snapped backward, porcelain bursting in a sound almost louder than the gunshot itself. The body hit the floor and didn't move.
Two Moirai on his left spread their fingers wider. Violet Luminite fragments lifted into the air - tiny shards, razor-sharp, dozens of them swirling like a storm of glass.
On his right, the suit with silver thread made a circle of shards that spun behind his shoulder, perfectly controlled.
The weaker ones had one knife each.
The stronger ones commanded fragments - higher accuracy, deeper wounds, death from a hundred cuts.
Takeshi dropped behind a chair, but it bought him less than a second.
The violet edges bit through wood and frame like they were paper. Splinters exploded. Metal screeched. A shard grazed his cheek, leaving a line of what felt like cold fire.
He rolled out and fired low under the table into a leg.
The knee bent in the wrong direction. One set of shards stuttered in the air for a breath, losing their pattern. Takeshi shot the mask before it could recover.
Then the man at the head of the table finally moved.
He didn't rush. Just lifted his hand, fingers closing a fraction.
Every loose shard in the room shuddered and rotated toward him. They rose and formed a ring over his shoulders - dozens of violet points, perfectly spaced, perfectly still, a crown of death waiting to fall.
"You're slower than I remember," the Moirai leader said calmly. "Age? Or maybe… Guilt?"
Takeshi didn't answer.
The leader's fingers twitched, a storm of fragments launching forward.
Five shards for the heart. A tight cluster for the throat. Others aimed at hips, joints, femoral artery, spine - nothing random, nothing wasted. Every angle had killing intent.
The red gem in Takeshi's arm screamed in response.
Seams glowed white-hot. Red light erupted from the plates and shaped itself into a shimmering barrier in front of him.
The storm hit.
Fragments slammed into the red energy wall in a continuous roar. Sparks burst like shattered glass. Some shards snapped outright. Some dug into the barrier and hung there, trembling, before falling dead to the floor.
But three got through.
One stabbed into his thigh, burying deep.
One scraped his side, burning another cold line under his ribs.
One sliced across his shoulder.
The red gem flared again. Heat lanced up through his shoulder, burning through muscle and nerve like molten wire. It wanted more. Wanted everything. Wanted him to let go and become nothing but violence and red light.
Takeshi's iron hand caught the edge of the massive table, the red Luminite pouring strength into dead metal.
He heaved.
The long black table ripped free of its floor bolts with a scream of tortured steel and flipped up like a wall.
The leader's hand snapped forward, a cluster of shards shot out, trying to intercept. But he was too slow. The table slammed into him - it caught his shoulder and drove him back into the glass wall behind with a thunderous crack. The display took a spiderweb pattern. Data flickered and died mid-scroll.
The leader slid a step, suit wrinkling, but the mask kept smiling.
"Clever," the man grunted softly. "But you've always been clever. That's not what killed your family."
Takeshi's vision went red with anger. His metal hand tore a chunk from the shattered table - wood, steel frame, jagged edges - and swung it like a club.
A Moiraian lunged in close, trying to slip a flying blade under his guard whilst trying to take his ankles.
Takeshi caught the wrist, twisted hard until something cracked. The hovering knife wobbled in the air. Then he shattered the mask with an elbow swing.
Two more suits stepped forward, boxing him in with swirling shards.
Takeshi shot one down, and the other, seeing the gun pointed at his face with supernatural speed, pulled fragments together, trying to form a shield.
Too slow.
Another body fell.
The room thinned. One more mask remained, but it still wasn't enough for him.
The leader was still standing, and Takeshi had given him time to recover.
Clusters of violet light drew together and hardened into shapes - a shield plate that hovered at chest height, a spear that formed and dissolved and reformed as needed, smaller fragments orbiting like satellites ready to intercept.
The leader wasn't throwing knives anymore.
He was building weapons mid-air.
Takeshi's jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. His thigh screamed every time he put weight on it.
His pistol was on its last bullet, but he fired anyway.
The leader's shard shield snapped up and caught it – violet gem exploding in a milion pieces, other shards replacing it a second later like the wall had never been touched.
Takeshi's metal fingers flexed.
Red light gathered along his palm, compressing, thinning, sharpening into something solid. Heat bit deeper into the shoulder socket where metal met flesh. It hurt like nothing he'd ever felt - like the arm was trying to consume him from the inside out.
A blade formed in his grip. A knife that looked made from red light itself, yet solid and sharp enough to cut steel.
Even the leader paused.
Just a fraction.
Just enough.
Takeshi threw.
The red knife cut straight across the room, a line of crimson fire.
Violet shards snapped up to meet it, but the red edge tore through them like they were mist and kept going.
The leader shifted, barely tilting his head in time.
The blade missed his mask by a hair and buried itself in a suit behind him.
Another body fell.
"So I underestimated you," the man said quietly. "Again."
Takeshi didn't let him finish. Another red knife grew in his palm. The heat was unbearable now, eating through his arm socket, but he didn't care.
The leader's violet spear snapped out. Takeshi turned straight into it, running straight towards the Moirai leader, metal forearm redirecting the hit. Sparks flew. The point scraped across plates and slid off.
The leader slid back, shards swirling up as a barrier between them. Takeshi's red blade slashed through the violet storm, cutting it open.
The leader's ring of shards tightened, spinning faster - a halo of death that would slice anything foolish enough to step inside.
Takeshi stepped inside anyway. He swung with all his might, the glowing red knife slicing through the shards, time felt as if slowed down. The first fragment shattered. Then another. Then three more. Each one that blew sent feedback screaming through his arm. The red gem burned hotter, plates trembling. Something deep in the mechanism was starting to crack.
He got behind the barrier - close enough to grab.
His metal hand caught the leader by the collar and drove him into the wall. The porcelain mask cracked.
Takeshi slammed the head again. Twice. Three times. The wall behind cracked in a spider web pattern with each impact.
On the fourth hit, the mask broke cleanly down the middle and fell in white pieces.
The violet shards in the air faltered, losing cohesion.
The leader's bare face stared up at him - not panicked, just tired. She was still a human. A woman with long black braided hair and eyes that had seen too much.
He looked at Takeshi's red-lit arm, at the trembling heat under the plates, at the light bleeding through seams that were starting to warp. Her eyes were half-closed from the pain, yet the woman still managed to speak, with a relatively deep voice.
"That stone isn't yours, Takeshi" she said quietly, almost gently. "It hates you. That's why it burns."
Takeshi's red blade hovered at her throat. This was it. The moment he'd carved himself hollow for. The revenge that had eaten years of his life.
But it felt smaller than he'd imagined.
His hand trembled.
Then he thought of his daughter's laugh. His wife's smile. The empty house. The silence that never ended.
The blade moved quickly. Precisely.
The last violet shards dropped to the floor like dead hail.
Silence crashed down: No humming. No floating knives. Just broken glass, white fragments, and bodies in black suits cooling on a floor that didn't deserve blood.
Takeshi stood there, chest heaving.
The red knife in his hand flickered and dissolved into thin air. The gem in his arm dimmed, but the heat didn't leave - it stayed, trapped under the plates, like a warning he couldn't shake off.
His revenge was complete.
The Moirai were dead.
Yet the place where revenge sat inside of him wasn't gone. It felt like a void.
He took half a step. Then another.
His leg buckled slightly.
And then—
A hand moved near the floor. The leader. Dying, but not dead yet.
Takeshi's eyes snapped down, but it was too late.
The woman's fingers closed around something. A plain steel knife, no Luminite, no glow. Just sharpened metal.
"One last lesson, Takeshi." The blade flashed up, just under Takeshi's ribs. "When you defeat someone..."
The cut wasn't deep. Just deep enough.
"Make sure they're dead."
Takeshi's whole body clenched around the point. Heat exploded in his gut, then turned to ice in the same breath.
He ripped the knife out and threw it back to the ground without thinking. The leader went completely still.
Finally.
Takeshi stayed hunched, palm pressed to his side.
Blood leaked between his fingers - too dark, almost violet, thicker than it should be.
The edges didn't burn like a normal wound. They went numb. His tongue thickened. His throat tightened. His vision blurred at the edges like someone was pulling curtains closed.
Takeshi blinked hard and understood.
The Moirai were dead.
But their poison wasn't.