"Ready?" Hikaru asked. His breath fogged the pale leather.

The rain began as a hush and finished as a promise. Neon smeared the wet asphalt into ribbons of pink and jade; the city exhaled steam from grates and sighs from alleys that never slept. In a narrow arcade beneath a row of glowing signs, three silhouettes paused beneath a single, overstretched awning—each one wearing a coat that declared something more than shelter.

nagi glanced over her shoulder and caught the movement. She lifted a hand—no words—an invitation and a benediction folded into a gesture. Hikaru nodded. Sho smiled the way of someone who knows that the job is never finished.

"You have the loop," he said. "It ties coats to covenant."

(Subtitles: n agenets recall a lullaby of rooftops.)

(Subtitles: They must mend what was lost.)

They met for reasons that belonged to language and legacy. A package had been left in the loading bay of COAT WEST—a thin, metallic box sealed with three sigils. It hummed when they passed: a bass note, then a whisper. Whoever had woven the sigils together had invited them all.

The first clue the disk gave led them to an old tailor at the edge of a shuttered mall. He sat among bolts of fabric and old buttons, a man who mended not just cloth but the stories woven into seams. When the disk sang against the tailor’s thumb, his eyes cleared like a window rinsed of grime.