Evening in Sunagakure was not a gentle transition from day to night; it was a surrender to a deeper, more hostile darkness. The sun, a blood-orange smudge behind a veil of perpetual ochre dust, bled its last light across the dunes, casting long, distorted shadows that seemed to claw at the village's curved architecture.
Then, the true dark descended, absolute and suffocating, broken only by the fitful glow of shielded lamps and the relentless, screaming wind. It was a wind that scoured, that bit with teeth of frozen sand, a wind that masked a multitude of sins under its mournful, constant howl.
Through this elemental fury, three shadows moved. They were not ghosts, but voids in the fabric of the night, their presence negated by the environment's own violent chaos.
They flowed over the wind-rippled sand, across the sweeping, curved rooftops of Suna's buildings, their movements a silent, synchronised ballet against the gale.
Their target: a squat, formidable building of reinforced sandstone, its windows mere slits, its single entrance a massive slab of ironwood banded with steel – a high-security intelligence depot.
"Wait!"
The command was not a sound, but a clean, sharp impulse that echoed in the minds of the other two. Ito Yamanaka, the linchpin of their triad, was a statue perched on a rooftop fifty meters away, his senses cast out like an immense, invisible net. His physical body was still, but his mind was a whirlwind of data, filtering the chakra signatures of the compound below from the background roar of the storm and the village's dormant life.
"Two patrols. Outer perimeter. Clockwise rotation. Gap in seventeen seconds. West wall, between the third and fourth torch bracket. Go."
The two other shadows didn't acknowledge; they simply moved. In the seventeen-second window, they crossed the open ground, a blur of motion against the sand-drifted wall. One of them, smaller and lithe, pressed against the cold stone.
This was Chuko, the Fuinjutsu expert. Her hands, no longer the gnarled claws of an old woman but now steady and sure, emerged from her dark shinobi gear. She didn't need light; her fingers traced the surface of the wall, reading the subtle chakra currents like Braille.
"A Three-layered barrier," her mental voice reported, clinical and precise. "Standard vibration sensor, chakra-density tripwire, and a nasty little feedback loop tied to the main gate. Give me three seconds."
Her fingers danced, weaving signs of silent nullification. A faint, almost invisible black sigil flared on the stone beneath her touch, pulsed once, and died with a soft fizz. Then another. And another.
"Barrier deactivated. Monitoring seals on the doorframe next. Ito, watch the patrol."
"Patrol is clear, rounding the south corner," Ito's voice confirmed, "You have a window."
The third figure, Nara Shin, gave a mental grunt of affirmation. The frail old man was gone, replaced by a lean, lethal predator. As Chuko's hands worked on the complex seals around the door lock, Shin's shadow, amplified by the flickering torchlight behind them, stretched out.
It didn't just grow longer; it detached from his feet, a pool of absolute blackness that slithered under the gap of the newly unlocked door like liquid night.
Inside, a Suna chunin guard paused his bored pacing, a faint scuffling sound catching his ear. He turned, frowning.
"That you, Kenji?" he muttered, stepping towards the door. His own shadow, cast by the lone globe light in the corridor, stretched before him. And then it moved.
It twisted, surging upwards, as a solid, binding darkness. It wrapped around his legs, his torso, clamping over his mouth before he could scream.
His eyes widened in terror, muffled grunts the only sound. The darkness constricted, a swift, merciful pressure on key points on his neck. His eyes fluttered shut, and he slumped, unconscious, caught in the shadow's embrace before he could hit the floor.
"Thud."
"Done," Shin's mental voice was flat.
They flowed inside, sealing the door behind them. The interior was dim, silent save for the muffled roar of the wind outside. The air was dry and carried the faint, sweet smell of old parchment and dust.
"Ito, we need a replacement," Chuko sent.
From Ito's distant position, there was a mild pulse of chakra. Two clones, one a shadow clone and the other a wind clone, materialised in a silent puff of air.
They immediately knelt over the fallen guard, their forms shimmering and then solidifying into perfect replicas of the Suna chunin and his presumed partner, Kenji. They took up the bored patrol posture exactly where the originals had been.
"Are you sure your seal work will hold?" Ito's voice queried through the connection.
"The real ones can't be discovered until we're long gone. If their chakra signatures fluctuate…"
"Would you relax?" Chuko's mental snap was like a whip crack, bristling with professional pride.
"The suppression tags are my speciality. Their chakra will read as dormant, like deep sleep, not neutralised. No fluctuations. No alarms. Unless your clones forget how to scratch their asses, we're fine. Now, which way, oh mighty sensor?"
Ito didn't rise to the bait. "Straight down this hall. Thirty meters. Two more guards at a junction. Shin."
The trio became a well-oiled machine of silent theft. Ito, their remote eyes and ears, dictated every move from his windswept perch.
"Left… now. Patrol passing above you… clear. Guard around the corner, leaning against the wall, half-asleep… Shin, your shadow can reach under that rack of scrolls… perfect. Chuko, seal on the floor ahead, pressure-sensitive… diffuse it. Good."
Shin's shadow was a relentless, silent predator in the dim corridors. It would stretch, twist, and lash out, immobilising guards with terrifying efficiency.
Chuko was always a step behind, slapping subtle chakra-suppression tags on the fallen to mask their state, her fingers a blur of silent, precise work.
And each time, Ito would replace them with flawless clones, weaving his jutsu over the distance, his chakra control a testament to his Yamanaka mastery.
Finally, Ito guided them to a heavy, iron-banded door marked with a complex Suna sigil.
"This is it. The inner archive. The scrolls we need should be in here. Chuko, the door is a nest of seals. Worse than the outer wall."
Chuko didn't answer verbally. She stepped forward, her entire demeanour shifting to one of intense, focused reverence. This was her art.
Her fingers hovered inches from the door, not touching, reading the intricate, lethal tapestry of chakra woven into the wood and metal. "Hmph. Five-layered matrix."
Her hands began to move, weaving a counter-weave of her own blue chakra threads. It was a silent, deadly dance. After two full minutes of painstaking work, she let out a slow breath.
"Done. It's a door now. Nothing more."
Shin pushed it open. The room beyond was small, windowless, and lined from floor to ceiling with shelves crammed with scrolls of varying ages and importance. The air was thick with the smell of ink, old paper, and the faint, metallic tang of secure storage seals.
"Find it," Ito's voice commanded, "The shift change for the outer perimeter is in twelve minutes. We need to be gone by then."
The trio fanned out, their movements swift and silent. Scrolls were lifted, scanned, and replaced with efficient, practised speed. Minutes ticked by, marked only by the rustle of parchment and the howl of the wind outside, which seemed to grow louder, more impatient.
It was Chuko who found it. The casing was standard, but the chakra residue on it was fresher, more potent, and carried a distinct, official frequency she recognised from their briefing.
"Got it," her mental voice was a victorious whisper in their minds.
"Full deployment schedules, attack vectors, and strategies for their imminent push against Konoha's western flank. This is it."
The wave of relief that washed through the mental link was palpable. The risk, the tension, the precision – it had all paid off. They had the key to potentially saving hundreds, maybe thousands, of Konoha lives.
And in that exact moment of triumph, the world turned to gold.
It wasn't a sound. It was pressure. A crushing, overwhelming chakra presence descended upon the entire building like a mountain falling from the sky.
All three Root operatives froze mid-motion, their blood running cold. Even Chuko and Shin, who were no sensors, felt it—a physical weight on her skin, a metallic taste in her mouth, a primal terror that screamed 'RUN' even as her limbs turned to lead.
From beyond the door, from the very walls around them, came a sound. A soft, inexorable, dry rustling.
"Shhhhhhh-shicka-shicka-shicka."
It was the sound of a billion billion tiny particles moving as one.
Before any of them could react, the doorway behind them, the corridor beyond, was filled.
Not with a person. With a wall. A flowing, shimmering, molten-looking wave of gold dust, brilliant even in the dim light, sealing the exit completely with the gentle, final sound of shifting sand.
"Fwoooooosh."
=====
Bless me with your powerful Power Stones.
Your Reviews and Comments about my work are welcomed
If you can, then please support me on Patreon.
Link - www.patreon.com/SideCharacter
You Can read more chapters ahead on Patreon