He opened his eyes.
The training yard was exactly as he left it.
Same stone.
Same sky.
Same four people watching him like they'd been holding their breath the whole time.
He sat there for a moment.
Then stood.
Slowly.
Ren opened his mouth.
"Don't," Tetsuo said.
Ren closed it.
Tetsuo rolled his shoulders once.
Looked at his hand.
Opened it.
Something flickered.
Not the faint distant thing from the first training session.
Not barely there.
Steadier.
Warmer.
Wrong color.
Not gold like Kaguren's.
Not silver like the instructor's.
Something between red and white that didn't have a name in the Order's vocabulary yet.
He closed his fist.
Filed it.
"Well," Ren said carefully.
"You're not dead."
"No."
"And you still have your own eyes."
Tetsuo looked at him.
"Mostly," Ren added.
Amara stepped forward.
Looked him over the way she looked over everything.
Practical.
Thorough.
"You're different," she said.
Not a question.
"I made an arrangement," Tetsuo replied.
"With yourself," Cecil said quietly.
"Yes."
She adjusted her glasses.
"Did it agree to the terms."
"Reluctantly."
"That's the best outcome we could have hoped for," she said.
And went back to her book.
Skull pushed off the wall.
Crossed the yard slowly.
Stopped in front of Tetsuo.
The mask giving nothing.
He looked at his eyes.
Whatever he found there settled something.
He turned and walked away without a word.
Which from Skull meant something close to approval.
Ren watched him go.
"So that's it?" he said.
"You went inside your own head."
"Talked to yourself."
"Made a deal."
"Came back slightly terrifying."
"And now everything's fine?"
Tetsuo looked at him.
"Everything's not fine," he said.
"The organization that killed my parents is still out there."
"Lucifer is moving pieces on a board we can't fully see yet."
"And I still can't produce H-Light properly."
He looked at his hand again.
"But I know what I am now."
Silence.
"That's enough for today."
Ren stared at him for a long moment.
Then nodded once.
Serious for the second time in sixteen chapters.
"Yeah," he said quietly.
"Okay."
The mission board had a new notice by evening.
Red ink.
Urgent classification.
Tetsuo read it twice.
Then stepped back.
Ren appeared beside him.
Read it.
Said nothing for three full seconds.
Which was unprecedented.
"That's a village," he said.
"Yes."
"In the Ashfen Range."
Tetsuo looked at him.
Ren's jaw was set.
Eyes doing something complicated and controlled.
"That's two settlements from Soren," he said.
Quietly.
Flatly.
The way people spoke when they were keeping something very compressed.
"I know," Tetsuo said.
Ren looked at the notice a moment longer.
"Same pattern," he said.
"Coordinated crossing."
"Not strays."
"Not a pack."
He stepped back.
"Someone is moving through the Ashfen Range deliberately."
Tetsuo pulled the notice from the board.
"I'll tell the others," he said.
Ren didn't move immediately.
Just looked at where the notice had been.
"Ren."
He looked up.
"You don't have to come on this one."
Ren looked at him.
The complicated thing behind his eyes resolved into something simpler.
Something that had already made its decision a long time ago.
"Yes I do," he said.
He walked away toward the eastern wing.
Tetsuo watched him go.
Then looked at the notice in his hand.
Ashfen Range.
Coordinated crossing.
Three settlements from the Soren massacre.
Moving closer.
He pressed two fingers against his chest.
One beat.
Then a second one.
Slightly different from the first.
Like something else briefly confirming its presence.
Then normal again.
*I know*, he thought.
*We'll handle it.*
A pause inside him.
Contemptuous as always.
But present.
"OBVIOUSLY."