Kazekage' Office
The office held its stillness, a silence that seemed carved into the very stone walls of the Kazekage's tower. The lamplight burned steady in its bronze stand, flame controlled and precise, casting its unwavering glow across shelves lined with sealed scrolls.
Long shadows clung to every corner, creating islands of darkness that gathered beneath the stacked documents, the inkstones, and the records that had not been moved for months.
Even the air seemed dry with restraint, faintly perfumed with dust, parchment, and the faint metallic tang of sand that crept in through the cracks no matter how tightly the tower was sealed.
Only the soft rasp of brush against parchment disturbed the silence.
Rasa sat at the wide desk, posture straight, brush gripped between steady fingers.
The surface of the desk was immaculate, every tool placed at a measured distance, inkstone aligned with the edge, fresh parchment stacked on the right, completed scrolls carefully rolled and sealed to the left.
The scroll lay open before him, divided into measured columns. Each name was inscribed in strokes both neat and deliberate, black against pale parchment, the characters formed with a hand that betrayed no tremor. At the head of the column, one word stood firm: Assets
The lamplight gleamed faintly against the ink, and the room itself seemed to bend around the rhythm of his writing.
The columns in the list were many and each with their own importance: graduation year, rank, affinities, grades across the three pillars: Ninjutsu, Genjutsu, Taijutsu.
The following bracket was titled Special — a column filled with Puppetry, Medical Nin, Fan, or, at times, was simply left blank.
Then came the final column, Risk. That one carried more weight than the others for Rasa, if it was something, someone that had the potential to surpass or oppose him, he wouldn't allow it in his village.
The brush paused only once, when the ink thinned and required a fresh dip.
Each name was not merely a record; it was a life condensed into ordered strokes, reduced by his hand to what mattered most. The list was long, yet in truth it felt shorter than it ought to be.
Where there should have been pages crowded with new graduates, with shinobi of promise, with the vigor of a growing village, the parchment now seemed stretched thin. The years had eroded Sunagakure's strength, and no decree could alter what the ink revealed.
The village thinned with each passing year, its strength eroded in a way that no decree or policy could reverse.
The lines on his ledger told the truth more clearly than anything else: the pool of shinobi shrank, narrowing with every season, and the weight of survival pressed harder upon those who remained.
The coffers followed the same path, their reserves bleeding steadily away, drawn out and denied by hands beyond his reach, leaving Sunagakure to bear the drought of both bodies and coin.
What could not be replenished through the academy was worsened by the steady decay of resources, each mission calculated not only in its difficulty but in the cost of deploying even a handful of shinobi. Every ryo had to be weighed, and even then, too often the scales tipped toward loss.
The Wind Daimyo had long since turned his gaze elsewhere, sending funds and favor to the Land of Fire, feeding the might of Konohagakure while letting his own land wither.
The insult festered in every account and calculation Rasa reviewed. Each sum, each uneven balance sheet was a quiet reminder that his village was being starved so another might flourish.
'Uchihas... one on one, run. Two on one, back to back.', the old saying crossed his mind unbidden, sharp and swift. It was no idle phrase but the distilled truth of countless reports and bitter encounters, a reminder of what Sunagakure's shinobi faced when pitted against Konoha's prodigies.
Nor did the council ease the burden. They meddled in his decisions, dulled his authority, especially after the failure his youngest son turned out to be.
His son, his intended weapon, the vessel into which so many of Sunagakure's dwindling hopes had been poured, remained the heaviest weight upon his mind. Yet the boy was not what he was meant to be.
Not only did he have to separate him from the other two, that weren't anything special as well, but the youngest, Gaara, was turning out to be a failed experiment. His inability to control the Bijuu made him a danger to the village, instead of a useful weapon.
His brush hovered once more, slowing when he reached three names: Isan, Shira, Daiana.
The ink bled faintly as he pressed the tip too long against the parchment. He marked them as he did the rest, his hand steady, though his eyes lingered a bit longer.