With a single, sweeping motion of the staff, Hiruzen began the finale.
Fire. "Katon: Karyū Endan!" (Fire Release: Fire Dragon Flame Projectile!)
A river of flame, wider than any he had conjured before, erupted forth. It washed over the fractured, rain-slicked stone of the plateau, and where it passed, the rock itself groaned, softened, and began to flow, melting into glowing, orange-and-black rivers that pulsed with infernal heat.
Earth. His hands barely paused. "Doton: Doryō Sōheki!" (Earth Release: Earth Flow Wall!)
The earth, now pliable and molten, answered a new master. It folded over upon itself, great waves of semi-liquid stone rising and crashing down, sealing the fiery fissures and creating a grotesque, shifting landscape of cooling crust and simmering magma beneath.
Water surged. "Suiton: Suiryūdan no Jutsu!" (Water Release: Water Dragon Projectile Technique!)
But the dragon did not take form; it simply exploded from the cracks in a colossal geyser, flooding the newly formed terrain. The water hit the superheated stone with a world-shaking hiss that dwarfed all previous sound.
Wind. "Fūton: Dai Rasen!" (Wind Release: Great Spiral!)
Hiruzen unleashed a tornado, a spiralling gale that caught the superheated steam and the millions of glowing embers scattered from the initial firestorm.
Lightning. The final seal. "Raiton: Raikōken!" (Lightning Release: Lightning Fang!)
A spear of pure, white lightning, thicker than an ancient tree, lanced from his hand directly into the heart of the swirling, conductive maelstrom.
"Boom!!!"
The resulting explosion was not of mere fire and force. It was the sun being born at their feet. The Raikage, whose eyes were accustomed to the flash of his own lightning, was forced to throw a massive arm over his face with a guttural shout. The others were blinded, their senses overwhelmed by the pure, annihilating light.
When the glare faded, a silence deeper than any tomb fell upon the world. The air itself seemed stunned. Where the centre of the battle had been, a new, massive crater now yawned, its edges glowing a sullen red, heat shimmers distorting the view of the shattered landscape beyond.
Hiruzen planted his staff into the cracked ground at the crater's rim. His chest rose and fell in a single, shuddering breath. He had laid bare the full might of the Hokage, and the cost was written in the tremble of his hands and the hollow ache in his bones.
=====
This was the fifth sunrise since Hiruzen had first marched out to force the hands of the Kages, and the third since all five Kages had assembled to turn this valley into a god's crucible.
For seventy-two relentless hours, their blows had rewritten the very geography. Their chakra had saturated the air, the earth, the water; a normal shinobi breathing this air would have their tenketsu burned out, a civilian would simply die. The very wind had become a weapon, carrying the psychic residue of their conflict.
This was the chasm that separated Kage from men. It was not merely power, but a profound, biological and spiritual defiance. Their willpower shaped nature. Their bodies, pushed far beyond any human limit, did not break; they adapted, fueled by a chakra that was as much a part of their spirit as their blood. They were forces of nature wearing human skin, miracles of endurance clinging to their mortal forms through sheer, stubborn will.
Yet, they still carried more humanity in their human skin shells.
'My reserves are nearing their end. A day. Perhaps less. The body cannot sustain this.' Hiruzen's eyes, heavy-lidded, scanned the others, assessing their cracks.
Onoki still floated, a testament to his vast reserves, but the continuous use of Particle Release, the most chakra-intensive of all kekkei tōta, had taxed even him. His movements were slower, his floating less stable.
Hiroshi stood favouring his uninjured side, the gash from the Raikage a stark, ugly wound. His Ice Release, while devastating, was a brutal drain, and the cold he generated seemed to have leeched into his own pallor.
Saitetsu was trembling visibly, his once-proud posture slumped. Blood soaked through his robes and now trickled from his lip, and the iron sand around his feet responded sluggishly, like a dying pet.
The Raikage's lightning armour now sparked and dimmed fitfully, like a guttering candle. Yet, beneath the fatigue, he still radiated a brute, animal vitality, the last embers of a forge that had burned for three days.
It was the Kazekage who broke the dawn's silence. With a roar that was half pain, half defiance, Saitetsu slammed his palms into the earth.
"Imperial Sandstorm — Suna no Kōrin!" (Emperor's Sandstorm: The Crown of Sand!)
The very horizon answered. To the north and west, the distant dunes themselves seemed to rise up, becoming colossal, swirling walls of ochre and gold that climbed until they swallowed the nascent sun.
The sky darkened into a premature twilight. This was not a technique; it was a cataclysm, an act of geographic violence. Within the howling, billion-grained mass, particles of refined glass and dust glinted like malevolent stars, each one sharp enough to flay flesh from bone and scour stone to dust. It was Saitetsu's magnum opus, his final testament as Kazekage, and its purpose was to erase the Tsuchikage from existence.
Onoki's eyes widened, his condescension replaced by genuine alarm. "You madman!" he cursed, shooting upward with a burst of Earth-Weighted Flight.
But the storm was sentient with Saitetsu's fury, and it pursued him, a tidal wave of abrasive death. Onoki retaliated, his hands forming his signature cube.
"Jinton: Genkai Hakuri!" (Particle Style: Demolition Lattice!)
He fired, not a single beam, but a network of them, carving temporary, geometric tunnels through the storm to keep from being consumed. The sight was surreal—prismatic light tunnels holding back a biblical sandstorm.
But the body has limits that even the will cannot overcome. Saitetsu's gave out. A violent shudder wracked his frame, his chakra control shattered like glass. The meticulously directed storm destabilised instantly, its contained energy detonating outward in a titanic, non-elemental sandburst.
"WHUMP!"
The explosion was a physical pressure on the eardrums, and the resulting shockwave levelled what little standing terrain remained around the crater.
Amid the settling chaos, while all eyes were on the fallen Kazekage, Hiroshi moved. He was a spectre of silent efficiency, his own pain locked away behind a mask of icy calm.
Blood trickled from a cut on his jaw, but his hands were steady. He gathered the residual moisture from the cataclysmic steam, the dampness in the air, and the last dregs of his chakra, compressing it all between his palms.
A spear of pure white ice began to form, swirling with internal pressure, a hybrid technique of lethal elegance—Frozen Compression Spear.
"SHHHWWWIP"
With a whisper of released air, it flew. It pierced through the lingering, dusty haze, a streak of deadly focus, and struck Onoki on his flank before he could fully reorient from the sandstorm.
The detonation was a dual-phase nightmare—first a burst of concussive force that knocked the wind from the Tsuchikage's lungs, then an instantaneous flash-freeze that encased the left side of his torso and arm in a thick shell of azure ice.
"CRACK!"
Onoki grunted, twisting in mid-air, his own chakra flaring violently to shatter the imprisoning ice. Shards of it rained down around him, but not before a thin, precise line of blood had been drawn across his ribs, staining his robe.
He glared down at Hiroshi, his face a contortion of pain and towering rage.
"You dare… after all this?" he snarled.
"If you can still bleed," Hiroshi retorted, "you're not invincible."
The Raikage watched it all, and the final, crumbling piece of his ambition fell into place, leaving only cold, hard reality.
He surveyed the scene: Onoki bleeding and furious, Saitetsu broken and coughing blood, Hiroshi standing resolutely beside a nearly spent Hiruzen. A curse escaped his lips, low and guttural.
"Tch… this is a shitty situation."
The alliance was not just fractured; it was pulverised. He saw the truth now, clear and ugly.
Onoki and Saitetsu were locked in a death spiral of pride, each too stubborn to retreat but too wounded to secure victory. Hiruzen, the primary target, was now protected by the very chaos he had engineered.
'Damn that old monkey's luck…' Ay thought, his lip curling in disgust.
'I can't touch him now. Not with those two tearing each other apart. There's no victory here. Only a graveyard for Kage.'
He clenched his fists, the lightning around them sputtering one last time before dying down to a faint, static crawl.
"Enough," he muttered to the empty air. "I'm not dying here with the rest of you fools."
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