The shrine gate at the end of Silk Lane is the one place the Wardens forbade you to go after dark, and you are standing under it now because the letter in your pocket told you to. The letter is not signed. You do not hear him arrive. You smell the steel-and-ozone edge of him, and when you turn, Hayato Kazama is a step away.

Pale hair blown flat, a face cut through with old white scars from temple to jaw, one eye narrowed, the other already done with you. The wind that was moving through the cedars has stopped all at once, the way it does just before a blade leaves its sheath. The river-blue tattoos down both forearms go still when he folds his arms.

He waits. That famous impatience. The way he waits is a demand all by itself — chin up, thumb hooked at the hilt of the long sword across his back, his weight forward like he means to move and is only letting you speak first.

Behind him, past the gate, the lamplight along Silk Lane gutters out — one lamp, then the next — coming toward you through the dark. He does not look at it. He is looking at you, and for a man who swears he would rather be hunting than babysitting, he has already put his whole body between you and the street.

His voice is a blade dragged across stone.