Rain hammered the mountains; thunder rolled in sheets.
Dozens of Mist-nin moved as a single, dark braid through the ruined forest, flickering from trunk to trunk under the downpour. The flood that had smashed through earlier had torn out whole slopes; broken roots and half-buried rocks jutted like bones.
This was Kirigakure's elite support unit — the reinforcement cell organized after the crisis call.
The Third Mizukage, worried about the damage a rampaging tailed beast might cause, had gone on ahead with only a handful of sealing specialists, the true vanguard. These ninja were the "proper" follow-up force: hand-picked jōnin, fully briefed, fully prepared, dispatched once the village had done everything it could to ready them.
"Keep up back there! Pick up the pace!"
The squad leader's voice was a hard edge under the rain. His gaze locked on the lake basin ahead — disturbingly quiet, even from this distance.
No clash of jutsu. No roar of a beast. No chakra shockwaves rippling the air.
Just silence.
A dead, wrong sort of silence.
No… I'm overthinking. The Mizukage can't have…
He shook his head once, violently, as if to throw the thought onto the ground. He trusted the Mizukage's strength. An eerie calm like this could only mean one thing.
The fight was already over.
The enemy had been suppressed.
They surged forward, each figure a streak in the rain, the entire unit unconsciously accelerating.
When they finally reached the lake's edge, they saw what the storm had hidden.
And every expression froze.
The terrain around the basin had been ripped open and rewritten. The topsoil had been peeled away by unbelievable force, exposing the hard rock beneath in places. Jagged ravines spiderwebbed across the ground, deep and interlocking, like something enormous had raked the world with an iron comb.
The lake itself sat lower in its cradle — the waterline had dropped by several meters.
The surrounding forest looked as if a hurricane had chewed through it. Trees lay uprooted, tossed aside with their roots in the air, or snapped clean in half mid-trunk.
A battlefield, no question. One that had very nearly stopped being a lake at all.
And yet—
Not a single figure in sight.
No sign of Isobu, the Three-Tails. No sign of Uchiha Sogetsu, the Konoha specter their intel spoke of. No sign of the Third Mizukage or the sealing corps.
Just ruin, and rain.
"All units — spread out. Search."
The squad leader's face had gone hard enough to crack. His voice was low and flat.
The dozen-plus jōnin blurred and scattered, fanning out through the wreckage.
They didn't have to search for long.
A short, strangled scream cut through the rain, sharp with something more than fear. Every head snapped toward it. Chakra flared. Feet hit water and stone. They converged.
By the time they reached the source, the jōnin who had screamed was already on his knees in the mud, eyes bulging, mouth working soundlessly.
What the others saw stopped their breath in their throats.
Shock hit first — blank and white.
Then horror.
Then anger.
Then something past anger, where words stopped working.
Their pupils trembled in their sockets. For a moment, not one of them could force out a sound.
"M… Mizukage-sama…"
Someone finally managed it, the title tearing out of him on a shaking voice.
The Third Mizukage of Kirigakure leaned against the shattered cliff, as if merely resting.
His robes were soaked through and black with blood. His head hung limp, chin on his chest. In the center of his torso, a hole the size of a fist gaped where his organs should have been. Blood still seeped from it in slow, stubborn pulses, turning the ground beneath him into a dark red pool.
There was no saving someone like that.
The conclusion was as obvious as it was unacceptable.
In the battle against Uchiha Sogetsu and the unleashed Three-Tails, the Mizukage had lost.
Not just lost.
He had died.
Silence, again.
The silence of people who knew the weight of what they were seeing. There were no genin here, no children; every ninja present was an elite, a pillar of the village in his own right. They had all seen death.
But this was different.
Their leader. Their shadow. The man at the top of their world, cut down and left under open sky.
Even keeping their composure, they could not keep their rage from rising.
Bloodshot eyes ringed every cornea. Jaws clenched until teeth creaked. The air thickened with killing intent, cold and feral.
One of the jōnin stepped forward, knelt by the body, and forced his hands to be steady as he examined it — head tilting, fingers checking muscles, eyes, the pattern of dried and fresh blood.
He took his time. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and stripped of everything but fact.
"Cause of death: heart and vital organs destroyed from the front. Almost no chakra residue left. That means… he exhausted nearly all his chakra before he died."
He glanced at the devastated terrain and added:
"Judging from the damage in the surrounding area, Mizukage-sama likely used multiple high-rank techniques at maximum power."
Another jōnin spoke up:
"We found pieces of his summoning beast in the lake. There must have been a fierce fight."
A third:
"The Three-Tails has returned to the lakebed. It's dormant again — sleeping."
The team leader listened to each report in turn.
No one yelled. No one demanded revenge.
They were already building the scene in their minds.
The Mizukage had gone all-out to suppress the tailed beast, burning almost everything he had. He'd succeeded — Isobu was back in its prison.
And then Uchiha Sogetsu had struck.
With the Mizukage nearly dry, one clean blow had been enough.
Otherwise, thought the squad leader, there's no universe where a single Konoha jōnin kills our Mizukage.
"Should we issue a village-wide kill-on-sight order?" someone asked hoarsely. "Uchiha Sogetsu killed the Third. We can't let him walk away."
"No."
The answer came sharp and immediate. The squad leader shook his head, biting down so hard his jaw ached, fists clenched until the knuckles blanched. He forced the words out past his own rage.
"Not yet. We can't let this leak. Not now. If word gets out, we don't have the strength to deal with what comes next. Not with Iwagakure's old fox watching us."
"So you're saying we just… don't avenge him?"
Logic wasn't the problem. They knew his reasoning was sound. But their throats still burned with it.
Their village's shadow had been killed on their own soil by a foreign ninja.
If they swallowed that quietly, they'd be a joke.
Let the smaller villages hear that Kirigakure didn't dare avenge its own Mizukage — they'd laugh themselves sick. The Mist's name, already battered, would be dragged through the mud and drowned.
"We will avenge him," the leader said, each word nailed in place. "But not now."
He looked around at them, forcing them to meet his eyes one by one.
"Don't forget — we're still in the middle of a 'cooperative phase' with Iwagakure." His tone turned bitter on the phrase. "If that old fox finds out our Mizukage is dead, what do you think he'll do? Stay honest little allies? Or pivot toward Konoha and use our weakness as an excuse to turn the knives?"
No one here was stupid. They'd just been blinded by the first flash of grief.
Now, with his words, the larger picture snapped into focus.
On one side: Konoha, watching for any opening.
On the other: Iwa, their "partner," sly and opportunistic.
If they stumbled now, Kirigakure could easily cease being a player and become the prize — a piece of fat meat both sides would happily tear apart.
"In other words…?" someone prompted.
All eyes swung back to the squad leader. Among the ones present, his fame and strength were closest to an actual Kage's.
In this moment, they needed someone to speak like one.
"We seal this," he said. "The Mizukage's death does not leave this valley. No rumors. No hints. Nothing."
His gaze swept them, hard as a blade.
"Then we accelerate our cooperation with Iwa. We strike Konoha first. We make the Leaf pay for this in blood."
"Blood for blood."
"Blood for blood!"
"Blood for blood!"
The chant caught and rolled, rough and hoarse, echoing off the broken cliffs.
Murderous intent flared skyward, hot enough to burn away the chill.
The squad leader stared out over the ruined lake, expression like a starving wolf.
"Gentlemen…" he said, voice low and fierce. "War has begun."
Not a single ninja flinched.
On the contrary — at the word war, something inside all of them seemed to snap awake. Adrenaline and hatred twined in their veins; nerves lit up; breathing quickened.
They were angry.
They were grieving.
But they were also shinobi of the Mist.
And shinobi of the Mist had always been closest to beasts.
Their killing intent surged, wild and exultant. In their minds, they could already see the blood that would pay this debt back.
None of them noticed the lone figure sitting a short distance away, no more than a hundred meters off, half-hidden among shattered rock and scorched earth.
Uchiha Sogetsu sat with his hands loosely resting on his knees, eyes dark and distant, as if the entire world had forgotten he existed.
"War," he murmured, watching the chanting Mist-nin through the sheet of rain.
"Has begun."
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