The tower wasn't just shaking; it was breathing.
Every three seconds, the stone walls of the spiral stairwell constricted inward, groaning under the pressure of the purple coils wrapped around the castle's exterior. Dust puffed from the mortar joints in rhythmic, choking clouds.
The vibration rattled my teeth, a low-frequency hum that made my bones itch inside my skin.
It felt less like climbing a building and more like crawling up the throat of something that was slowly deciding to swallow.
"Pick it up, Boss Lady!" Gamakichi croaked, hopping up three steps at a time ahead of me. "The bad vibes are getting heavier!"
"I'm moving," I wheezed, my hand leaving a sweaty print on the central pillar as I hauled myself up. "And don't call me that."
We were close to the top. The dim light filtering down from the arrow loops was getting brighter. I could hear the roar of the battle outside—a chaotic mix of wet impacts, explosions, and the high-pitched screeching of Manda. The noise didn't just hurt my ears; it vibrated in my diaphragm, stealing the air before I could even use it.
I reached the landing. I saw the heavy oak door leading to the parapet.
Then the roof disappeared.
There was no explosion. There was no warning. One second, there was a ceiling of heavy slate and timber; the next, a flash of silver light shore through reality.
SHINNNG.
The sound was so loud it didn't register as noise—it registered as a drop in air pressure. My ears popped violently, a sharp crack inside my skull that drowned out my own gasp.
I threw myself flat against the wall.
Gamabunta's colossal dosu blade sliced through the tower ten feet above our heads. It cut through stone, iron, and wood with the indifference of a guillotine. The top three floors of the spiral keep simply slid sideways, defying gravity for a heartbeat before tumbling into the abyss below.
The silence of that half-second hang-time was louder than the crash that followed.
Sunlight flooded the stairwell, blinding and sudden.
"Holy—!" Gamakichi yelped, flattened against a step.
"We're alive," I gasped, staring up at the jagged circle of blue sky where the roof used to be. "We're—"
Then the sky turned purple.
It wasn't rain. It was a deluge. A severed artery the size of a subway tunnel opened up directly above us.
Manda's blood didn't fall like water; it crashed down heavy and thick, a hot, toxic sludge smelling of copper and sulfur. Steam rose where the droplets hit the stone, hissing like a kettle left on the stove too long. It hit the top of the stairs with a sound like a wet slap, filling the cylinder of the tower instantly.
It surged toward us, a tidal wave of crimson violence rolling down the spiral.
It was exactly like that scene in the horror movie I wasn't supposed to watch when I was six. The elevator doors opening. The flood.
Move.
My body reacted before my brain could process the terror. I didn't try to run—you can't outrun a liquid falling down a drain.
I slapped my hands together. I didn't have a water source big enough to fight this, so I pulled everything I had from the air, from the sweat on my skin, from the damp moss in the cracks of the stone. It felt like scraping the bottom of a dry well, forcing moisture to coalesce through sheer panic.
"Water Style: Bubble Wall!"
It wasn't a wall. It was a desperate, shimmering umbrella. A convex dome of surface tension materialized inches above my head just as the torrent hit.
WHAM.
The impact drove me to my knees.
My kneecaps slammed into the stone, sending a jolt of white-hot pain up my thighs that nearly broke my concentration.
My arms shook. It felt like holding up a collapsing ceiling. The blood slammed against the water shield, diverting around the edges, spraying the walls and splashing down the stairs on either side of me.
"Gamakichi!" I screamed, my voice straining under the weight.
"On it!"
The orange toad didn't panic. He puffed up his chest, his cheeks ballooning.
"Water Style: Starch Syrup Gun!"
He spat a high-pressure jet of sticky liquid directly at the center of the oncoming flood. It didn't stop the blood, but it cleaved the flow, forcing it to split wider around my shield, creating a small, dry pocket of air in the middle of the red waterfall. The syrup smelled deceptively sweet, like burnt sugar, clashing violently with the stench of the slaughter.
"Back up!" I gritted out. "We have to go down!"
I shuffled backward, one agonizing step at a time, keeping the shield angled to deflect the cascade. The smell was overpowering—hot iron and poison.
Then I saw it.
In the corner of the landing, clinging desperately to a piece of broken masonry, was a clump of white and blue slime.
It was a division of Katsuyu.
The slug was small—maybe the size of a cat—and it had been separated from the main hive. It was sliding on the slick stone, trying to find purchase, but the blood was washing it toward the edge of the stairs where the flow was strongest. It looked painfully small against the violence of the crimson tide, a smudge of white paint about to be scrubbed away.
If it fell into that churning purple river, it would be washed all the way to the foundation and crushed.
It wasn't a person. It was a summon. A piece of a chakra construct.
But it was terrified. I could feel its panic in the air, a sharp, neon spike in my sensory range.
It tasted like sour milk and looked like frantic, stuttering yellow lines scratching at the edges of my vision.
Save it.
I didn't think. I couldn't save the castle. I couldn't save the village. But I was right here.
I lurched forward, breaking my rhythm.
"Boss Lady, what are you doing?!" Gamakichi yelled, the spray hitting his face.
I dropped one hand from the seal, the shield wobbling dangerously above me. The pressure tripled on my remaining arm. A migraine bloomed behind my eyes, sharp and blinding—it felt like my tenketsu, like every single one of them, all of my chakra points were punishing me for the strain.
For a split second, the red world flickered out, replaced by a silent, gray landscape of cold stone and unblinking eyes.
I reached out.
"Come here!" I shouted at the slime.
The Katsuyu division didn't hesitate. It threw itself off the wall, landing on my outstretched hand with a wet thwack. It slithered instantly up my arm, over my shoulder, and clamped itself onto the back of my vest, shivering.
It felt like a cold, wet sandbag, its chakra humming a frantic, high-pitched thankyouthankyouthankyou directly against my spine.
I slammed my hand back into the seal, restabilizing the bubble just as a fresh wave of gore hammered against it.
"Gotcha," I whispered, my teeth grinding together.
We retreated. Step by step. Down into the dark, carrying the slug, diverting the flood we couldn't stop.
My arms were numb, vibrating like a tuning fork struck against iron.
The blood rushed past us, thick and deadly, carrying debris and broken history down into the dark.
And in the crushing noise of the stairwell, with my head splitting open and my chakra burning out, I finally understood.
This is what Tsunade means. This is the weight of the medic.
You don't stop the flood. The flood is inevitable.
You just decide who drowns, and who you carry out of the water.