The masked intruder didn't hesitate.
In one blur of motion, they launched forward—silent, efficient, blade gleaming with faint chakra threads trailing from the hilt.
Kiyoshi sidestepped just in time, his reflexes sharpened from years of survival, not academy drills. The blade cut through air where his chest had been, but the pressure from the strike grazed his shoulder.
He staggered back.
"Fast. Not ANBU... but trained like one. Definitely Root-style."
His left hand slid to his pouch. No kunai—he hadn't come expecting a fight. But he had his eyes.
The Chinoike blood surged.
"Ketsuryugan."
His irises deepened to crimson, lines of power threading through them.
The world slowed slightly. The enemy's chakra—tight, cold, precise—flared like a coil of venom around their core.
He caught the next slash with his forearm guard and twisted his body, sweeping low. The figure jumped, flipping midair and launching shuriken mid-spin.
Clink! Clink!
Kiyoshi ducked and rushed under a tree root. His breath came fast.
"He's testing me. Not trying to kill. Yet."
From the shadows above, the intruder spoke.
"You're not just some stray. You're his blood."
Kiyoshi's breath froze. "His...?"
Before he could ask, the attacker blurred behind him—blade at his neck.
But this time, Kiyoshi had baited him.
A shimmer of genjutsu peeled away, revealing Kiyoshi now behind the masked man, a hand stretched forward.
"Blood Snare."
A thin line of blood from his earlier wound curled from his fingertips like a whip—and wrapped around the masked shinobi's ankle.
In an instant, he yanked—and the enemy crashed to the ground.
Kiyoshi jumped on top, yanked the mask off—
But it wasn't a man.
It was a girl. Young. Maybe two years older than him. Pale-eyed, hair silver-white and buzzed short. A long scar ran across her temple.
Before he could say anything, her hand clapped together.
Poof!
A smoke bomb erupted, and she vanished in an instant.
Kiyoshi sat back against a twisted tree, breathing hard.
His arm bled again. His chakra reserves were thinning. But that wasn't what disturbed him.
It was what she said.
"You're his blood."
He retrieved the old Root tag from the ground again, now stained with dust from their fight.
There were people still carrying out Danzo's legacy.
And somehow… they knew about the Chinoike.
Back in Konoha, under candlelight in a side room of the hospital, Kiyoshi sat silently as a nurse finished stitching his arm.
He didn't tell the mission office about the masked attacker.
He didn't tell them about the Root tag either.
But he kept the mask in his pack.
As he looked out the window at the Hokage monument, he thought one thing:
"I can't free my clan unless I understand why they were locked away in the first place. This... isn't just exile. It's a cover-up."
[End of Chapter 9]