"Still no word from Uzushiogakure?"
The Raikage wasn't a man known for nerves. He was known for breaking tables, mountains, and occasionally common sense, but right now, his fingers drummed against the armrest of his throne with unmistakable tension.
Two thousand Kumogakure ninja.
That was not a scouting party, that was an event.
If none of them had returned yet, that alone wasn't alarming. Uzushiogakure wasn't some backwater village you burned down over a weekend. With its seals, barriers, and Uzumaki stubbornness, flattening the place could take days or months or even more than a year.
No—that part he could live with.
What he couldn't live with was the silence.
Not a report or a coded transmission. Not even a panicked Anbu screaming through a forbidden jutsu before dying dramatically.
Nothing.
And that terrified him.
"Still no news, Raikage-sama," the intelligence officer said, bowing stiffly.
The Raikage's jaw clenched because this was what he expected but also hated. He gestured sharply for the man to continue.
"Uzushiogakure remains completely dark with no outbound signals of any kind. However…" the officer hesitated, wisely choosing his words, "we do have developments from the other great villages."
That got the Raikage's attention.
"Konoha has deployed the majority of its shinobi to its borders," the officer continued. "All of them, in every direction and in fully defensive formations."
The room grew colder.
"That means one of two things," the Raikage said slowly. "Either they're panicking… or they know something we don't."
"Yes, sir. And whatever they know is likely bad enough that they're preparing for a multi-village conflict."
The implication hung in the air like thunderclouds.
Two thousand elite ninjas don't just vanish, at least, not unless something very wrong happened.
And if Konoha already knew? That meant retaliation was coming.
"What about Iwa? Suna? And especially Kiri?" the Raikage asked. "I called for a Kage meeting yesterday. Surely someone answered."
The intelligence officer winced.
"Iwa replied," he said carefully. "The Tsuchikage claims to be 'very hungry' for information about the situation, but he declined the formal meeting."
"…Of course he did," the Raikage muttered.
"He also claims they have no more information than we do," the officer continued. "However, he did agree that our villages should exchange personnel, share intelligence, and begin planning."
"Planning for what?" the Raikage asked, already knowing the answer.
"To unite," the officer said, "and take revenge against… Konoha."
Not Uzushiogakure but konoha, and that alone said everything.
In the Tsuchikage's mind—and likely the others'—Uzushio wasn't the problem. The Uzumaki were inconvenient, yes, but not terrifying enough to erase ten thousand ninja without a trace.
Konoha, on the other hand?
That was a village with a long, unpleasant history of doing exactly that.
No matter how deeply A despised that scheming and cowardly dwarf called Ōnoki, he wasn't stupid enough to let pride drive the Cloud straight into the grave.
Cooperation was unavoidable. Not because he trusted Iwagakure but because he didn't know just how many blades Konoha still had hidden up its sleeves. And that ignorance was dangerous.
If Kumogakure went to war alone… if they truly had to face Azula, Tsunade, and Sakumo head-on—A didn't kid himself.
Even throwing the Tailed Beasts into the war wouldn't guarantee victory. Not when men like Hiruzen Sarutobi were still breathing, and not when Konoha's clans stood behind them.
A snorted quietly. Damn village breeds monsters like it's tradition.
Still, he kept those thoughts to himself. The man standing before him wasn't a strategist—just the head of intelligence. No need to burden him with the full weight of the storm.
Instead, A crossed his arms and shifted the topic.
"What about Suna and Kiri?" he asked. "Any word from them?"
The officer shook his head, lips tightening. "Sunagakure is completely isolated with no confirmed movements. The only thing we've picked up is a possible line of cooperation with Hanzō. As for Kirigakure… nothing."
A raised an eyebrow because he knows that the things that may broke the deadlock is news from Kiri. "Nothing at all?"
"Yes, sir, their situation mirrors Uzushiogakure's and with Konoha and Uzushio positioned between us and them, we're effectively blind."
A stared ahead and he could already imagine many scenarios.
"…Looks like this time," he said at last, voice loud but strangely steady, "the ninja world is heading for the bloodiest war it's ever seen."
...
...
...
If there was any country the entire ninja world was watching right now—aside from Uzushiogakure itself—then it was Kirigakure.
It had even surpassed Konoha in importance. After all, if anyone had firsthand information about what truly happened in Uzushio, it should be Kiri.
Or at least, that was what everyone assumed but reality, as usual, was far less cooperative.
At this very moment, Kirigakure was sealed tighter than a jinchūriki during a full moon.
The village-wide barrier had been fully activated—no entry, no exit, no messenger hawks, no sensory probing, not even a reckless idiot trying to fly over it, just absolute lockdown.
Which was precisely why not a single scrap of information had leaked out.
Inside the Mizukage Tower, a meeting was underway.
Under normal circumstances, a gathering like this would be a chaotic mess—clan heads snarling at each other, political knives being sharpened mid-sentence, and at least one argument threatening to turn into bloodshed.
Today, however, there was none of that, 'o shouting, no scheming and no posturing but only suffocating tension.
A Kirigakure ninja stood in the center of the room, drenched in sweat as if he'd just fought a tailed beast and lost.
"E-Elder Genji," he began, voice trembling despite his best efforts, "we've confirmed that the Mizukage… and all those who accompanied him… are dead."
The room didn't breathe.
"We managed to retrieve several bodies," he continued hurriedly, "but… we couldn't find the Mizukage's remains."
That single sentence hit harder than any news.
They had expected casualties. Heavy ones, even because Uzushiogakure was never going to be an easy target, especially with Uchiha and Senju.
But this?
Not a single person in the room—not one—had truly believed that this mission would be the Third Mizukage's final voyage.
Other villages whispered about Mizura's strength. Some mocked him for having once been defeated by Tsunade Senju.
But Kirigakure knew better.
Here, reputation meant nothing, bloodlines meant nothing and political backing also meant nothing.
In the Land of Water, strength was law.
And Mizura had been strong enough to command a village full of lunatics, psychopaths, and battle-hungry killers—and made them obey.
That alone said everything.
Elder Genji closed his eyes and let out a long, weary sigh.
"It seems," he said slowly, "that our worst fear has come to pass. The Mizukage… and many of our elite shinobi… are gone."
Silence followed.
Then—
"Hmph."
The sound cut through the room like a blade.
Everyone turned.
Kaguya Ryukotsu, patriarch of the Kaguya clan, sat with his arms crossed and an unmistakable sneer on his face.
"So that's it?" he scoffed. "With that many ninja backing him, Mizura still couldn't take Uzushio?"
His eyes gleamed with undisguised contempt.
"And after the humiliation of being beaten by a woman," he added coldly, "this is how he ends? Pathetic."
Genji quickly realized he'd worried about not internal strife far too early. After all, expecting the people of Kirigakure to suddenly become reasonable was like expecting sharks to turn vegetarian.
Before Genji could even open his mouth, someone beat him to it.
"At the very least," a cold, clear voice cut through the hall, "he defeated you in a fair fight. I never thought the Kaguya clan would sink so low that its patriarch would insult a dead man."
A brief pause—sharp, deliberate. "Or were you only brave enough to speak once Mizura was no longer alive? Why didn't you say any of this when he could still hear you?"
The speaker was Akiko Yuki. Though her words defended the late Mizukage, there was no warmth in them—especially when she referred to him simply as Mizura, without title or honorific.
Respect was not something she gave freely, even to the dead.
And she wasn't alone in that sentiment. Most of those gathered belonged to the new generation—clan heads who had only recently seized control of their lineages.
Mizura, on the other hand, was from an entirely different era, one that stretched back to the time of the Second Mizukage himself.
When Mizura first ascended to the position, many of them had still been children—weak, inexperienced, and powerless to oppose him.
It had also been the age when their predecessors followed the Second Mizukage into that infamous, suicidal confrontation with Iwagakure's Tsuchikage. The result? Mutual annihilation.
Though both villages bled, Iwa had suffered far worse—and even now, a decade later, had yet to recover.
The room tensed. Ryūkotsu didn't respond with words, he simply stood. The scrape of his chair against the floor echoed like a blade being drawn. His chakra flared—sharp, violent—locking directly onto Akiko.
Akiko, for her part, didn't flinch. Without weaving a single hand sign, the temperature in the hall began to drop. Frost crept along the stone floor, thin as spiderwebs.
In fact, this wasn't just a clash of tempers but also a declaration. Both of them were making their positions painfully clear—staking their claims to the title of the next Mizukage.
They had only just received official confirmation of Mizura's death… but in truth, they'd already acted long before that. The village had been under their control for days.
And even if Mizura had returned alive? There were more than a few ways they could have ensured he didn't stay that way for long.
"Enough." Genji's voice cut through the tension.
"We are not wasting time on this nonsense," he said firmly. "The village has barely recovered from the last war. Before the next one even begins, we've already lost our Kage—and many of our elite shinobi."
His gaze swept across the room, unyielding. "This situation is far more serious than any of you seem to realize."
Genji wasn't the strongest man in the room—not close to Kage-level in raw power. But influence? That was another matter entirely.
In Kirigakure, his authority was second only to the Mizukage themselves. With a single word, he could rally nearly ninety percent of the civilian shinobi to his side.
They weren't as individually powerful as the bloodline clans. They lacked kekkei genkai and secret techniques. But there were many. And in the shinobi world, numbers had a way of evening the scales. After all… Even a Kage could fall—if buried under enough bodies.
(END OF THE CHAPTER)
Today's chapter, no gonna lie, I feel like my writing is evolving, but if I came back a few days and read a chapter I wrote, I would feel so cringe which is somehow discouraging me, lol