"That's where it started, Roxy, that's where they took them from me. I thought if I burned the manor, the memory would stop hurting. But looking at it now..."
He tightened his grip on his longsword, his knuckles turning white.
"I think it's time we finish this."
The air inside the hovel was stagnant, thick with the smell of damp wood and forgotten years. Mochi pushed the door open, it groaned on its lone hinge, revealing a skeleton of a home. Most of the furniture had been looted long ago, and what remained was smashed or rotting.
Mochi didn't linger in the hollowed-out living space. He walked straight through the wreckage to the small, overgrown backyard.
There, tucked under the shadow of a dying willow tree, stood a simple, weathered stone. It wasn't ornate or polished, just a slab of grey rock with a name carved into it by a steady hand.
Caco.
I felt a sharp pang in my chest as I looked at the grave. My mind flashed back to the day I brought Mya back here, the way the old man's eyes had filled with tears of relief, and the way he had shared his last crust of bread with me despite having nothing.
"He died shortly after I saved Mya, he was so kind to me... he offered me everything he had left as a thank you. But the illness was already too deep. He went peacefully, knowing she was safe."
Mochi stood perfectly still, his silhouette framed by the setting sun. He reached down, brushing a layer of moss away from the base of the stone. His fingers lingered on the carved letters, his feline ears flattened against his head.
"He was a stubborn old man, Yeah... he was the last of us. Our last anchor to this place after our parents were taken and sold into the Callus interior. He stayed here, in this rot, just to make sure Mya and I had a place to come back to if we ever escaped."
He straightened his back, his amber eyes glowing with a cold, renewed ferocity as he looked away from the grave and toward the manor on the hill.
"He survived the slums, the hunger, and the plagues, only to die in a shack while the men who enslaved his children drank wine in gold cups, I'm glad he's at peace, Roxy. But I'm not. I'm going to make sure the people who broke this family never get to sleep peacefully again."
The sun dipped below the horizon, casting long, bloody shadows across the backyard. We stood there in the silence of the dead, two ghosts of Tata preparing to haunt the living.
"Come on, the sun is down. It's time to show Dominik what happens when you leave survivors in the slums."
The sun had vanished, leaving the slums in a bruised, purple twilight. As we turned to leave the hovel, the shadows of the alleyways began to move. Dozens of eyes, golden, slitted, and wide with hunger, emerged from the dark.
"Is it really him? The boy with the sun-gold hair? Mya's brother?"
Mochi froze. For a moment, the fearsome Luminous Knight looked like a lost child again. A group of demi-human children, their clothes tattered and their faces smudged with soot, sprinted forward. They saw a legend. They threw their arms around his legs, clinging to his armored greaves.
"Mochi, you're home, ee thought the Manor ate you."
I saw Mochi's jaw tighten. A single tear escaped, tracing a path through the dust on his cheek, but his expression remained as rigid as iron. He remembered the stones thrown at him by these same people when he was a starving orphan. He remembered the bullying, the way they had turned on each other just to please their human masters. But looking at these children, he saw the cycle continuing, and he snapped.
Gently but firmly, he stepped onto a stack of discarded crates, the moonlight catching his silver pauldrons. His voice rang out, no longer a growl, but a clarion call that echoed through the hollow streets.
"Look at me! Look at my face! You call me home, but look at the home you live in! We breathe the rot of the masters while they perfume their bedsheets with the coins they stole from our parents' pockets! For five years, I ran. I thought if I became a knight, if I wore their silver, I would finally be 'human' enough for them. I was wrong!"
He unsheathed his longsword, the blade glowing with a faint, righteous light.
"They treat us like the trash of Callus! They use our bodies for labor and our lives for entertainment! They killed my grandfather in a shack, and they slaughtered Elodie Petit today just to send a message to us! They want us to fear the dark, but I say the dark is our territory! We have been bitten, beaten, and broken, but we are still here!"
He pointed his sword toward the Manor, glowing like a beacon on the hill.
"I didn't come back to visit a grave! I came back to burn the throne that sits on our necks! If we must be the monsters they claim we are, then let us be the monsters that tear their walls down! Who among you is tired of being hungry? Who among you is tired of watching your children grow up in the dirt? Tonight, Tata does not belong to Dominik! Tonight, Tata belongs to the People of the Slums! Fight for your homeland, or die in its gutters!"
The silence held for a heartbeat, then it shattered.
"FOR MOCHI! FOR OUR FREEDOM!"
The roar was primal. Men and women surged into the streets, grabbing pitchforks, rusted cleavers, and heavy timber beams. Torches were lit, one by one, until the slums looked like a sea of rising stars.
I stood in the shadow of the hovel, watching the spark I had helped ignite turn into an inferno. Mochi looked down at me, his eyes burning with a terrifying, revolutionary fever. The Luminous Knight was gone and the King of the Slums had risen.
"Roxy, The distraction is ready. Tell Harold to prepare the signal. We aren't just infiltrating the Manor tonight. We're reclaiming it."