The air was thick with tension. Puddles of water stained red reflected the thick mist, as Bruhil, panting but unyielding, faced the remaining seventy-plus ninjas. His Sharingan spun intensely, capturing every slight movement in the gloom. His arm trembled, his side burned, but his smile... his smile was still there. Sadistic. Defiant.
The ninjas moved with millimetric coordination. They weren't simple-minded warriors, not after what they had seen. Now they attacked with strategy, with a single goal: to annihilate him.
· "Suiton: Kaibatsu Suichū no Jutsu!" (Water Style: Exploding Water Pillars Technique!)
The ground erupted in water, forming pillars that emerged like liquid spears. Bruhil pushed himself backward, but in mid-air, a lightning bolt tore through the darkness.
· "Raiton: Shiboshi!" (Lightning Style: Electrocution!)
The electric flash streaked across the sky like a furious serpent, impacting the water below him. The shockwave expanded, trapping him in its radius. His body shuddered. Every muscle contracted in an infernal cramp, his only hand clenching. A whip of pain shot down his spine.
· "Now, finish him!" roared a captain.
A swarm of water whips hissed through the fog. Suiton: Suiben (Water Style: Water Whip). Bruhil, still convulsing from the electricity, barely managed to twist his body in time. One whip sliced open his abdomen with a diagonal gash. A spray of warm blood gushed out, dyeing the water at his feet.
His vision blurred for an instant.
"Shit... I have to move!"
Ignoring the pain, he flexed his legs and dodged another whip that roared past centimeters from his face. He landed in a crouch and, with a lightning-fast movement, pulled out two kunais, throwing them in different directions.
One pierced an enemy's eye. The other sank into another's trachea, whose gasp turned into a bloody gurgle before he collapsed.
But the assault didn't stop.
From the right, stakes of hardened hair flew like a lethal rain. Bruhil spun around, deflecting some with his kunai. Others grazed his arms, leaving deep cuts. One lodged in his shoulder.
He grunted in pain.
There was no respite. From the left, a ninja emerged from the water, his sword gleaming with the light of the lightning.
· "Die, you bastard!"
Bruhil let the Sharingan do its work. His world slowed down. He saw the trajectory of the sword, the pressure in the enemy's muscles, the angle of the strike.
He moved his head one centimeter. The blade grazed his cheek, taking a thin strip of skin. Before the ninja could react, Bruhil drove his kunai into his side and twisted it with a sharp movement.
The ninja vomited blood before collapsing.
But there was no time to celebrate.
The water exploded around him.
· "Suiton: Baku Suishōha!" (Water Style: Exploding Water Collision Wave!)
A titanic wave engulfed him. The world spun in a liquid vortex. His back hit a rock, his leg slammed against a submerged log. Water rushed into his nose, his mouth. He tried to move, but something held him.
A ninja fused with the water. Suiton: Suigitai (Water Style: Water Body).
Bruhil felt a watery hand trying to strangle him. His lungs burned. His vision began to darken.
"Shit... no... not like this!"
His crimson eyes blazed with fury. He forced his good arm to move, stabbing his kunai into the water itself. His chakra exploded through the blade.
The ninja hidden within the technique screamed. His liquid form destabilized. Bruhil seized the moment and kicked upward with all his strength.
He shot up to the surface, gasping for air desperately.
But his instinct warned him of danger.
· "Hari Sutēku no Jutsu!" (Needle Stakes Technique!)
Stakes of hair surrounded him in mid-air, seeking to impale him.
Bruhil narrowed his eyes.
He couldn't dodge.
But he could counterattack.
He gathered all the air he could into his lungs, feeling the burn of fire chakra.
· "Katon: Gōka Mekkyaku!" (Fire Style: Great Fire Annihilation!)
The sky turned into hell. A tongue of fire roared from his mouth, devouring the enemy attack. The hair stakes incinerated instantly. The fire continued its course, trapping several ninjas in its scorching fury.
Screams filled the night. Flesh burning. Thick smoke enveloping the mist.
When the hellfire dissipated, Bruhil fell to his knees. His breathing was an irregular gasp. His body was covered in blood, both his own and that of the dead.
But at least fifty enemies still remained.
The Kiri captain gritted his teeth. His men were trembling.
· "Don't let him breathe! Attack together!"
Bruhil let out a rough laugh. He spat blood on the ground and stood up, swaying.
· "You still think... you have a chance?"
The ninjas moved, surrounding him in perfect synchrony. The rain kept falling, mixing water and blood in the mud.
Bruhil spun his kunai in his hand.
The next assault was about to begin.
---
Bruhil could barely breathe. His side burned with unbearable pain, his thigh bled uncontrollably, and his back throbbed with every movement. His only good hand could barely hold the bloody kunai in his fingers. But his Sharingan still spun, it still saw.
The Kirigakure ninjas surrounded him, panting, drenched, but determined. They were no longer 150. They were about thirty. But everyone knew he wouldn't fall easily.
One of the captains gritted his teeth.
· "He's just one man! Kill him now!"
Bruhil let out a choked laugh, his raspy voice mingling with the sound of the storm.
· "Just one man...?" His smile was stained with blood. "You're fucked."
The first attack came without mercy. A water whip hissed through the air. Bruhil leaned to the side, dodging it by centimeters. But another strike came from below. With no room to react, he could only raise his kunai.
The impact was brutal. His arm shook, the kunai flew from his fingers, and a sharp pain shot through his abdomen. He looked down. The blade of a sword was piercing his side.
But Bruhil was not a man who knelt before death.
He gritted his teeth, grabbed the enemy's arm, and twisted it with brutal force. A dry snap and a choked scream were heard. Using the same momentum, he pivoted and broke the man's neck with a fierce blow.
The body fell, but Bruhil barely had time to breathe. The rain became a curtain of blood as the next enemies lunged.
· "Just die already!"
Six hair stakes flew towards him. With a grunt, Bruhil jumped forward, cutting the air with his elbow and striking a ninja in the throat. Another stake lodged in his shoulder. He didn't scream. He couldn't afford to feel pain.
He took his enemy's face with his only hand and slammed it into the ground with inhuman force.
Mud mixed with blood and broken bones.
Another ninja tried to surprise him from behind. A fatal mistake.
Bruhil turned, his Sharingan glowing with a demonic gleam.
· "Too slow."
He drove his knee into the enemy's chest, felt the ribs crack under the pressure. Before he could fall, he grabbed him by the hair and slit his throat with a kunai picked up from the ground.
But the attacks didn't stop. An electrical discharge hit his back.His body shuddered, his vision flickered. A second blow forced the air from his mouth.
His burned skin steamed in the cold rain.
An enemy ran towards him with a raised sword. Bruhil barely reacted, tilting his body so the blade grazed his cheek. With a roar, he shattered the man's jaw with a punch, followed by a knee to the stomach that made the ninja vomit blood.
He staggered backward. Blood ran down his body in warm streams. His breathing was erratic, his muscles screamed for rest.
But he was still standing.
The last five ninjas looked at him with a mix of hatred and terror.
One of them swallowed.
· "He... he can't be human."
The remaining captain clenched his fists, desperate.
· "SHUT UP! We can't lose to one man! Let's-!"
Bruhil raised his gaze.
His red eyes were an abyss of death.
· "I'm done with you."
He took a gulp of air, tasting his own metallic taste in his throat.
The fire chakra burned inside him like an infernal storm.
· "Katon: Gōka Mekkyaku!" (Fire Style: Great Fire Annihilation!)
Hell descended upon the earth.
The fire roared like a furious beast, enveloping the last enemies in scorching flames. Screams pierced the air as their bodies were devoured, their skin melting like hot wax.
The rain could not extinguish the fire of their death.
When the last body fell, when the last breath was extinguished, Bruhil remained there.
Alone.
Standing.
The storm kept falling, washing the blood from his shattered body.
His chest rose and fell with difficulty. His wounds oozed, his burned skin smoked. His Sharingan still glowed, but his vision was blurry.
But he never fell.
He did not kneel.
The 150 Kirigakure ninjas lay dead around him. And Bruhil, with his body on the verge of collapse, with death breathing down his neck...
Remained standing.
Something here stinks.
Nah... He smiled proudly. He could win.
Or at least, he thought so for an instant.
---
The metallic taste of blood flooded his mouth. His arm trembled, his legs threatened to give way. Around him, the bodies of the dead lay motionless, but the battle wasn't over. Not for him.
Something was wrong.
· "Who the hell keeps fighting when they can retreat with their life?" he whispered with a rough, almost amused laugh.
It was what I would have always wondered. The logical thing would have been to leave. To live. But I didn't.
I wanted to prove I was better. That's why I broke my own promise. The promise to stay alive forever. To always protect Nasli.
All of it, just to reaffirm my greatness.
But my ego condemned me to defeat.
The pain began to fade, replaced by something colder. Something final. And then, on that threshold between life and death, he saw her.
Nasli.
The golden light of the sunset filtered through the hospital window, illuminating her serene face. Her silent smile, the one that had always been his refuge.
· "Bruhil, will you change my flowers tomorrow?"
He always did. He always would.
But this time, there would be no tomorrow.
The mist thickened in my vision, as if my own memories were crumbling. Maybe because my mind could no longer hold them, or because the pain of evoking them was too great. But there they were, dancing in the haze, disordered, trembling, as if memory rejected them and treasured them at the same time.
Nasli spun in the field of flowers, her arms open, her laughter breaking the silence of the sunset. Her hair floated in the wind and the golden light embraced her as if she were part of the sun. I watched her from the hill, hands in my pockets, pretending I didn't care. But I did care. I always did.
Then, Nasli curled up against my chest on a cold night. Her breathing was calm, as if the world weren't a cruel place, as if I weren't who I was. I stroked her hair, fearful that the slightest movement would wake her and break that moment of calm.
And then.
· "You know?" she said without looking at me, her gaze lost on the horizon. "I always thought that when this ended, I would be the one to leave first."
I didn't answer.
· "Why aren't you saying anything?" she asked, her tone wavering between sadness and resignation.
· "Because I don't know what to say," I murmured.
She smiled, an empty smile.
· "That's new."
The wind whipped her hair, but she made no move to push it away from her face. I realized she was trembling, even though it wasn't cold.
· "If you had the chance to change something, just one thing..." Her voice was a whisper.
· "I don't think I can answer that."
· "Of course you can. But you don't want to."
Nasli had always been like that. She never let me hide behind silence. She never allowed me to shelter behind half-answers.
I rubbed my face with one hand, feeling the weight of her question.
The vision of Nasli before her accident. Before her life changed forever, and mine too. I remembered how her eyes shone with a determination I never knew where it came from. The world seemed at her feet, and in her eyes there wasn't a hint of doubt. I knew it would change the course of our lives, but not in the way we imagined.
Was it my fault? I couldn't stop asking myself. So much time had passed, and I still felt that pressure in my chest, that burden I couldn't let go. Maybe if we hadn't gone that morning, maybe if we hadn't made that decision, maybe if...
· "I..." I said, unable to look at her. "I would have stopped you from going to the war."
Nasli didn't react immediately. Her breathing became deeper, as if she were testing those words inside before deciding what to do with them.
· "Would you have done that for me?" she whispered.
· "Always."
She let out a brief, broken laugh.
· "How foolish..." she said, and her voice sounded like a distant echo. "If you had done that, then you wouldn't be you. And if you weren't you... then I wouldn't have loved you the way I did."
The air between us became heavy, as if all the unspoken words were piling up over our heads.
· "I don't want you to love me like that," I admitted, clenching my fists. "Not if it meant losing you."
Nasli closed her eyes.
· "You never lost anything, you know?" Her voice was serene, but held no comfort. "I was the one who got lost in all this. I was the one who stayed in a place I no longer belonged."
· "Don't say that."
· "Why not? It's the truth."
The horizon began to tint a darker blue. The sun was hiding, and night fell with the same inevitability with which she was pulling away from me, even being so close.
· "If you could go back," I whispered. "If I gave you that chance... would you have chosen a different path?"
Nasli turned her face to me. Her eyes were two infinite wells, reflecting something greater than sadness.
· "No," she replied. "Because every step led me to you."
I felt a knot in my throat.
· "Nasli..."
· "Don't say anything else." Her trembling hand sought mine, and I held it tightly, as if that could anchor her to this moment, to this reality where I could still touch her. "Don't change anything."
She gave me the last kiss on the lips, a soft kiss, full of farewell, as if she wanted me to remember it that way: slow, tender, but final. Her face, close to mine, reflected a mix of sadness and understanding, as if words could no longer say what we both knew, but didn't dare to face.
· "I'm going to miss you," she said, her voice broken, as if it were hard to breathe. The shadows enveloped us,but the memory of her laugh, of her warmth, of her life, remained suspended between us, immortal in that icy breeze.
· "I'm sorry..." she whispered.
The wind carried Bruhil's last exhalation.