The breastplate came out of the water glowing.
Hitetsu didn't speak. He simply looked.
The surface held a warmth that had nothing to do with residual heat — something deeper, a jade-red luminescence that shifted subtly when the moonlight caught it, as though the light were being generated from somewhere inside the metal rather than reflected off it. Beautiful in a way that made the word feel insufficient.
The old swordsmith had spent his life believing that great creations had character. Not metaphorically — literally. A presence, an identity, something that announced itself to anyone with the experience to receive it. He'd felt it in his own work, in the blades he'd examined across decades of study. He'd learned to read it the way other men read faces.
He read this one now.
Gorgeous and warm on the surface. Underneath — something else. Not aggression exactly, but a fullness of purpose, a density of intent that pressed outward against its own beautiful exterior. This piece of armor didn't exist to protect. It existed to endure, and then to answer.
A creation no less than Grand Blade Mastery. Forged from steel he had personally condemned.
He had no words immediately available that felt proportionate, so he said nothing.
Ornn looked at the breastplate in his hands, made a quiet decision, and put it on.
It disappeared.
Hitetsu blinked.
The weight remained — Ornn could feel the pressure across his chest, the solid presence of something that his eyes insisted wasn't there. He pressed his palm flat against his sternum and felt only his shirt. He looked down.
Over his heart, a small diamond-shaped mark sat against his skin. Warm-toned, faintly luminous. It looked like it had always been there.
"Where did it go?" Hitetsu asked. The question came out carefully, the way questions come out when you're not entirely sure you want the answer.
"Into me, apparently."
Ornn turned his attention inward and found it immediately — the Heart of Steel rotating in the space behind his thoughts, circling the Creation Illustrated Book with the patient steadiness of something that had found its orbit and intended to keep it. He called it back with a thought. The breastplate reappeared in his hands, solid and warm. He dismissed it. Gone again.
He did this twice more, partly to confirm the mechanism and partly because it was genuinely satisfying.
"My fruit ability," he said, when he noticed Hitetsu watching. "The creation stores itself. I can summon and dismiss it freely."
The old swordsmith absorbed this with the expression of someone who had already absorbed considerably more than expected this evening and was managing admirably.
A careful throat-clearing. Then, with studied nonchalance: "I haven't asked your name yet. Or what you're calling the breastplate."
"Ornn. The breastplate is the Heart of Steel."
Hitetsu repeated it softly. Nodded once, something settling in his face. "That suits it." He straightened, and when he spoke again his voice had recovered most of its usual composure, as though he'd decided the most dignified path forward was to simply proceed normally. "Since we're exchanging names — I am Tenguyama Hitetsu. Swordsmith. And the foremost collector of rare blades in all of Wano Country."
Ornn looked at him.
"The swordsmith part I already knew," he said. "The collector title I could have done without."
Hitetsu's expression flickered. He'd clearly anticipated a different reception. He looked away, rallied, and continued in a slightly flatter tone.
"There's something I should tell you honestly." A pause — the kind that carries weight behind it. "No work has done by these hands in over ten years."
The bamboo moved in a quiet wind. The forge had burned down to coals.
"For a swordsmith," Hitetsu continued, "that's not a record worth having. I spent those years underground — Orochi's doing — and since escaping I've been unable to obtain the materials I'd need for any work worth the name. High-grade Sake Heart Steel is beyond my reach here." He glanced at the empty wrappings beside the anvil. "Which is why finding that piece, and then finding it as I did—" He stopped. Let the rest of it go unsaid.
"You want me to forge you a piece," Ornn said.
"I have no right to ask it outright. This village has almost nothing, and what it has I can barely supplement. Ore, food to sustain the work — I can't provide either properly." A beat. "What I'm asking for is considerable, given what I can offer in return."
Ornn was quiet for a moment.
He thought about who was standing in front of him. Not the eccentric hermit with the clogs and the tengu mask — the man underneath. Kozuki Sukiyaki. Former Shogun. A father who had outlived his son and watched his country collapse and kept faith with a future that gave him very little reason to. Twenty years of that. Still here, still working, still teaching young samurai in a forest village and looking after a small girl with purple hair and an unusual dog.
There were reasons Hitetsu couldn't walk into town. All of them were heavy, and none of them were his fault.
"Here's what I want," Ornn said.
Hitetsu looked up.
"Yamato has been measuring herself against Kozuki Oden since she was eight years old. Every decision she makes, she holds up against a dead man and finds it lacking." He kept his voice even. "Oden was your son. If anyone can help her understand him as a person rather than a legend — help her find her own direction instead of spending her life trying to become someone she can't be — it's you."
Something moved through Hitetsu's expression. Old grief, mostly. The particular weight of a father who has outlived his child and carries the shape of that absence everywhere he goes.
"That's what you want," he said. "In exchange for Sake Heart Steel."
"In exchange for your workshop, whatever ore you can source, food while we're here, and an honest conversation with Yamato." Ornn met his eyes steadily. "I'd call that fair."
The old swordsmith stood in the moonlit clearing for a long moment, looking at nothing in particular.
"Bring me the ore," he said finally, "and we have an agreement."