Kamo nodded once. He remembered clearly his own first night, the way Fūre had knelt before him, not to comfort, but to study, to dissect, to test his worth as coldly as a merchant examining merchandise.
And yet, standing here, Kamo felt only gratitude, as sharp and bitter as ashes.
Fūre had not saved him—he had sculpted him, cut away weakness until only something useful remained. Now Kamo would do the same for these nineteen trembling souls.
Kamo didn't add to Fure's sentiment. His eyes returned to the recruits, scanning their faces, their hands, the way they shifted their weight nervously from foot to foot.
Fūre exhaled again, slower this time. Then clapped his hands once—sharp, abrupt, too loud for the room.
"Well," he said cheerfully, "any questions?"
The words didn't match the tension in the room. His voice had lightened, almost amused, like a teacher addressing a rowdy classroom instead of nineteen traumatized teenagers.
No one answered.
He looked around expectantly, eyebrows raised as if this was all perfectly normal. "No brave souls? Not even one?" He paced a slow arc in front of them, smoke curling from his cigar like a tail.
Then, finally—quietly—someone spoke.
Fūre's eyes lingered on the girl's question—Fūre raised a brow. "Why did you take us?"
"Because you're trained." He replied as if he expected something to that effect. "Or close to it. And because the people you served were never going to let you be anything but tools."
Her voice cut through again, sharper. "So what—you're forming an army?"
Fūre's eyes flicked to her. "Sure, if you need to view it that way. I can tell you one thing though, army or not, I'm ending a war that was never declared out loud."
The silence that followed was tighter than before—sharper, like it had cut through something vague.
Kamo saw it in their eyes. Some were still hoping this was a pitch—some chance to be part of a noble cause, maybe even heroes. But the words they'd just heard weren't about purpose. They were about survival. They won't believe you. Kamo knew that before they got here. He hadn't believed him at first either.
Another voice rose—bitter, louder than the rest. "You sound just like them."
Fūre didn't move.
"You talk about 'usefulness' like it's a favor. Like being valuable to you is supposed to mean something."
Kamo's gaze drifted toward the boy. Maybe seventeen. Pale scars around the collarbone. Breathing sharp and uneven.
Fūre stepped forward, but didn't raise his voice. "And what did it mean to them? To the Foundation?"
"That doesn't make you different," the boy snapped. "You just took the leash."
A few heads nodded. Small, tight movements.
Kamo didn't speak. But in his mind, the words were already forming.
They think they've escaped one cage just to land in another. That Fūre's no different from the system. And maybe they're right—if all they're looking at is the leash. But they're not seeing the hand that holds it. The reason it's there.
Fūre tilted his head. "You think this is about being free?"
He looked at no one in particular. "You want your name back. Your file erased. You want to feel clean again. But the second you lit a spark in your takton, they stopped seeing you as human."
He let that sink in.
"You were removed. Before you got to the real thing. Before you became another blood-slick podium in some Trial."
A long pause. No one spoke.
Kamo felt it shift. The realization—slow and subtle—sliding through the room.
Fūre didn't wait for another question.
"The outside world doesn't care if you come back. They won't ask where you've been. Hell, to them you've been dead They'll mark you as a defector—or pretend you never existed."
He stepped back, the edge in his voice softening into something far more unsettling.
"You're not prisoners. You're problems the world forgot to finish cleaning up."
Fūre's voice cut the silence. "That'll do."
No one argued.
He gestured toward Kamo without looking at him. "Orientation. Show them the base. Don't bother sugarcoating it—if they're going to break, better it happens before morning." Fūregen followed with a nod toward the rear passage.
"Show them where they'll sleep. And the layout. We'll move again soon."
Kamo's eyes flicked to him. Just slightly.
Move again?
But Fūre was already walking off, smoke trailing behind him like punctuation.
He didn't say it outright. He didn't have to.
But soon, another raid was coming.
Kamo nodded. "Understood."
He turned to the group. Their eyes met his like animals watching a fence close behind them. He didn't wait for their fear to settle.
"This way," he said simply.
Boots scraped against stone as they moved—some dragging, some stiff with tension. The metal door hissed open again. Kamo led them through it, and with him, went the tension.
Only smoke and silence remained.
Nagitsu stepped forward from the wall where he'd leaned for most of the exchange, hands still tucked in his pockets. His smirk had faded. He let the door seal behind the last recruit before speaking.
"Well," he said lightly, "they're not going to sleep easy."
Fūre didn't respond. He walked to the table, ground his cigar into the steel with a slow, thoughtful twist. Ash smeared like blood on metal.
"They shouldn't," he said.
Nagitsu leaned beside the table, eyes flicking to the spot where the girl had stood. "That one's gonna challenge you again. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon."
Fūre gave a faint nod. "Good."
Nagitsu tilted his head. "You want them agitated?"
"I want them thinking," Fūre replied. "Fear makes them still. Doubt makes them look inward. But curiosity? That's the only thing that ever made one of us dangerous."
He tapped the side of his head, once.
"They're not enough," he said quietly.
Fūre didn't respond.
Nagitsu's voice hardened. "Are they enough for the Celaris? Because after what we pulled at Foundation Four, that mission looks twice as impossible. I saw them up close. They flinch at noise. They freeze at blood. They're not soldiers. They're barely trained survivors."
Fūre stepped away from the table, rolling the tension from his shoulders. "We'll recruit more."
"There's power in numbers," Nagitsu said flatly.
Fūre nodded once. "Exactly."
Nagitsu stepped forward, the flicker of frustration in his voice now undeniable. "There's more power in power. In people like me. Like Kamo. Like you."
Fūre stopped. Turned.
"You think two or three more of each of us—clones of the three—could tear down a system that's stood untouched for over four hundred years?"
Nagitsu didn't answer.
Fūre's voice was calm, but cold. "The government doesn't need a god to win. Just a formula. Just control. Just time. The Foundation kids? They're pieces of that formula. Even the weak ones."
"So what?" Nagitsu said. "We train them up and hope they don't break in the field?"
"No," Fūre replied. "We put them through the fire. And the ones that survive—really survive—become fire themselves."
Nagitsu's jaw twitched. "And the rest?"
Fūre's stare didn't waver. "They die for a cause better than the one that raised them."
Silence again. Then Nagitsu scoffed faintly, not mocking—just tired.
"This plan of yours… it has a lot of graves in it."
Fūre's voice softened, but not out of sympathy. "It always did."
He walked past Nagitsu, picking up a folded map off the table. His fingers brushed it open, revealing a charcoal-sketched layout of a city sector.
"There's no clean way to topple a lie that's become architecture," he muttered. "So we chip at its foundation. Piece by piece. Person by person. You gotta realize that when The Celaris falls, it won't be from a single blow. It'll be because something rotten finally couldn't hold its own weight."
Nagitsu looked down at the map. "And if it holds longer than you expect?"
Fūre's eyes lifted. "Lets make sure that doesn't happen instead of endless pessimism."