The altar room behind the Miko village smelled of incense and iron. Zhige pressed her palms to the carved stone, and a heavy, worn power bled from her into the Guardian Monument. The rune-work on the altar shivered and the sealed gate began to open like a wound.
From the darkness beyond, something answered with a cold, hungry laugh. The Sprite's chakra—rotten and bright—bristled through the space, tasting the light. It felt Zhige's exhaustion like a feast.
"Zhige Miko," the voice sneered from the void, amused. "You'll strip me of my fun and bury me again, will you?"
Zhige didn't flinch. Her hands moved in a steady, patient rhythm—handseals she'd practiced since childhood, seals meant to close. But the words she mouthed were different from a simple reseal. They were a scalpel.
"You've been a danger for too long," she said. "Today I will cut you in two—soul and body separated, buried apart. If you want resurrection, you'll have to put yourself back together."
The Sprite's laugh twisted into a hiss of panic. Its original plan had been straightforward: force Zhige to pour her power into the seal, then let its four human allies finish her off and claim the spoils. Instead Zhige began to fracture the Sprite itself, making the thing's existence unstable.
As Zhige's chanting accelerated, her features seemed to unwind—age, hair, the tired weight of years—until light ran along her bones. Power tore free, and for a blazing instant the altar was a storm of purple and black. The air screamed.
Someone moved then—a single figure cutting through the room. Raizen planted himself between the stone and the child at his side.
"Protect the Miko!" a guard shouted, but it was already too late. A blade of water, honed and cruel, shredded through the front line like a sickle.
"Water Style: Water Cutter!" The attacker's shout was a crack of ice. Men who'd stood to shield the shrine were sliced in half; red mist spattered the flagstones. Yume screamed.
Raizen didn't have time to think like a sermon. He shoved Yume behind him and spat the word for a clone into the air—the shadow duplicate materialized and threw itself to shield the child. Then Raizen reached for clay, rolled it into his mouth, and spat. A giant clay bird erupted, beating clay wings in a gust. Raizen vaulted up onto its back.
"Stay here!" he barked to Yume. "Do not move. I'll handle the rest!"
From above, Raizen saw the yard like a game board. Over a hundred guards lay killed or wounded. The four enemies who'd been whispered about for years were no longer a rumor.
"Where are the other three?" he muttered, scanning shadows.
The other three weren't hiding for long. From a shadowed column a small figure called out in a high, weird voice, and a taller man—his body all lean and twisted—snickered behind him.
"Aniki, there are shinobi!" the small one crowed.
Aniki—tall, cruel—snorted. "Nanami, this one's yours."
Nanami grinned like a child given a stolen toy. He flexed one bared arm; the skin split and something black slithered free. It crawled like a living thing right into his mouth. Raizen watched, unfazed. Nanami chewed the thing like a snack and laughed—then his shape blurred.
Muscles erupted, flesh bulged; wings folded from his back, four arms tore from his sides. The black chakra Corvette that had entered him painted his face with strange lines. He was no longer human in the strict sense.
"Die, brat!" Nanami howled and launched himself at the clay bird, wings beating with hungry speed.
The fight exploded from the altar like thunder. Raizen kept one eye on Zhige as she poured the last of her strength into the seal—if she finished, the Sprite would be restrained; if she died first, the village would be drowned in something worse than war. Raizen's brain began ticking like a player in a duel: priorities, exits, timing.
"Alright, you show-off demons," he told the sky. "Let's make this quick."
He drew a handful of special kunai—his Flying Thunder God anchors—loaded detonation tags, and began to move. Every jump, every gap between wing-beats was a calculus of distance and chakra. Nanami was fast, brutal, and joyless; the remaining two were already shifting forms in the dark, preparing their own grotesque gifts from the Sprite.
Zhige's voice rose, a single, aching chord. The stone tablets around the altar flared, and a net of faded runes crawled outward. The Sprite screamed as one part of it condensed, pulled into the altar's belly, while the other part writhed free into the four human hosts. It took everything Zhige had to force the split.
Raizen lunged, a shadow-clone in front to bait, Raizen himself behind to strike where the real would land. The battlefield was a blur of water, wing, clay talon, and bleeding stone. He had promised. He would not let the Miko's bell fall into the dirt.
Smoke, blood, and the high metallic tang of chakra filled that little temple compound. The sealing had reached its most dangerous gap—Zhige's form flickered like a candle—but one by one Raizen disrupted the attackers' rhythm. Every time one of them faltered, Zhige's chant grew steadier. The Monster's howl thinned.
By the time the last of the four threw itself at the altar, it found only stone, runes, and a ring of tired guards clinging to breath. Zhige's final syllable dropped like a gavel. The altar slammed shut with a sound like a bell tolling underwater.
A dead quiet followed. The Sprite's scream dissolved into nothing. The four hosts crumpled—either spent or broken—some twitching, some still. Zhige sagged against the altar. She'd drained what was left of her life into the seal.
Raizen slid down from the clay bird as the guards gathered, shaky but alive. He was breathing hard, a smear of blood and mud on his cheek. Yume clung to the bell Zhige had given her, eyes wide as constellations. Zhige's face, older and peaceful, tilted toward Raizen once.
"Keep her safe," she breathed. "No matter what."
Raizen looked at the child, then at the witch who had become treasure and burden all at once. He'd promised. He'd roll the dice with fate itself if he had to.
"No rest for the wicked," he muttered. "Get up, we've still got a world to annoy."
But even as he joked, behind his eyes a black picture hovered—Yume's vision of his death. He'd bought them time. He'd bought a chance. Fate might be loud, but it wasn't finished making deals.