The message arrived in Kumogakure not on a scroll, but on the breath of a half-dead runner, a sensor-nin who had pushed his body to the absolute limit with a forced march that had left his muscles screaming and his chakra reserves utterly depleted.
"Raikage-sama!" he gasped, collapsing to one knee, his chest heaving. "Urgent… report… from the borders!" He sucked in another burning breath.
"Kirigakure forces… have launched unprovoked, coordinated attacks… on multiple Konoha withdrawal units! The alliance… it's shattered. It's over. They're tearing each other apart!"
The Third Raikage, who had been studying a map of the Lightning Country's coastline in the event Kiri decided to become a little bit adventurous, did not turn at first.
His back remained to the messenger. The only movement was the slow, deliberate tightening of his fist where it rested on the map's edge, the parchment crinkling under his knuckles.
His aides and generals froze, their own conversations dying mid-sentence.
Then, he slowly turned. His eyes narrowed to slits.
And then, the silence broke.
A sound erupted from the Raikage's chest, starting as a low rumble and swelling into a deep, booming laugh that echoed off the stark, metallic walls of the command centre. It was not a laugh of joy, but of savage, vindictive elation.
"HA!" The single syllable was like a thunderclap.
"They turned on them! They actually turned on them!"
As his laughter subsided into a grim, satisfied smile, raw power began to manifest around him.
His mind flashed back, not to a vague notion of the war, but to a specific, searing memory. The last major confrontation along the border. In a moment of desperate pragmatism, the Raikage had swallowed his pride and reached out to Konoha, to Hiroshi, for assistance in the containment of the tailed beasts.
The refusal had been a masterpiece of condescension. The bitterness of that moment, of being treated as an insignificant, troubled child, was a poison he had carried ever since he returned to his village.
Now, he watched as the poison turned to an antidote.
"Poetic justice," the Raikage growled, the lightning around him flaring. "The very ally they stood with has driven a knife into their back. This chaos… this is our opening." He slammed his fist onto the map, this time with decisive force.
"Dispatch orders to all border regiments! Intensify patrols, double the guard stations. I want our pressure on the Land of Fire's border to be a constant, palpable threat. And get our intelligence network moving! I want to know everything—what fractured Kiri, who gave the order, and how deep the rot in Konoha goes." He leaned forward, his eyes blazing with a long-suppressed fire.
"Let Konoha drown in the same disaster they once watched us face."
Far to the west, in the towering, stone-built chambers of Iwagakure, the news arrived with more subtlety.
A carefully encoded missive was placed on the Tsuchikage's desk by a silent attendant. Onoki set down his teacup and picked up the scroll, his ageing, gnarled fingers unrolling it with deliberate slowness. As he read, a change came over his wizened face. The perpetual frown of a leader burdened by the weight of a village built on rock and resilience softened, and then twisted into a slow, deep, and profoundly pleased smile. It was the expression of a master shogi player who sees his opponent make a catastrophic, unforced error.
"So," he murmured, the sound like grinding stones. "The Mist has shown its teeth. And they've bitten the hand that fed them."
He set the scroll down precisely, aligning it with the edge of his desk. His mind, a geopolitical scalpel, began its work. A stable Konoha, united with the Land of Water's might, was a formidable bloc. But a Konoha betrayed, its flank suddenly exposed and bleeding? A Kiri isolated, having violated the fragile trust of the post-war world? That was not a bloc. That was a target.
"They are vulnerable," he stated to his assembled council, his voice calm and analytical. "A divided Konoha and Kiri are weaker than a united one. This is not the time for rash action. Rocks are worn down not by the hammer, but by the constant, patient drip of water." He steepled his fingers. "We watch. We let the Leaf weaken itself further, bleeding from this wound Kiri has given them. We let the suspicion between them fester. We strike," he concluded, his eyes glinting with cold intent, "only when the fracture becomes a break."
In the heart of Sunagakure, buried amidst the shifting, singing sands, the reaction was starkly different. The Kazekage, Saitetsu, received the intelligence report in his sun-bleached council chamber.
Unlike the Raikage's explosive joy or Onoki's cold satisfaction, Saitetsu's brow furrowed in profound confusion.
This… this made no sense.
"What possible gain could Kiri secure from this? The war is basically over. They stood to benefit from the alliance's stability."
The council was divided. "It is a power play!" argued one hawkish elder. "The Mizukage seeks to destabilise the continent and seize dominance in the chaos!"
"Nonsense!" countered another. "It is a deception! A false flag operation to draw others into a conflict!"
Saitetsu listened to the debate, his gaze distant, looking past his advisors and through the arched window at the endless, rolling dunes. The timing was too perfect. The coordination too precise. It lacked the messy, self-interested logic of village politics. This felt… clinical.
"This reeks of a hidden hand," Saitetsu finally said, his voice dropping to a near-whisper, yet silencing the room. "Someone is orchestrating shadows across nations. This is not the Mizukage's ambition. This is the work of a puppeteer, and we are all watching the dolls dance." He gave the order, his tone leaving no room for argument.
"Our spies are to prioritise this above all else. I do not care about force movements or battle reports. I want to know who is pulling the strings in Kiri. Find the puppeteer."
Long after the chamber had emptied, Saitetsu remained. The desert night was cold, and the oil lamps in his study cast long, dancing shadows that writhed across scroll-strewn tables.
The only sound was the gentle, persistent hiss of fine sand blowing against the windowpanes. He pored over the reports again, his lean frame bent under the weight of a dawning, formless dread.
He paused, a sentence half-read. A subtle, almost imperceptible unease prickled at the nape of his neck. It was the delicate, primal pressure of being watched.
His head snapped up, his sharp eyes scanning the corners of the room, the deep shadows cast by the high, wooden rafters. He saw nothing but the familiar, stark geometry of his own study.
The feeling persisted, a silent, invisible needle pressed against his skin. He stood, walking slowly around the room, his senses extended, but detecting no foreign chakra, no sound of an intruder's breath.
He was wrong.
High in the ceiling shadows, where the support beams met in a nexus of darkness, a small puppet clung upside down, its wooden form perfectly motionless and painted to match the aged, dark wood.
It was no larger than a desert fox, its limbs articulated with impossible delicacy. Its face was a blank, polished mask, and in its wooden eyes, the lamplight from below caught not a reflection, but a perfect, minuscule replica of Saitetsu's own silhouette as he paced, unknowing, below.
From its back and limbs, trailing up into the absolute blackness of the ceiling, ran chakra strings so impossibly fine they were thinner than spider silk, utterly invisible to the naked eye and undetectable to all but the most specialised sensory techniques.
This puppet was not a weapon. It was an eye. It had been there for weeks, maybe months, patient and unblinking, a silent witness to every strategy session, every confidential report, every private doubt the Kazekage had uttered in this room.
It waited with an inhuman patience, a tool of perfect espionage, for the moment its master required the intelligence it gathered.
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