Kirigakure — Mizukage's Office
The reports were thin.
Too thin.
The Mizukage read them once. Then again. Then set the folder down without closing it.
"Say it plainly," he said.
The intelligence officer swallowed. "We've received three separate civilian sightings of Ice Release over the past year. None confirmed. No combat signatures. No aftermath."
"And the hunter-nin assigned to Yuki Clan's observation?"
The officer hesitated.
"…They stopped reporting."
The room cooled—not with chakra, but with attention.
"How long?" the Mizukage asked.
"Long enough that excuses no longer fit."
Silence settled. Maps lined the walls, their edges worn smooth by years of revision. The Yuki territory was marked in faded ink—half erased, half remembered.
Ice Release without panic.
Ice Release without pursuit.
Ice Release without noise.
That was wrong.
The Mizukage steepled his fingers. "Hunter-nin do not vanish quietly."
"No, sir."
"They're moving," the Mizukage said at last. "Not scattering. Relocating."
A murmur rippled through the room.
"That's not their pattern," one advisor said.
"It is now," the Mizukage replied. "Someone taught them a new one."
He rose, cloak shifting like mist over stone, and crossed to the central map. His finger traced borders—north-facing slopes, broken valleys, places no one bothered to rule.
"Fire Country," he said.
Several heads snapped up.
"They wouldn't risk—"
"They already have," he cut in. "And they've done it without leaving us a corpse to follow."
He turned back to the room.
"Which means this is no longer about reclamation," the Mizukage said calmly. "This is about precedent."
The advisors understood immediately.
A bloodline that learned to survive without fear was dangerous.
A clan that learned to move without being hunted was worse.
"Deploy wide," he ordered. "Not loud. No purges. No burn lines."
"Objectives?"
"Find the Yuki Clan," the Mizukage said. "Confirm leadership. Identify who taught them to move like this."
A pause.
"And if you find them?"
The Mizukage's eyes hardened—not cruel, but resolute.
"You watch," he said. "You wait. And you report."
His gaze flicked to the empty space on the roster where names should have been.
"Because whatever killed my hunter-nin," he continued, "did not do so to announce itself."
The folder was finally closed.
Outside, mist curled along the village streets, unaware that somewhere beyond its reach, ice had learned how to walk in the open—and not be seen.
And Kirigakure would not let that lesson go unchallenged.