The wind rolled down from the northern ridges long before the scouts did. A cold, colorless wind that carried dust and the faint metallic tang of disturbed earth. Kozan felt it before he heard the first whistle thin, desperate, the sound of boots slapping hard-packed stone.
He didn't turn at once. He was still kneeling beside the shattered edge of the training ground, stone fragments scattered around him like a broken mosaic. He traced a fingertip along the spiderweb cracks he had carved earlier. Controlled blows. Perfect angles. Every fracture could have been a page in a manual on destruction. His breathing was even, steady. Silent.
It was Chūnin Otera who arrived first. His chest heaved like a bellows, sweat matting the roots of his burnt-orange hair. His eyes flickered to the ruined stones, then to Kozan, then back again as he swallowed whatever unease clawed at him.
"They found it," Otera rasped, voice hoarse. "The northern watchpoint. you should see it yourself."
Kozan rose slowly.
Behind him, Mei stiffened. She'd been watching him since morning, a cautious stillness about her movements like someone observing a dangerous animal from outside its cage. Yagura's paranoia had left its fingerprints on everyone, even now, long after the last of the genjutsu haze had dropped from his mind.
Kozan brushed dust from his palms, turned to her, and Mei caught something in his eyes a question he didn't ask out loud. She gave a small nod.
"Let's go."
The northern watchpoint sat along a narrow ridge that overlooked miles of stripped, rocky terrain. Only two buildings stood there: a cramped outpost shack and a tower built entirely of stone drawn from the surrounding cliffs.
At first glance, nothing at the outpost seemed disturbed. That was the troubling part.
No splintered wood.No scorch marks from jutsu.No signs of battle.
Just stillness. The wrong kind.
A group of Iwa shinobi stood in a tight circle around something at the tower base. Kozan approached without speaking. Even before the group parted, he could smell it the faint, clean scent of blood exposed to air too cold for immediate rot.
When the shinobi stepped aside, Kozan saw the body.
Or what remained close enough to be called one.
Stone plates were fused with flesh clean, surgical fusion, not the brutal crushing of a boulder fall. The victim's torso was intact, but the limbs were twisted into the rock like roots gripping soil. Smooth. Intentional.
Mei drew a sharp breath.
"It's… almost like"
"An art piece," someone murmured.
No one corrected him.
Kozan crouched beside the body, examining the seams. Not a drop of blood stained the stone. Not a single sign of tearing.
"Advanced Doton manipulation," Otera whispered. "But I've never seen it used to do this."
One of the older shinobi shook his head. "This ain't our work."
Kozan agreed. The stone told him enough. Whoever did this didn't just command earth they understood its grain, its density, the subtle flex that came before the fracture. They manipulated it with the same elegance Kozan used with wire.
This wasn't sloppy. It wasn't rushed.It was deliberate.
A message.
But to whom?
Mei knelt beside him. "The scouts said the body was found like this at dawn. No forced entry. No chakra signatures."
"Correct." Otera wiped his forehead, hands shaking. "And the guard roster shows the last patrol checked in at midnight. Everything was normal then."
Kozan studied the stone again. It wasn't the brutality that caught his eye it was the restraint. Whoever did this wanted the body to remain recognizable. Wanted someone to stand here and interpret it.
Wanted someone to feel the wrongness.
"This isn't a random attack," Mei said quietly. "There's meaning behind it."
Kozan stood, brushing dust from his fingers. "There is."
Her gaze flicked to him. "And?"
"…It's a warning."
Mei stiffened at the confirmation.
"From who?" Otera croaked.
Kozan didn't answer right away. He stepped back, sweeping his gaze across the barren ridges. The wind scraped hard across the stones, pulling loose grains into small spirals. Every sound seemed sharper. The silence between them felt too heavy, too packed with unspoken things.
Mei's voice was soft. "This is the second body, Kozan."
The others flinched.
The first had been found three days ago hidden deep beneath collapsed rubble near the old quarry. They had assumed it was a wandering missing-nin or a rogue experiment from the Tsuchikage's old projects.
Two coincidences were still coincidences.
Three were not.
Kozan considered the body again. The way it was arranged. The angles. The precision.
"This isn't imitation," he said. "This is mastery."
Otera swallowed. "You saying someone like us did this?"
"No," Kozan said. "Someone better."
A pulse of fear moved through the group.
Mei narrowed her eyes. "You're not talking about an Iwa shinobi."
"No."
"Then who?"
Kozan finally looked at her and she knew instantly he wasn't guessing. He'd already drawn the picture in his mind.
"The Land of Earth's northern border touches old war territory," he said. "Ruins from the Third Great War. Abandoned mines. Underground routes."
Mei nodded slowly. "Many rogue shinobi used those routes to escape after the war."
"And some" Kozan's gaze returned to the stone-fused corpse "never stopped experimenting."
The group murmured, unease rippling through them.
Mei stood and motioned for the nearest jonin. "Secure the body. Map the scene. No details leave this ridge."
But even as the orders spread, Kozan felt the tension shift around him. The shinobi didn't look at the corpse anymore.
They looked at him.
As if the sight of stone molded like flesh reminded them of something dangerous sitting quietly in their own ranks.
Mei felt that shift too. Her shoulders tightened.
She stepped closer to Kozan, lowering her voice. "You're thinking too far ahead."
"No," he said. "Not far enough."
They returned to the village by dusk.
The fog rolled in early thick, heavy, the kind that clung to skin and roof tiles like living cloth. Lanterns cast stretched shadows across the stone streets, making everything seem distantly distorted.
Kozan walked in silence, hands in his pockets. He felt Mei's eyes drift toward him more than once, but she didn't speak until they reached the administrative district.
"You're too calm about this."
Kozan paused at the base of the steps leading to the Mizukage offices.
"I'm never calm," he said. "I'm controlled."
Mei stared at him. "That's not exactly comforting."
Kozan shrugged.
She stepped closer, lowering her voice. "I know what you're thinking. Whoever is doing this understands earth release in a way that shouldn't exist anymore. Someone with technique beyond our records. Someone who has a reason to test Iwa's borders."
He didn't answer, so she continued.
"But that doesn't mean they're after us specifically."
"Yes," Kozan said. "It does."
Mei exhaled sharply. "And why do you believe that?"
"Because they're not hiding," Kozan said. "They're communicating. Stone speaks. This one is telling us exactly where to look."
"And you know where that is."
Kozan nodded.
Mei closed her eyes for a moment. "…And I'm not going to like your answer, am I?"
"No."
She reopened her eyes slowly. "Say it."
"The old tunnels beneath Raiden Gorge."
Her expression changed instantly. Not fear calculating dread.
"…Those tunnels were sealed," she whispered. "Decades ago. They're filled with abandoned traps, toxins, forgotten weapons nobody goes there."
"Exactly."
"You think someone's been living down there?"
"No," Kozan said. "I think someone's been working down there."
The fog swirled around them, muffling footsteps and voices from nearby streets. Mei's posture shifted her default mask of confident authority replaced with something more tense.
"Kozan…" she said quietly. "You know that place is cursed."
"Curses don't shape stone," he replied.
She bit her lip. "You really intend to go down there."
He didn't deny it.
A long, uncomfortable silence stretched between them.
Then, finally, Mei said the thing she had been holding back since the ridge.
"Is this… connected to you?"
Kozan's eyes narrowed, but not with anger with assessment.
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
And then he added, quietly:
"But it might be connected to what created me."
Mei's pulse jumped. She hadn't expected him to say that not in those words, not with that still, controlled precision. She stepped closer, lowering her voice until it was barely more than breath.
"You think whatever's down there understands your techniques."
"I think it understands my origins," Kozan said. "The way my strength was shaped. The way my control was forged."
Mei felt a chill crawl across her arms.
"If someone like that exists…" she murmured.
"They don't exist," Kozan said. "They survived."
Late that night, long after paperwork lights dimmed and the village fell into a quieter rhythm, Mei stood at her balcony overlooking the mist wrapped rooftops. She traced a fingertip along the railing, feeling the cold condensation cling to her skin.
Her mind replayed Kozan's words again and again.
Connected to what created me.They survived.
She had known Kozan for years now known his quiet discipline, his strange detachment from fear, his unsettling instinct for reading violence in the smallest details. But she had never heard him speak about his origins with anything but cold dismissal.
Tonight was different.
Tonight, something had rattled him.
Something in that stone-fused corpse had whispered to him in a language only he and the killer understood.
Mei leaned forward, letting the fog brush against her face.
She wasn't afraid for the village.
She was afraid for Kozan and what someone like him might become if pushed hard enough.
Because Kozan didn't panic.He didn't break.He didn't crumble.
He adapted.
And in the wrong hands, adaptation was the most dangerous weapon in the world.
Kozan didn't sleep.
He sat in the corner of his room, wires laid out in perfect straight lines before him, each one aligned with surgical precision. He ran his fingertips along them, feeling the subtle tension in every metal thread.
The corpse from the ridge replayed in his mind like a breathing photograph.
Not the violence.Not the grotesque merging.The intent.
The same intent used on him years ago, when his strength was still being shaped, broken down, reforged.
If someone else had survived that process
If someone else had inherited the same cold training, the same merciless design
Then the bodies weren't warnings.
They were invitations.
Kozan opened his eyes, pupils narrowing.
"I'm coming," he murmured.
And the room fell back into silence cold, perfect, disciplined silence.