The echo of the Ice Arrow's message seemed to freeze in the very air, crystallizing the moment into a perfect, terrible tableau. "…The Six-Tails' host, Lady Ayame… she's lost control…" The words did not fade; they hung there, a new, invisible barrier of implication and dread.
All four Kage, who moments before had been preparing to retreat, were now coiled springs of renewed suspicion.
Onoki's aged brow furrowed so deeply it seemed to swallow his eyes. His mind, a labyrinth of political schemes, was already mapping the new, treacherous landscape. This was no simple misfortune; it was a move on the board, and he needed to identify the player.
Saitetsu uncrossed his arms, a reflexive, subtle gesture that caused the few remaining grains of his iron sand to stir from the dust at his feet, swirling in a slow, defensive orbit around his kneeling form. His nation's poverty made him inherently suspicious of windfalls and catastrophes alike; both were usually someone else's weapons.
The Raikage's massive frame, which had been turned away in retreat, now stiffened. His jaw tightened into a block of granite, and his eyes, burning with exhausted fury, narrowed to slits as they swiveled from Hiroshi to Hiruzen.
But the most profound change was in Hiroshi, the Mizukage. The brief, triumphant light in his eyes was extinguished, replaced by a storm of confusion and a cold, burgeoning anger. The alliance with Konoha, his masterstroke, now felt like a fragile glass sphere in his hands. His first, instinctual thought, born from decades of leading the notoriously paranoid Village Hidden in the Mist, was a sharp, bitter spike of betrayal. 'The Six-Tails… Ayame… if it's rampaging, it means it had a trigger. A precise, external trigger. Konoha just proved they can tamper with Kumo's Jinchuriki. Did they decide to clean house? To remove Kiri's deterrent now that our usefulness has ended?'
He took a pained step forward, "Tell me, Hiruzen," the use of the Hokage's name without title a deliberate breach of protocol.
"Did your people do this as well??"
The Raikage's lightning flickered again, a weak but violent sputter of blue-white energy. His face darkened as a memory, previously buried under rage and exhaustion, surfaced.
Hiruzen did not raise his voice or clench his fists. He simply exhaled, a long, weary breath that seemed to carry the weight of the entire war.
"No, Mizukage," he stated, his voice even and clear. "We did not. I am sure you can remember that the Six-Tails' host—Ayame—was not in Kiri's care when this happened. She was taken during the northern skirmish near the Hot Springs border. The one where both our villages collaborated to push back Iwa's advance." He paused, letting the geography of the memory settle in their minds. "My jonin, Uzumaki Renjiro, was present on that assault. Ayame was captured by the Raikage."
He let the information sink in, a stone dropped into the still pond of their suspicions. Then, with the same measured pace, he turned his head and fixed his gaze fully upon the Third Raikage.
"So this," Hiruzen said, "is your doing. You didn't just weaponise your own beasts. You intended to weaponise his as well."
The Raikage's face hardened into an unreadable mask, but he did not—could not—deny it. The omission was a confession shouted in the silence.
Hiruzen finished, "And now, Raikage, you have not one, but three beasts rampaging across your camps—the Two-Tails, the Eight-Tails, and the Six-Tails. You wanted a war of annihilation. Now you will know what it truly feels like to fight on three fronts against opponents who feel no pain, no fear, and know only rage."
Saitetsu and Onoki exchanged a single, wary glance, a silent communication between two men who understood power. The implications were enormous.
If Kumo, the military and economic powerhouse of the alliance, collapsed under the weight of its own rampant tailed beasts, its strength would be erased for a generation. The war, for all practical purposes, was over before the terms of surrender could even be drafted.
'Sarutobi didn't just win a battle,' Onoki thought, 'He dismantled an alliance without breaking its last treaty.'
'The Third Raikage's pride,' Saitetsu mused, his own predicament suddenly seeming less dire, 'his relentless drive for power… it will be his village's undoing. Suna may be poor, but we are not so foolish as to cage more gods than we can control.'
Hiroshi's reaction was the most complex. The anger in his eyes did not vanish, but it melted, reshaped by the cold hammer of truth. It flowed away from Hiruzen and turned, with a new, white-hot intensity, toward the Raikage.
And beneath the strategic relief, a personal, poignant realisation dawned, a quiet ache beneath the political calculus. 'Ayame… I can't believe I even forgot about her…'
The thought was a sickening twist in his gut.
The Raikage could bear the weight of their stares no longer. A guttural, frustrated growl ripped from his throat, a sound of a cornered animal.
He knew, with a certainty that felt like a physical blow, that Hiruzen was right. Three uncontrolled Bijuu were not a military problem; they were an extinction-level event.
"Damn you, Sarutobi!" he spat, the words raw. "Damn this war! You and your… your tricks!"
Hiruzen's reply was so quiet it was almost carried away by the wind, "Remember this the next time you scheme against Konoha. You wanted this war. You lit the fuse. Now," he said, his gaze sweeping the ruined landscape, "go and count your losses."
The finality in his tone was absolute. He looked around at the four battered, broken pillars of the shinobi world, his voice firm, rising to a command that brooked no argument.
"This war is over." The declaration was simple, undeniable. "Return to your villages. Tend to your wounded. Bury your dead. And remember what happened here. Remember the cost."
Then, without another word, he started walking away.
The Raikage and Hiroshi exchanged one last, heavy look for vastly different reasons. Without a word, they flickered away. The Raikage became a fading streak of sputtering lightning, heading northeast toward the heart of the disaster.
Hiroshi dissolved into a swirl of mist, his movement swift and silent, driven by a desperate need to confront what had become of his people.
Saitetsu sighed. He summoned a wide platform of iron sand, its form sluggish and weary like its master. 'Iwa and Kumo will burn for their arrogance,' he thought, the calculation already beginning. 'And Suna… Suna will have to find a way to rebuild in the ashes they leave behind.'
Onoki, the last to leave, simply floated higher, his expression unreadable, etched with the grim wisdom of ages. He took in the scene one last time—the shattered earth, the silent victor. 'This is how great villages fall,' he reflected, not with glee, but with a profound, weary certainty.
'Not in a single, glorious fire, but in the slow, inexhaustible tide of exhaustion.'
He then vanished, his form blinking out of existence without a sound.
And then, Hiruzen was alone.
He stood amidst the vast, gray expanse of the battlefield, the scale of the destruction finally laid bare under the pallid sun. The air was still heavy with the ghosts of spent chakra and the iron scent of blood. Slowly, deliberately, he reached up and removed the conical Hokage hat from his head. He held it in his hands, the symbol of his office, now scarred and tattered like the land itself. The wind, cold and impersonal, swept through his sweat-matted hair.
"This," he murmured to the emptiness, his voice barely a whisper, "is the cost of peace."
A single, vibrant autumn leaf, caught in an errant gust, danced across the scarred earth, a spot of defiant color in a world of gray ruin. It tumbled past craters and over frozen streams, a fragile testament to life persisting.
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