The stadium was a stone bowl full of noise.
From his seat in the Kage box, Sarutobi Hiruzen watched Konoha roar for its children and thought, not for the first time, that war and peace sounded disturbingly similar at the start. Screaming, banners, the metallic stink of anticipation in the air. The only difference was who pretended it was a festival.
The Fire Daimyō sat to his right, layered in silks and polite boredom. To Hiruzen's left, the Kazekage of Sunagakure—face hidden behind that rigid brown mask, hat casting him in shadow—sat just a fraction too still.
Soundless, patient stillness. Snake kind of stillness.
Below them, the stadium seats had filled with civilians, merchants, minor nobles, retired shinobi. Color everywhere. Clusters of clan symbols like islands in a human sea. The stone ring at the center waited, clean for now.
"Truly impressive, Hokage-dono," the Kazekage murmured. "So many promising young leaves, all in one place."
His voice slid out low and warm. A practiced diplomat's tone. Hiruzen's skin crawled anyway.
He let himself feel it, just for a heartbeat—the chakra behind the mask. Most people couldn't sense something that carefully folded in on itself, but he had been a shinobi for longer than many of these spectators had been alive.
There it was: a slick, controlled coil of power, wrapped tight like a scroll bound in too many cords. Pale, cold, with a faint, reptilian edge. It tasted… wrong. Familiar in the way a half-remembered nightmare was familiar.
Kakashi's report still sat under his ribs like a stone.
Orochimaru, in the tower, breathing over the Uchiha boy. The Five Elements Seal would hold for now, the jōnin had assured him—but "for now" was a phrase Sarutobi had always hated.
He smiled anyway.
"Our guests from the Sand have sent strong genin this year," he replied mildly. "Konoha is honored."
The Kazekage inclined his head, that motion just a shade too smooth. "We look forward to seeing how your… legends of Konoha's next generation will measure up."
Down on the shaded level between ring and stands, the remaining genin lined up in two neat rows. Naruto's hair was a small flame of orange and yellow in the line, bouncing despite orders to stand still. Neji Hyūga stood with the stiff, formal gravity of someone walking into a courtroom. Shikamaru slouched as if the whole thing was an elaborate prank designed to make him get out of bed. Gaara simply… existed, a column of dust-colored presence with sand whispering at his feet.
The crowd loved them already. Humans were simple like that. Give them children in uniforms and the promise of spectacle, and they'd cheer themselves hoarse while the diplomats counted potential corpses and future weapons.
A discreet throat-clearing sounded behind him.
Hiruzen glanced back. Danzo Shimura stood in the shadows near the box entrance, half his face swaddled in bandages, single visible eye flat.
"Such a turnout," Danzo said, voice low. "Our allies will be… reassured."
"Our allies are already reassured," Hiruzen answered, just as quietly. "That's why they came."
Danzo's gaze flicked toward the ring, then higher, briefly tracking the benches where the eliminated genin sat. Hiruzen followed it in time to see pink hair bobbing as Sylvie leaned over the railing to shout something at Naruto. She wore her too-big clothes and her too-serious expression, scribbling in that damn notebook even now.
"The jinchūriki. The Uchiha. And the little seal-girl," Danzo murmured. "Konoha's future hangs on… unconventional branches."
"Children are never conventional," Hiruzen said. "That's why they surprise us."
Danzo's mouth tightened. "And surprises, Hokage-sama, are what get villages killed."
He let the barb pass. There were more important battles to spend himself on than Danzo's need to be right.
"We can discuss your concerns later," Hiruzen said. "For now, enjoy the exams. Stand with the other advisors."
Translated: Get out of my line of sight.
Danzo dipped his head in something technically like a bow and withdrew, cloak whispering against stone. His chakra, damped and compartmentalized like a man-shaped filing cabinet, retreated with him.
In the row below, Shibi Aburame leaned toward his son, saying something behind his high collar. Shino's bugs had been restless all week, Shibi had told him—first in a carefully neutral mission report, then again, quieter, with the concern of a father whose hive had started buzzing against his skin for reasons they couldn't name.
"They sense… hollowness beneath the arena," Shibi had said. "Air pockets. Vibration that does not match the crowd. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps…"
Hiruzen had ordered the ANBU and barrier team to triple-check the foundations. The reports had come back: no foreign seals detected, no active tunnels, no direct threats.
Still, when the wind shifted, he swore he could feel a faint, wrong draft coming from the earth itself.
Beside him, the Kazekage's cloak never rustled.
A proctor's chakra flared below—the calm, steady pulse of someone used to standing between teenagers with sharp objects. Genma Shiranui stepped onto the field, shadow long in the late-morning light, senbon fixed between his teeth.
He lifted one hand. The noise of the stadium dipped.
Hiruzen rose.
His robes felt particularly heavy today. Not with weight, but with eyes. Konoha's. Suna's. "Sound's." The Daimyō's advisors. Elders. All the people who needed to see strength instead of the ache in his bones.
His voice, when he projected it, cut cleanly through the air.
"Citizens of Konoha. Honored guests from allied lands."
The crowd surged quiet.
"The Chūnin Exams," he continued, "exist not only to test our genin, but to affirm something greater. When our young shinobi stand in this arena, they carry the will of their villages. The will to endure. To protect. To change."
He watched Gaara—eyes like old blood—tilt his head, sand hissing faintly at his ankles.
"The peace we enjoy now," Hiruzen said, because one should always name illusions even if one had to pretend otherwise, "was bought with the lives of many. These children stand ready to carry that burden forward. Today, we honor their courage—and show our trust in the future they will build."
The Daimyō nodded, pleasantly unmoved. The elders murmured their approval. The crowd erupted again.
Out of the corner of his eye, Hiruzen saw the Kazekage's chakra pulse in a soft, contained ripple. Interest. Hunger. Mockery. It was hard to tell, with snakes.
He forced his shoulders to stay relaxed, his pipe-holding hand not to tremble when he lifted it in a genial arc for the benefit of the crowd.
"Let the final stage of the Chūnin Exams begin."
Genma stepped up, barked for the finalists to await their calls, set out the rules—the same as always, the same as never, because this time the ground itself might be lying to them.
Hiruzen sat, feeling the whole village lean forward in one breath.
The Kazekage smiled politely behind his mask.
Somewhere under their feet, something shifted, just enough to make the smallest trickle of dust fall in a dark space no one was looking at yet.
I'd seen the stadium before, from the outside.
From the inside, packed with people and noise and heat, it felt like the inside of a drum someone was about to hit very, very hard.
"Stop fidgeting," Ino hissed, elbow digging into my ribs. "You're gonna fall over the railing and die before anyone even fights."
"I'm not fidgeting," I lied.
I was absolutely fidgeting.
The stone under my sandals vibrated with the crowd's yelling. The sun bounced off metal headbands and weapons and blond hair. Naruto was down in the lineup with the other finalists, shifting in place, craning his neck to glare at Neji like he could start the fight with pure eye contact.
Beside him, Shikamaru yawned so wide I could see his tonsils.
From up here, everyone looked small and manageable. Dots on a board. But the chakra in the air told a different story. It pressed against me in layers: the background buzz of thousands of civilians, soft and erratic, like static; the sharper, trained pulses of chūnin and jōnin around the edges; the heavy, rooted presence of the elders and clan heads in their boxes.
And above all that, like an old tree in the middle of a storm, the Hokage.
His chakra spread out and down, a massive, weathered lattice of deep brown and faint gold. Old oak, I'd called it to myself before. Thick trunk, roots everywhere, a few dead branches, but still standing and holding up the canopy.
Every time the Kazekage spoke to him, that lattice tightened, like bark growing a new ring of tension.
"Do you see him?" Ino whispered, leaning in so close her hair tickled my cheek.
"Who, Naruto? Yes, he's the one turning in circles like a dog chasing his tail."
"Not him, you gremlin. The Kazekage." She jerked her chin subtly toward the VIP box. "Dad says he's scary. I want to see scary."
I pushed my glasses up with one knuckle and squinted.
The Kage box was shaded by a carved overhang, but I could make out shapes. The Fire Daimyō glittered. The Hokage's hat was a familiar outline. Beside him, the Kazekage sat upright, cloak and helmet and mask hiding everything but a thin strip of shadowed lower face.
I let my chakra-sense ease out, careful not to push too far. I'd already given myself three migraines this month trying to catalogue everyone in the hospital, and Migaki had flat-out banned me from collapsing in the hallway again.
The Hokage's chakra was easy to find: big, slow waves, old wood and pipe smoke and tired warmth.
Next to it, the Kazekage's chakra was like…
Like someone had taken a big, bright bonfire and shoved it into a jar, then wrapped that jar in wet cloth and buried it in cold ash.
The hint of what it really was sat way down underneath, coiled and pale, with a thin, oily shimmer. Cold lilac-gray, same as the void I'd felt in the tower corridor when Orochimaru's presence had yanked itself away from Kakashi's room. Different pattern, same flavor.
My stomach flipped.
I'd known, obviously. Kakashi had told us part of it. The Third had looked like someone had swapped his pipe for a grenade that might go off if he breathed wrong. But knowing and feeling were different things.
Feeling it sat right next to the Hokage's chakra made the hairs on my arms stand up.
"Yeah," I muttered. "Scary."
Ino followed my gaze, but she didn't have the color-sense layer. To her, it probably just looked like two old men talking politely across a table.
"What does his chakra feel like?" she asked, because this had become our new game: Ino points at someone; Sylvie gets a migraine describing them.
"Like a sealed snake about to figure out locks," I said. "Don't stare too hard. It might notice."
Ino made a face. "That is not reassuring, thanks."
Across the aisle, Shino adjusted his high collar. Shibi leaned in, murmured something. The tiny buzz of kikaichū around them shifted, higher-pitched for a second, like a hive disturbed.
"The ground still feels wrong," Shino said calmly, more to his father than anyone else, but I heard it anyway. "There is… hollowness."
Ino made another face. "Okay, no. No bug weather reports. We're here to cheer, not to think about… hollowness."
"Thinking is how we don't die," I pointed out.
"Yeah, yeah. Thinking is your hobby," she said, rolling her eyes. "Mine is making everyone look cute for the death games."
She reached over and fussed with my ribbon, re-tying it tighter, fingers brisk and weirdly gentle.
"You look good," she said, more serious for a half-second. "Like, 'I totally punched me in the face a month ago, but I'd do it again' good."
"That sentence got away from you."
"Shut up." She smoothed a stray bit of my choppy hair behind my ear. "There. Perfect. Now scream for Naruto so he doesn't freak out and puke."
Down below, Genma finished explaining the rules. The genin lines shifted.
Neji's chakra sat like a carved block of white stone, smooth on the outside, fractures running through the middle. Naruto's was more like… a bonfire someone kept throwing wet logs on: loud, messy, sputtering, refusing to go out.
And down in the depths of him, coiled tight, that other thing. The red-gold furnace, nine-tailed impatience. I tried not to taste it too hard. Every time I did, it felt like sticking my tongue on a battery made of teeth.
Genma lifted his hand toward the Hokage.
Up in the box, the Third nodded and gestured back.
"First match of the finals," Genma called out, voice carrying. "Uzumaki Naruto… versus Hyūga Neji!"
The crowd loved that. Lots of cheering from the civilian side for the loud blond boy who ate too much ramen and helped old ladies with groceries; a lower, more dangerous murmur from the clan seats at "Hyūga Neji."
Hinata, sitting a few rows behind us with Kiba and Akamaru (who was currently trying to disappear inside Kiba's jacket), flinched. Her fingers tightened in the fabric of her jacket. Kiba bumped her shoulder with his, something quick and wordless.
"You got this, Hinata," he muttered. "I'll boo extra loud."
Shino just adjusted his glasses.
Naruto punched the air. "YEAH! I GET TO GO FIRST!"
Genma didn't bother hiding his sigh.
"Both contestants, step into the arena," he said.
Naruto looked up, straight at me.
I hadn't actually expected that. For a second, our eyes locked, and all the noise blurred around the edges.
I remembered him in the forest, bleeding and laughing and calling Lee's kicks "awesome" even while they bruised his ribs. Him sitting on the hospital floor, yelling about how he'd beat Neji so hard fate itself would have to apologize. Him grimacing when Jiraiya told him to pull more of the fox's chakra, saying he didn't care what happened to him as long as his friends didn't die.
Now he grinned, huge and bright and not scared at all, because he was absolutely scared, and that's how he dealt with it.
My chest did something stupid and fluttery.
I cupped my hands around my mouth. "NARUTO! DON'T YOU DARE LOSE!"
Ino winced at the volume. "Subtle."
Naruto's grin somehow got even bigger. He threw me a thumbs-up so enthusiastic he nearly clocked Shikamaru in the chin.
"I won't!" he yelled back. "Just watch, Sylvie-chan!"
Shikamaru grabbed his wrist and shoved it down. "Troublesome idiots," he muttered, but there was a tiny smile tugging at his mouth.
Neji didn't look up at anyone. His gaze was forward, fixed on the ring as he stepped down to it, every motion precise. The block of stone inside his chakra shook once, just faintly, then settled.
Somewhere behind us, Danzo's chakra pricked like a needle as he shifted for a better view.
Somewhere above us, the Kazekage's sealed-snake aura rippled.
Somewhere beneath us, under all the stone and dust and history, something in the stadium foundations hummed a little louder.
The drum of the village tightened, waiting for the first hit.
Genma's arm dropped.
"Begin."