**wind country to Fire**
The desert stretched behind him, an ocean of shifting gold swallowing the horizon. Shisui walked with steady steps, his cloak heavy with dust and his body marked by long days of silence. The winds clawed at him as if to pull him back, but he did not turn. The Wind Country was behind him. Ahead lay Fire.
His chakra was quiet, carefully reined in, but the air still carried weight around him. A heaviness pressed faintly from his very presence — the residue of someone who had been poisoned, betrayed, carved apart, and yet had survived. His calm was not the calm of ease, but of a man who had learned to breathe inside storms.
Soon the sand gave way to earth darkened by roots. Grass rose where dunes sank. Trees gathered, tall and watchful, Fire Country greeting him with shadows rather than sun. The forest stretched ahead, leaves whispering in a language softer than the desert winds.
And in those shadows, someone waited.
Itachi leaned against the trunk of an oak, still as stone. Moonlight slid across his pale face, cutting sharp lines into the features of a boy already burdened beyond his years. His cloak did not stir. His silence was not empty — it was deliberate, honed.
When Shisui appeared through the treeline, Itachi's dark eyes lifted. His voice broke the stillness, low and measured.
"You're later than I expected."
Shisui stopped a few paces away, sand still dusting his shoulders. A faint smile tugged at his lips, but it carried no humor.
"After everything that's happened," he answered, his voice steady but edged with truth, "I don't move the way I used to. The poison Root left in me still lingers. Danzo took my right eye. I'm not at my peak anymore. And if I want to stay hidden, I can't even use the jutsu that once defined me. Killing Iwamaru without them… took longer than it should have."
The words were plain, but heavy. He wasn't asking for pity. He was simply setting truth between them.
Itachi's gaze lingered, unreadable. To others, Shisui's calm might have seemed whole. But Itachi knew him — and knew how much silence could conceal.
The forest whispered. A branch creaked. Neither moved for a time. Then Shisui's lone eye shifted, watching the younger man with quiet intent.
"You've been waiting for me," he said.
"I wanted to see you," Itachi replied, almost evenly. But the stillness in his tone was brittle, too sharp around the edges.
Shisui caught it. He tilted his head, studying him. "This is about Sasuke, isn't it?"
The slightest flicker crossed Itachi's face, too brief for most to catch. He did not answer.
So Shisui did. His voice dropped lower, carrying a weight heavier than wind or stone.
"He hates you, Itachi."
Itachi's breath stilled.
Shisui's words cut through the night, plain and merciless. "Not sorrow. Not confusion. Hatred. Pure, burning hatred. I've seen it in his eyes, and it's not fading. You carved that into him the night you cut down our clan."
Still, Itachi did not move. His face held its mask of calm, but the silence between them grew sharp, like glass under strain.
"You wanted it that way," Shisui pressed, his gaze narrowing. "I know. You wanted him to hate you, to chase strength through that fire. But do you understand what that hatred is doing to him?"
A long moment passed before Itachi finally spoke, his voice low, almost too soft for the forest to carry.
"It is the only way he will grow strong enough."
Shisui's expression darkened. "Strong enough for what? To kill you? To carry your burden after you're gone? You've made yourself his enemy, and in his eyes, nothing else matters anymore."
At last, a shadow of pain cracked through Itachi's calm. His hands curled at his sides, fingers tightening briefly before loosening again.
"I chose this path," he said, his voice quiet but taut, "because it is the only way to keep him safe. If his hatred is directed at me, he won't lose himself to anyone else. Better he despises me… than be consumed by the world that took everything from us."
Shisui's lone eye softened, though his words did not. "You speak like you can carry all the weight and still stand. But you can't control what hatred becomes, Itachi. It will shape him in ways you never intended. And when that day comes, you won't be able to guide him."
Itachi's gaze lowered to the forest floor, the shadows pooling like ink. His lips parted, but no words came.
Shisui exhaled softly, the sound more weary than sharp. "You love him, more than yourself. That's why you think this is the only way. But love twisted into hatred is still poison. If Sasuke can't see through it one day… then all of this will swallow him whole."
The silence that followed was suffocating. Leaves rustled faintly above, as if even the forest leaned closer to hear what would not be spoken.
At length, Itachi straightened from the tree. His face was composed again, his mask repaired, but his eyes carried shadows that the moonlight could not chase away.
"I have no choice," he said.
Shisui's lips curved faintly, though his eye betrayed no mirth. "There's always a choice, Itachi. But I won't waste breath telling you that tonight."
For a time, neither moved. Then Shisui shifted his cloak, turning his steps toward the distance.
"You should stay here," he said quietly. "I'll handle the rest."
Itachi gave the barest nod. Shadows swallowed him, until only the forest remained.
---
**The Black Market**
The underground tunnels stank of sweat, smoke, and iron. Torches burned unevenly against damp stone, their flames spitting shadows across walls carved by hands long gone. Voices echoed in sharp fragments — haggling, laughter edged with cruelty, the low thrum of a marketplace built on stolen lives.
And then Shisui entered.
He did not draw a blade. He did not flare chakra. He simply walked. His lone visible eye fixed forward, unblinking. His steps were measured, calm.
But the air shifted at once.
The first mercenary froze mid-drink. The next, leaning over a table stacked with weapons, stilled with hands half-open. One by one, the hall fell into silence, a ripple of instinct spreading faster than thought.
Breath shortened. Spines stiffened. Eyes turned, then dropped, as if forced downward by a weight they could not resist.
He had no legend to precede him. A single week as a hunter had given him no myth, no whispered stories. And yet bodies remembered what words did not. They knew when death had stepped among them.
Shisui's presence pressed against the chamber like a storm pressing against glass. Not loud, not violent. But suffocating, inescapable. A silence sharper than any blade.
The crowd parted without a word.
Even outside, at the tunnel's mouth, Itachi waited in shadow. He had not followed inside, but even from the dark, the weight of Shisui's aura reached him, settling in his chest like stone.
Inside, eyes turned toward Rosukin. He sat on crates stacked with contraband, his grin stretched across a scarred face. But his shoulders betrayed him, tense beneath the cloak.
For a long moment, he said nothing. His throat worked, his smile faltered. And then, rough and unguarded, words slipped free.
"…That presence… it's worse than last time."
The words weren't meant for anyone, but they carried, swallowed by silence.
Shisui's gaze found him — calm, unhurried, a single eye holding the weight of something greater than violence. No jutsu woven. No sword drawn. And yet Rosukin felt the breath in his lungs seize tight.
Forcing steadiness into his grin, he spread his hands. "My Lord," he said, voice brittle beneath the torchlight, "the market welcomes its newest shadow."
Shisui said nothing. His silence pressed harder than any threat.
He approached the table, unsealing the scroll in a single motion. Air cracked faintly as the parchment released its contents. With a heavy thud, the battered corpse of Iwamaru struck the table — his face twisted in death, his body marked with the wounds of a man who had fought desperately and lost.
Gasps broke the silence, stifled quickly. Eyes darted from corpse to hunter, disbelief tangled with fear.
Rosukin leaned forward, eyes narrowing in greedy delight yet with absolute Respect. "Sixty million," he murmured. "Minus my five percent commission… leaves you fifty-seven million. My Lord"
He slid the payment forward.
Shisui gathered it without a word, sealing it into his cloak. His gaze swept the hall one last time. Dozens of eyes flinched away. No one moved.
He turned, cloak falling still against his back. The market parted for him as if by instinct, a shadow carving its own path.
No one stopped him. No one dared.
Death had not come for them tonight. But it had walked past, calm and certain. And its shadow would haunt them long after it was gone.
**End of chapter 9**