The descent into the second cavern was different.
The first chamber where Kozan had found the cracked stone titan and the whisper that knew his name had been cold, but still. Silent, like the inside of a forgotten tomb.
This one breathed.
Not loudly. Not like a creature gasping for life.
But there was a slow, rhythmic expansion and release in the air, as if the entire cavern inhaled and exhaled through the rock.
Even the Iwa shinobi following him understood something was wrong. Their footsteps softened. Their shoulders tucked inward. A shared tension, thicker than the mist Kozan carried inside him.
None of them dared speak.
Kozan didn't look back at them. He didn't need to. He felt how their chakra signatures spiked every time he slowed his pace. Fear leaked off them in thin, metallic threads, subtle but constant like blood left too long on steel.
He welcomed the silence.
He was using it to listen.
The breathing wasn't natural. It wasn't wind.
It was chakra, pushed through cracked stone as if forced through a dying body.
A memory surfaced, uninvited.
"…breathe again."
A voice from long ago spoken in a place that smelled of cold metal and damp floors.
Someone had whispered that to him as a child.
Right before light had flickered above a table.
He closed his eyes for half a second.
The memory tried to shape itself into a face.
But like always, it slipped.
The Cavern Expands
The tunnel widened abruptly, dropping into a massive chamber that stretched out of sight. Pillars of stone rose up like ribs, curving toward the ceiling. Small flecks of mineral dust drifted from above with every "breath" of the cavern.
A faint blue glow pulsed in the distance.
The Iwa squad froze.
One of them Yado, a veteran with deep scars and a cracked voice finally whispered, "This isn't human… is it?"
Kozan didn't answer.
Human didn't matter.
Life didn't matter.
What mattered was familiarity. Something in this cavern echoed in his bones, in the parts of himself he never let anyone touch.
He stepped forward.
The glow intensified. Pulsed.
Like a heart struggling to beat after being still for too long.
His fingers twitched once, instinctively.
The mist chakra inside him shifted, sharpening, anticipating.
Another memory tugged.
This one sharper.
"…if it answers, don't look away."
A hand on his head. Not gentle evaluating. Cold.
He inhaled quietly.
The First Sign of Recognition
Eight meters ahead, the ground cracked open around a half-buried object. For a moment Kozan thought it was another piece of a ruined statue. But then it moved only slightly, only once, but enough for the dust around it to twitch.
The Iwa shinobi stumbled back.
"What the hell is that?" one hissed.
Kozan approached.
A spine.
A stone spine.
Segmented, fused with rock and chakra matter, etched with symbols that didn't belong to any village. Not sealing marks. Not fūinjutsu. Something older.
When Kozan knelt, the segments shifted again, and faint lines on their surface glowed the same blue as the cavern's heartbeat.
It was responding to him.
He reached out.
The air around his fingertips thickened, pulling at the mist chakra in his skin.
The spine whispered.
Not in words.
In recognition.
Like the way metal sings when it meets its pair.
One of the Iwa shinobi gagged, stumbling backward. The others grabbed him before he fell over the edge of the ridge they stood on.
"Don't touch don't touch that thing!"
"If it reacts to him, we fall back!"
"He's not touching it. Why isn't he touching it?"
Because Kozan didn't fear it.
He feared the memories it would unlock.
A Shadow in the Stone-Light
A shape moved along the far wall.
Kozan didn't react visibly, but his chakra sharpened instantly. The Iwa shinobi, however, panicked.
"Did you see that?!"
"Something's moving "
Kozan raised a hand.
Silence returned like a blade pressed to a throat.
He stepped closer to the spine and the cavern answered.
The blue glow leapt upward, running along the walls like veins lighting under skin.
The breathing intensified.
Dust scattered.
The stone ribs trembled.
And from the shadows, something stepped forward.
A figure.
Humanoid but wrong.
It was tall, draped in overlapping plates of stone-like carapace. Not an armor. A body. Its eyes were hollow pits, yet glowing faintly with the same blue pulse. Cracks ran along its limbs, each one radiating chakra that felt…
Familiar.
Painfully familiar.
Kozan didn't move.
His heart didn't quicken.
But something in his stomach tightened the smallest flicker of recognition, like remembering a lullaby he should not know.
The creature stopped ten paces away.
Tilted its head.
The breathing of the cavern stopped.
And in the new silence, the creature spoke.
Its voice was layered stone grinding over stone beneath a whisper that came from nowhere and everywhere.
"…child… of the Mist…"
The Iwa squad broke.
One bolted first, pure terror ripping through his chakra. The others followed, scrambling back toward the tunnels they'd entered from.
Kozan didn't look away from the stone figure.
He felt no urge to run.
The creature's head tilted further, studying him.
"…no… not child…"
It stepped closer.
Chips of stone shed from its body with each movement.
"…fragment…"
"…piece returned…"
"…why… incomplete…?"
Kozan lowered his hand.
The mist inside him churned, heavy and unsettled.
A final memory snapped forward clear, vivid, undeniable:
A cold room.
A metal table.
Rows of jars filled with blue-lit fragments.
And a voice, low, clinical, precise:
"Harvest what's left. We only need pieces. The child doesn't need to be whole."
His breath came slower.
Lower.
Controlled.
"Kozan."
The name echoed inside him.
Then died.
He looked up at the creature.
"Do you know what I am?" he asked quietly.
The creature's chest cracked open slightly, light seeping between the fractures.
"…we were one…"
The words reverberated through the chamber.
"…until you were cut from us…"
The cavern shakes
Stone ribs splintered.
The blue pulse surged to a blinding flash.
Kozan stepped back once, instinctively not out of fear, but because the chakra resonating from the creature was unstable, wounded, desperate.
It reached toward him with a hand ending in uneven stone fingers.
"…come… back…"
Kozan raised his fist.
A swirl of mist gathered around it dense, shimmering with the violence he kept caged inside.
"I'm not yours," he said.
The creature's head jerked.
The cavern screamed.
Not metaphorically actual sound, bursting from the walls like exploding pressure. Cracks spider-webbed across the chamber. Dust rained in sheets. The air turned metallic, like tasting thunder.
The creature charged.
Kozan met it halfway.
Mist exploded outward, swirling around his arm in sharp, whip-like spirals. He struck the creature's chest stone splintered, but didn't fully break. The force launched the creature backward, slamming into a pillar and shattering half of it.
Blue light bled from its wounds.
It rose again.
This time, it didn't speak.
This time, Kozan didn't hold back.
A Battle of Pieces and Memory
The cavern pulsed violently, reacting to every blow.
Kozan's fist collided with stone plates, crushing them inward. Mist chakra drilled through cracks, tearing them wider.
The creature retaliated with a swipe that sent shockwaves through the ground, nearly knocking Kozan off balance. He slid back, boots scraping across dust-coated stone, catching himself at the last second.
Fragments of old memories burst behind his eyes every time the creature struck:
A syringe flashing
Hands holding him still
Blue light humming through glass
Children crying in another room
Whispers:
"The Mist will never know."
He ground his teeth.
The creature lunged, cracking the ground beneath its weight. Kozan ducked under the swipe, pivoted, and slammed his elbow into its side. Mist chakra detonated in a tight burst, snapping a large piece of the creature's torso off.
It shrieked half stone, half something living.
And the cavern answered with a long, deep inhale.
The blue veins across the walls brightened.
Dust lifted as if gravity loosened.
The creature's body responded, pulling itself upright, cracks knitting slightly as the cavern's breathing fed it chakra.
Kozan narrowed his eyes.
So that was its lifeline.
He clenched his fist.
Mist coiled tighter around his arm, condensing, sharpening.
He exhaled once.
Then sprinted.
The creature tried to intercept but Kozan feinted left, planted his foot, and twisted through the air bringing his mist-enforced heel down on the ground in front of the creature.
The ground caved in.
But not downward outward, in a violent shockwave that snapped the blue veins and extinguished half the cavern's glow.
The creature staggered.
The cavern wheezed.
Kozan struck.
His fist hammered into the creature's chest, mist chakra spiraling inward like a drill. Stone cracked. Blue light flashed then dimmed.
One more blow.
He pulled his fist back, mist swirling violently
And the creature whispered:
"…fragment… stay…"
Kozan hesitated for half a heartbeat.
And that pause cost the creature everything.
Mist exploded through its core.
Stone shattered.
Blue light burst upward like a geyser
Then died.
The creature fell apart, collapsing into pieces that hit the floor with muffled thuds.
The cavern stopped breathing.
Silence returned.
But Kozan's heart didn't slow.
The memories didn't fade.
He stood there, surrounded by rubble and fragments of something that claimed to be part of him.
He didn't feel victory.
He felt carved open.
Footsteps Behind Him
Soft ones.
Controlled.
Not the panicked scrambling of Iwa shinobi.
Kozan didn't turn.
"Mei."
Her voice reached him from the tunnel entrance.
"You… felt that?" she asked quietly.
He nodded once.
She stepped beside him, eyes scanning the shattered remains of the creature.
"What was it?"
Kozan didn't answer immediately.
He let the dust settle.
Let the cavern's final breath fade.
Then he spoke:
"…A fragment."
Mei frowned.
"A fragment of what?"
Kozan looked down at his hand.
Mist curled between his fingers, quiet and cold.
"A fragment of me."
The cavern echoed those words long after they left his lips.
And for the first time, Mei looked at him not as a weapon…
not as an ally…
not even as someone she trusted.
She looked at him like someone standing near a crack in the world and realizing it wasn't done opening.