Raizen hadn't been wrong. As soon as he walked into camp, Amamiya Left hurried up to him, face tight with urgency.
"The council decided to press the big force into the gorge to rescue the vanguard," Amamiya Left said without preamble. "You're riding with me tomorrow. Don't lag behind—understand?"
"Yes." Raizen felt something like heat behind his ribs—better than comfort, it was a rare, human reassurance. The Amamiya clan looked after its own; fewer things in this world felt safer than that.
Raizen packed like someone who expected to survive the apocalypse and planned to sell the ashes. He tied extra jars of detonating clay into the ninja bag, slid several specially forged Flying-Thunder kunai into a pouch, wrapped up chakra-recovery salves the size of medicinal tablets, and stacked field-bandages. If war was a ledger, he wanted every line covered.
Night came and he didn't sleep much. Dawn found the Uchiha coalition lined up on the great square—thousands in black and crimson, armor and banners snapping. Last night's talks had ended: the coalition would push into Lingshan Gorge and try to pull the vanguard out.
Lingshan wasn't a single pass but a whole jagged range. From the coalition station to the Hyuga front it was a day's march through choke points and lookout trees. The vanguard was pinned deep in that maze, bleeding time and men. If the rescue failed, elite shinobi would be crushed one by one.
"Hyuga started this," shouted an Uchiha officer, voice ricocheting off timber and stone. "They smashed the fragile peace of the Warring States. We stop them here. Uchiha must win!"
"Uchiha must win!" the formation roared back, a tide of voices that felt like thunder.
When the order came the entire mass surged forward. The camp emptied; only a hundred stayed behind to guard the wagons and wounded. Raizen rode shoulder-to-shoulder with Amamiya Left, Amamiya Tian and Amamiya Riku among the vanguard columns. Madara and his three escorts rode ahead, stony-faced.
"Battle isn't a playground," Madara warned, slowing to match his pace. "Individual glory is meaningless out here. Don't die."
Raizen almost laughed—then his throat tightened. "Not dying is a priority," he said. "I have plans that require a pulse."
They cut into the gorge like a blade sliding into rough wood. Trees crowded the sky until the world narrowed to the hoofbeats and breath of a thousand shinobi. Silence dropped over the column, the kind that tasted like copper.
"Ready yourselves!" the commander barked.
From the mouth of the valley the Hyuga host answered—dozens, then hundreds of pale, focused faces. The space between the opposing forces hummed with stiffness: a decisive clash about to snap.
The Uchiha formation split into three attack lines and nine columns. Raizen found himself in the center assault unit—the knife team. He felt the weight of that designation: they'd be the wedge, the first steel thrown into the enemy.
"Knife team—attack!" the commander screamed, and the valley swallowed the sound as a thousand bodies surged forward.
Raizen watched the trees flash past, palms twitching for seals and kunai. He checked the special Flying-Thunder kunai at his waist, flexed his fingers around clay that smelled faintly of wet earth and gunpowder, and let the battlefield's rhythm settle under his skin. This wasn't practice. This was when things either turned into legend or into graves.