"Earthquake, run."
"Run."
The sky was the color of ash, heavy clouds pressed low on the horizon.
The ground bucked like a trampoline. The world seemed to turn upside down. Towers folded one after another, roads split, people scattered like ants.
The girl stood dazed where she was.
The ruin in front of her filled her eyes.
Her mother, half-buried under bricks and stone, screamed in pain. Beside her, her father was a lump of mangled flesh, already beyond breath.
"Run."
In the clamor, the weeping girl was shoved forward by the flood of bodies toward a narrow slice of light.
She glanced back.
Thunder rolled.
The earth heaved.
The building came down with a roar and the world went black again.
Water crashed.
Bathroom.
A silver-haired girl burst up through the bath, sending waves over the rim.
She coughed hard.
Pale fingers seized the edge of the tub, the pads wrinkled. Pressing the back of her hand to her mouth and nose, Konome Taketori hacked and dragged herself out of the water, her face drained of color.
Where am I.
A white-tiled bathroom, steam hanging in the air, a shape lying still not far away.
Kirigakure.
The haze cleared from her gray pupils and light came back to them.
The world changed shape in an instant.
Flat turned to layered, three-dimensional. Walls and right-angled rooms no longer blocked her vision. Streets and plaster went clear like glass.
She swept up and down, confirmed nothing moved nearby.
She released the Byakugan and exhaled, wiping water from her face.
Wet hair clung to her cheeks and neck, tickling.
She had been too tired last night.
She had dozed off in the bath without meaning to.
Her palm rested on her brow. Her skin felt warm. Her breath came out of her nose with a faint heat.
Her limbs were weak.
A touch of fever maybe. She had no idea whether Shikotsumyaku's healing could do anything for a cold.
It should be fine.
Bare feet on cold tile, she stood naked at the sink. Naoko Tenzaka still lay beneath it, brown eyes glassy, the softness of her features already tinted blue from too much blood lost.
Life breaks easily.
Konome stood over the corpse, took the towel hanging above the basin, wrapped her dripping hair, and scrubbed.
The woman's bruised face tugged loose a memory she could not bury. That apocalyptic quake when she was small, the one that took her parents, her home, and left her an orphan. The kindly neighbors who knocked her down for a scrap of food.
Her parents dying was a nightmare she would never wake from.
She would not be that helpless again.
She would live, and live better than anyone.
She lifted her head. The mirror above the sink was fogged, her outline only a blur.
She wiped the glass with tissues. A pale gray streak smeared across the white.
A silver-haired girl with nothing on stared back from the clean patch.
Her features were fine and clean-cut, her skin milk-white. She had not grown into them yet, but the promise shone through. Long hair fell to her shoulders and covered her chest. In the light, the silver-gray took on a matte, metallic sheen.
Her irises were milky, but the pupils at their center were a dead ash, darker than she remembered.
She pushed her hair back and checked her brow. The hole from the kunai through the glabella was gone, not even a scar.
Her skin was smooth and bright, unreal.
This face.
I missed a card in yesterday's count.
She stepped over the dry, black smear of blood on the floor, smoothed the gooseflesh from the chill on her arms, patted herself down with the towel, and left the bathroom.
In the living room,
the floor was shadowed with black patches.
The quick-drying steam left her chilled to the bone.
Light slipped through the seams of the shutters and set a faint glow over her bare skin, a milky luster like the finest mutton-fat jade.
Through the window the sky had gone pale with violet at the edge.
She had no idea how long she had slept.
Byakugan, open.
She formed a one-handed seal. Veins threaded out around her eyes.
Clarity snapped in. The bones of the house and the structure of the entire street lay bare.
Kirigakure was a city built on a mountain.
Clouds milled about the crown while homes climbed the slope.
The streets rose at harsh angles. The middle of the road even bulged like a giant basketball had been buried under it. Houses on both sides were single-story. Some backed onto trees and mounds. Climb those and you reached another street. It felt like a city from a story in her past life.
She reeled her sight in and swept from top to bottom again.
Her brows drew together.
She turned back to the bathroom, unscrewed the drain cap, and fished out the wad of silver-gray hair that had clogged it.
She looked at Naoko under the basin and at the fist clenched tight against her lower belly.
Chakra flowed.
A click.
Her finger joints deformed and a cruel edge punched up through skin.
White bone lengthened and narrowed, honing to something like a surgeon's scalpel. Already sharp, the edge grew another measure keener.
A soft, steady rasp of bone.
Naoko's fingers were locked into a stony fist.
With the bone blade, Konome sliced the dead woman's fingers off one by one. The blood on the palm smudged and then the single character for bone stood out.
Married, expecting, dulled by a gentler life, yet on the brink of death she had left a sign.
Worthy of the Bloody Mist.
Konome's praise stayed silent. She cut the skin from the center of the palm and peeled it away.
In the bedroom, she pulled on Naoko's shorts and T-shirt.
Her own clothes were beyond saving. Their sizes were nothing alike. The shirt hung loose, the hem past her hips. The shorts bagged at the waist. She cinched them with a belt to keep them up.
Using the Byakugan's transparent vision, she cleaned out the cash from under Hoshino's bed, his nightstand, and the black box at the bottom of Naoko's wardrobe.
She kept a little on her person and shoved the rest into a shoulder bag.
The lighter clicked.
The torn, blood-crusted clothes caught, and the flames licked up the Taketori crest. She tossed the hair and the strip of palm into the brazier. Protein stank as it burned, a thin sweetness under the stink of meat. Firelight flickered in her pale eyes.
When everything that could point to her had turned to ash,
she scanned the room for anything she had missed.
She swept the blood-dusted bone grit from the floor together with the ashes into a garbage sack. She formed a seal and let the Transformation Technique sheath her. She took on the face of a coworker from her past life, slung her bag, grabbed the trash, and stepped out looking for all the world like a salarywoman heading to work too early.
Three hours later.
Somewhere under Kirigakure.
"Captain, we found Dark Fox."
"Where."
Toike Takuto in his Great Tengu mask stood with a crow-masked ANBU in a bare concrete chamber.
"The hospital."
Takuto's brow furrowed. "Injured. I sent him to clean the field. What happened."
"He is dead."
Silence gathered in the room.
Hearing the captain say nothing for so long, the Crow began to sweat. He had never known the captain and Dark Fox were this close.
"Go on."
The hoarse words were low and dry, but inside them the Crow heard killing cold.
"Last night Dark Fox found a severely wounded ANBU while cleaning the field. He carried the man to the hospital alone. What happened in between is unknown. When he did not return, Blood Hound and I went to look. The nurses said Hoshino was dead. The ANBU who carried him in left to notify the family and never came back. When they described the man's face, we realized he had already died on the battlefield Hoshino had been cleaning, killed by something that shredded his head like a set of claws.
"So we judged there was a Taketori survivor loose in the village. The purpose is unknown. They are likely hiding at Dark Fox's home. We just sent people to search."
Here, the Crow hesitated.
"What about Naoko."
The tone was even. To the Crow it sounded colder than the Yuki clan's Ice Release.
"Naoko Tenzaka is dead. No sign of a fight inside. It was a one-stroke kill. Every trace was cleaned. There are no leads. The killer is strong and ruthless. I judge they are at least jōnin level."
He left out what the body had looked like.
"Clean."
"Yes. Cleaner than ANBU standard, not a single hair left."
Silence again.
The Crow stood with his head lowered and his fists clenched.
"The Taketori are reckless and head-on. This is nothing like them.
"Orochimaru appeared near the Taketori grounds in secret. This killer is likely one of his. Crow, lock every exit from the village. From this moment, the gates only open inward. No one leaves. Screen everyone coming in. If anything smells off, cut them down."
Toike Takuto's orders came steady and cold.
"Seal the village. The village council…"
"I will handle them."
"Yes."
The Crow flashed through seals. Water gathered and he vanished with the Water Body Flicker Technique.
The wide chamber was empty again. Takuto stood where he was for a long time without moving.
He had lost his parents young. Now he had lost his closest friend and the woman he loved.
Hatred burned in his chest like a grassfire.
He could not let it fog his sight.
The Elder and Mei Terumi were moving to challenge the Mizukage and the shadow behind him. No one knew which way that would break. He had lured Fierce Fang, the Mizukage's hound, and many of his top jōnin out to chase Orochimaru.
Kirigakure looked strong and was in fact the weakest it had ever been.
Any ripple inside the village now mattered.
If this really was one of Orochimaru's people and they sized up the village's state, there was no one strong enough to stop him if he came himself.
Pin the enemy in place.
No need to rush the search.
When the Elder returned, he would ask Ao to sweep the village with the Byakugan. With that eye and blood to track, the killer's disguises would be like reading lines in a palm.
He would take that head and lay it before the graves of Harusora and Naoko and let their spirits rest.
"Did you hear. The Taketori tried to rebel last night and attack the village. They were wiped out."
"What. No."
"The bodies are piled high. How could it be fake."
"I heard it was the Mizukage who wanted their heirloom."
"Watch your mouth."
Central boulevard.
People who knew one another formed little knots and whispered.
Caution was second nature here.
The central boulevard sat at the very top of the mountain city. From anywhere in Kirigakure you had to climb a long grade to reach it. From above, the grid of streets looked like a crosshatch cut into the nose of a bullet. At the exact center of that cross sat the Mizukage's Tower.
The one they were whispering about stood at the tower's peak.
Knocking echoed from the corner of the street.
The storyteller glanced over, wary.
A silver-haired girl tapped a wooden staff on the slope and made her way up.
An army-green pack rode her back. A brown staff sat in her hand. A short white cloak fell to her calves. A hood shadowed her brow. Black cloth covered her eyes beneath it. Silver-gray hair curled out along her cheeks and fell to her chest, winking with a metallic sheen in the sun.
A beautiful blind girl.
Once they saw the source of the sound, the men let out a quiet breath of appreciation, then turned away and went back to whispering about the Mizukage.
Men talk about women and politics.
No one talked about little girls.
In the Bloody Mist, lusting after children was a sin worse than murder and not forgiven.
Tap.
Listening to the murmur of passersby, the blind girl kept her head lowered, lips the soft pink of cherry petals pressed together. She set her staff down and walked on at an easy pace toward the distant tower that needled the sky.