Time had passed - days, maybe more - long enough for the pain in Raizen's arm to dull to an ache rather than a constant scream. The bandages were tighter now, cleaner, and Louissa had scolded him more than once for trying to use it too much.
He just had to learn that nothing slipped past her watchful gaze. Despite her ominous prophecy… Nobody came looking for him… Yet.
Hikari had recovered faster. She sat by the window most of the time, watching the streets outside with quiet intensity, like she was memorizing every shadow.
The whisper - the cold voice that had guided him through fire and forest - had gone silent. Completely silent. He'd noticed it the day she woke up.
Like it no longer needed him.
One morning, Takeshi stood at the desk, mechanical arm half-assembled on his workbench.
"You're healed enough" he said, not looking up.
Raizen blinked. "For what?"
"Look at you." Takeshi pointed at Raizen, from top to bottom, with a sharp tool. "Think you'll survive the Underworks like… That?"
"Like what?"
Takeshi finally looked at him, and sighed. The black leather eyepatch caught the lamplight. "You look like a depressed straw."
Raizen frowned. Takeshi was partially right. Spending most of his childhood practicing fishing and cooking fish, his physique was... Underwhelming. "…So? What do you propose?"
Hikari's head turned from the window. So slowly, neither Raizen or Takeshi noticed her.
"I know a place" Takeshi couldn't stop one corner of his mouth from rising. This was the second time when Raizen had't called him "Sir".
"It's not on maps, but I can get you there, to train."
Raizen sat up straighter despite the protest from his ribs. "Train for what?"
"Surviving. Hunting. Even killing, if it comes to that." Takeshi's spoke slowly, each word measured. "The Underworks is brutal. You'll need more than luck."
"When do we start?" Raizen asked, because rejection was out of the question.
Takeshi almost smiled. "How about now?"
✦ ✦ ✦
They left through back corridors Raizen hadn't seen before. Narrower. Darker. The sounds changed here - less market chatter, more machinery. Steam hissed through pipes overhead. Somewhere distant, metal scraped against stone.
This wasn't the Underworks Obi had shown them a few days ago. This was the part people avoided.
They passed an alcove where two men stood beside a covered cart. One glanced at Takeshi, then quickly away - like seeing him was a mistake he'd immediately regret.
Raizen glimpsed pale yellow-green chunks under the tarp.
Takeshi's hand pressed his shoulder, moving him forward.
"Don't stare" he murmured.
"What was that?"
"Luminite. The cheap kind." Takeshi's voice flattened. "Barely enough for a Graver's weapon."
Hikari walked closer to Raizen after that. The corridor ended at a smooth metal wall. No door. No seam. Just seamless steel that didn't belong in the rust-eaten Underworks.
Takeshi pressed his palm flat against a specific spot on it.
Something inside clicked. Whirred. The metal split down the middle and slid apart with a pressurized hiss.
Cold, filtered air poured out.
Beyond the threshold: white corridors. Clean. Clinical. The opposite of everything the Underworks had shown them.
Glass panels overlooked training bays on either side. In one, a track coiled and tilted at impossible angles. In another, a climbing wall where tiles shifted and locked into new patterns every few seconds.
"What is this place?" Raizen breathed.
"Welcome" Takeshi said.
"To the Rust Room."
✦ ✦ ✦
Takeshi stopped at the third room. It didn't have doors, as if anyone could step inside.
"As far as I can recall, this is the gym" he said.
The room did, in fact, look like some kind of gym. Racks stood on every wall, holding weights in all shapes and weights. Nothing sagged. Nothing squeaked. Everything looked underused - new, even.
Someone was upside down in the center of the floor.
One arm locked, shoulder over the wrist. She dipped - nose to the floor, push, again.
One-hand handstand pushups as if gravity had just given up trying to argue with her.
Short silver hair swung with each rep, a sharp bob cut that framed a face full of mischief and trouble. When she finally noticed them, she spun midair, landing lightly.
The young woman blinked once.
"Tin arm. One eye." she called out, voice bright with mischief. "You're supposed to be dead."
"Kori." Takeshi's voice warmed. Barely. "Nice to see you alive too."
She crossed the distance in three steps and punched his shoulder - the flesh one - hard enough to make Raizen flinch.
"You don't send a note for a decade, then stroll back in here with two strays?" Her eyes flicked to Raizen and Hikari. Sharp. Assessing. Amused. "Cute. You get them from a shelter or did they follow you home?"
"Strays bite" Takeshi said. "They need to learn."
Kori raised an eyebrow. "Learn what?"
"How not to die."
"Hm. Popular course." She tilted her head, studying them like a puzzle with missing pieces. Then she grinned wider. "Alright. Let's see what they're made of."
She turned toward a door. "Mina! Wake up, darling! We've got fresh meat!"
A woman's voice drifted from behind thick glass above the bay. "Please stop calling new vital profiles fresh meat. Logging them in a sec."
Raizen looked up. Behind the observation window sat a woman in front of six monitors, headphones pushed back on dark hair. She waved once, casual, like watching people get destroyed was just another day for her.
"That's Mina" Kori said over her shoulder. "She watches. Tracks everything. Judges silently." She cupped her hands around her mouth. "DON'T YOU, MINA?"
"I judge out loud too!" Mina shouted back, through the speakers this time.
"See? Honest. I like that in surveillance."
Kori led them into a white room. Empty except for five steel poles arranged in a circle. From each pole, three rods jutted out at different heights - low, mid, high. They looked harmless.
They weren't.
"Rules are simple" Kori announced, spinning to face them with a grin that promised pain. "The rods swing. You dodge, parry, or try not to cry. Questions?"
"That's it?" Raizen asked, raising a brow. Surely, he could dodge a few rods, right? He thought
"That's everything."
"No warmup?"
"Oh, my sweetie." Kori's grin widened. "but this IS warmup."
She snapped her fingers toward the glass. "Mina! Speed ten, for now. Let's be gentle."
"Speed ten" Mina confirmed. "Wow… First time you want to be gentle, in a while."
The rods hummed to life. The first one snapped out without warning - a mid-level swing aimed at Raizen's ribs.
He barely jerked back in time. It clipped his shoulder, spinning him.
The second came low.
Raizen jumped,.
The third caught him in the stomach.
Air left his lungs. He hit the padded floor with a wheeze that echoed.
"Dead!" Kori called cheerfully from the sideline. "But hey, you dodged two. That's something."
Raizen tried to stand. A fourth rod swung for his head. He ducked too late - it tapped his temple like a disappointed teacher.
"Also dead!"
Beside him, Hikari had gone still. Watching. Reading the pattern like it was written in a language only she understood.
The first rod swung for her.
She leaned - barely a shift - it missed by a hair, but it was enough.
Second rod, low. She stepped over it without looking down.
Third rod from behind. She tilted her head. It whistled past her ear.
Kori's grin faltered. Just a fraction.
"Speed fifteen for her" she said to Mina.
The rods blurred faster.
Raizen scrambled to his feet, got clipped in the shin, hopped, took another hit to the shoulder, and went down again with considerably less dignity than the first time.
"Dead, dead, dead! Wow, you're consistent!"
But Hikari-
Hikari moved.
Not fast. Not flashy. Just... Extremely precise. Like the rods weren't trying to hit her. Like she'd already seen where they'd be and simply chose not to be there.
A double swing came from opposite sides. She ducked and turned in the same motion, and both rods hit empty air.
Up in the booth, Mina leaned closer to her screen. "That's... her reaction time is reading at 82 milliseconds. That's not normal."
Kori didn't respond. Her eyes tracked every movement, sharp and suddenly serious.
"Speed twenty."
The rods became a storm. Raizen didn't even try - he just covered his head and accepted death. Hikari slipped through it like water through cracks. When the rods finally stopped, Raizen was on his back, groaning. Hikari stood in the center, breathing steady, hair a bit disturbed.
Kori stared for a long moment. Then she clapped. Once. Slow.
"Welp." She looked at Takeshi. "You brought me a disaster and a ghost."
"Can you work with them?"
Kori's grin came back, sharper now. "Oh, I can work with anything." She looked down at Raizen, still sprawled on the floor. "Even… Uh… Whatever that is."
"Encouraging" Raizen wheezed.
"I'm not here to encourage" Kori said. "I'm here to make you not die. There's a difference."
She offered a hand. He took it. She hauled him up with alarming ease.
"Tomorrow. Same time. We'll see if you're serious or just visiting."
✦ ✦ ✦
The walk back through the Underworks was quieter. Raizen's everything hurt. Hikari walked beside him, silent as always, but her eyes kept flicking to corners he hadn't noticed before. Dark edges. Beggars hiding behind steel boxes or hugging pipes for warmth.
Takeshi walked ahead, mechanical fingers flexing absently.
"That woman" Raizen said. "Kori. She's... different."
"She was one of the Phalanx" Takeshi said. "Second one, if I recall correctly."
"Phalanx?" Raizen asked.
"What? You've never heard of them?" Takeshi turned with genuine confusion. After Raizen shook his head, he explained biefly:
"Best fighters this world's ever seen. Seven of them. Now… Most are gone."
"What happened?"
"They fought of the darkest nightmares." Takeshi's jaw tightened. "Some monsters just don't let you walk away."
They turned a corner. A group of men stood near a broken lamp, voices low. One glanced at Takeshi. The conversation stopped, and instead their eyes glimmered at Takeshi's steel arm..
Hikari's hand brushed Raizen's sleeve. She didn't say anything, her eyes focused forward.
Raizen couldn't help but stare at their waists – visible, as if they were wearing them to inspire fear, knives. About four of them. Different sizes, different shapes. All of them were rusty.
The Underworks wasn't just dangerous.
It was always watching.
✦ ✦ ✦
That night, Raizen lay on the thin mattress, staring at the ceiling.
Every muscle hurt. His ribs ached. His shoulder throbbed where the rods had tagged him - which was everywhere. But under the pain, something else annoyed him. He'd been slow. Clumsy. Predictable. The rods had destroyed him.
And those were just training tools. Controlled. Held between parameters.
…What would a Nyx do?
His hand curled into a fist.
The whisper was gone. The cold voice that had dragged him through fire and commanded him to survive and protect was now gone.
Good.
He didn't need it anymore.
He had the Rust Room now.