The sidearm was cold and absolute against Hikari's head.
Raizen saw it and everything inside him went very, very quiet.
Not the Maw. The Maw kept moving - the ceiling fans pushing air, the food sending up gentle steam, someone's glass knocking softly on wood.
But inside Raizen, the sound fell away. His breath completely cut. His body remembered something older.
The whisper sneaked through his mind again, intertwining with his thoughts.
Protect her.
For a white flash he saw the village wall exploding. He saw his father's feet leaving the ground. He heard his mother's broken voice, urging him to run.
He finally... Finally understood.
If he moved too late, he would lose Hikari the same way.
The fear didn't make him shake. It emptied him. The boy was gone. What the Rust Room built stood up.
A...
Heartless killer.
Two things happened at once:
Hikari didn't cry out. She went statue-still.
But she couldn't be left to die. Not her.
Raizen moved.
A fraction of a second, and his right hand was already on the pistol, wrenching the barrel off Hikari's skull and straight up, line of fire to ceiling. The guard's eyes widened - there wasn't time for anything else.
Raizen's movements were instant.
Perfect.
Filled with bloodlust.
Pivot. Raizen spun through the man's lead shoulder, dragged the wrist across its weakest line and folded the elbow, and the arm snapped into a brutal, clean lock - hand trapped, elbow pinned, shoulder captured.
He gave the pistol nowhere to live except in his own hands.
Then the lights went out. The bodyguard's lights.
Three touches: knuckles tucked under the ear, two fingers stabbing the jaw hinge, a short cruel rake where nerves live. The guard's body fell to the ground before his mind understood.
The air in the Maw changed again - like everyone had stepped to the edge of a drop without meaning to.
The weapon hummed as its grip brushed Raizen's sleeve, with utmost precision. He held it so the barrel never pointed at Hikari again. He swiftly turned on his heel, and the world inverted.
The gun's dark mouth was now on another head. Marcus Valerius's.
From the first touch of steel to the sight on Marcus's head, less than a breath had passed. The fiddle in the corner hadn't finished the note it had started.
Everything else finished for it.
The rust room finally showed the weapon it created.
The tune fell apart. The dice forgot to roll.
Marcus didn't flinch. He didn't shout. Calm was his talent and he showed it once again.
The way a cornered king peacefully surrenders.
His hands lifted, fingers loose. His eyes were careful, as they had been when Obi walked up.
But they were not the same eyes. Terror lived behind them now. Honest terror.
"You don't want to do that" Marcus said, with a completely different tone.
"I don't want to do a lot of things" Raizen's eyes were absolute, and his own voice frightened him.
It was flat. Cold. Emotionless.
"Let her go."
Behind him, Hikari finally exhaled.
She hadn't moved when the barrel pressed in. She didn't move now. But her heartbeat was fast enough for Mina to call numbers and shout about it.
Obi's grin went missing. "Maybe it would be a wonderful idea to listen to the guy with the gun" he suggested brightly, which was the only brightness left in him.
Marcus didn't glance at his man. He looked at the barrel. At the darkness inside it. The darkness that meant certain death. His life was now in someone else's hands.
Then he looked at Hikari's wrist. Then he smiled, a professional expression that hid his trembling hands.
"Of course" he said softly. "We all want the same thing. No one dies here."
He started moving. Slowly. Deliberately. Two fingers found a flat piece of metal in his vest's hidden pocket. It looked like a thick coin with a notch taken out and a symbol etched in the brass - a lotus, simplified down to a simple shape. He brought it up where Raizen could see it.
"On the table" Raizen said.
Marcus obeyed. He set the token by the case's base and pushed. Something inside the case recognized the pattern.
The bolt that had driven through wood sighed back up in a clean cylinder of motion and disappeared. The case became portable again.
"The cuff" Raizen went on.
Marcus's mouth bent at a corner. "Key" he said, almost apologetically. He pulled a thin metal strip from the inside of his pocket watch.
He held it up, then stood up. Slowly. The room tensed - taverns can breathe - but no one interrupted the ritual of a man with a gun asking another to be careful with his life. Marcus lifted the makeshift pick.
Hikari didn't look at him. Her vision was fixes on Raizen.
He didn't blink. The gun didn't even tremble.
The pick slid into the cuff's lip. The teeth inside didn't want to be convinced, only after a few tries.
The steel clicked, again. Hikari withdrew her hand, flexed fingers to make sure they were all still there, and slid the case off the table with her other hand.
Marcus stepped back. The pistol stayed with him Raizen like a shadow that had found a reason to be real.
The Maw remembered how to murmur. Not loud. Enough.
"Take it and leave" Marcus said. Still soft. Still polite. Sweat pearled at his hairline anyway. "You have what you came for. We can pretend this didn't happen."
Raizen's arms felt steady and hollow. The gun felt like a thing pretending to be part of him. The cold inside him stayed the same.
He unloaded the sidearm with one single movement.
Every bullet that was once ready to steal someone's life was now on the floor, meaningless.
Then he turned away and started moving towards the exit.
Obi and Hikari quietly followed.
At the door, Obi's smile came back all at once as if it had been hiding behind the last table.
"The beef really was great" he told the barman in a confessional whisper. "Send one to our place. Put it on his tab."
"Obi" Hikari said, soft, warning, not quite a question.
"Right, right" he sighed. "Leaving."
They stepped out into the Underworks.
For some time, no one spoke.
Raizen's hands remembered that they were normal, human hands, and began to shake. Not much.
"Are you... Okay?" Obi asked without looking, which was kindness.
Raizen stayed quiet, after what happened. He was shocked by his own capability. All that he could feel in that moment was bloodlust. Him, that saw people die. Him, swearing to protect. The feeling of pure bloodlust made him want to throw up.
"So... This is how cruel the world is.. This is how cruel the world can make you..." thoughts ran through his mind.
He swallowed. "I... I don't know."
"You moved like… Like you slowed down time" Obi said, and let the compliment sit instead of turning it into a joke the way he usually would.
Hikari matched Raizen's steps. Her hand was slightly brushing his.
"You saved my life" she wanted to say, but her mouth couldn't move.
They took a turn into a narrower lane. The Underworks' lights stitched along pipes like far-off constellations.
The gun in Raizen's hand cooled to the touch of his skin. He stopped, just long enough to look at it. His reflection ran along the slide in a dark smudge.
Was this what strength felt like?
Was strength something... Drawn from desire to kill?
Faint memories of his parents flooded his head again, but he couldn't cry. His eyes were completely dry.
Yet somehow, his revenge felt right. The wish to kill every Nyx… Just... Made sense.
Was it the calm, perfect cruelty of emotions?
The way the fear had turned into a sharp blade?
Or was it just another kind of running, except forward instead of away?
He closed his eyes and saw Hikari, eyes wide open, steel against her head
His fingers tightened around the pistol. Then, deliberately, he loosened them. He tucked the weapon inside his coat where it wouldn't show.
His hands felt like tools he hadn't learned how to be gentle with yet.
They kept moving.
Raizen didn't look back. He couldn't decide if what had stood up inside him when the gun touched Hikari was his strength - or the part of him that only lives to stop loss, no matter what it turns him into.
The cold whisper returned for a second. It skimmed the edge of his thoughts again.
End anyone who tries to take her.
Raizen didn't know if that voice was just protecting Hikari…
…or slowly trying to rewrite him into a monster.