The next morning came with no shift in the sky. Kiri's dawn didn't announce itself — it simply existed, crawling over stone and tile, soaking into wood and skin. The only way to tell it wasn't night was that the lanterns had gone out.
We stood in a half-circle before Kisame.
Same team. Same silence.
"You led," Kisame said to me, voice flat as ever. "You kept your hands clean. Let's see if you can keep your hands dirty."
No scroll this time. No briefing hall.
Just him, standing outside the old slaughterhouse by the canal district, where gulls circled and blood still stained the gutters from years before.
"Get in."
The door creaked on rusted hinges. Inside, the air was thick with rot and mold. A table sat in the center of the room — stone, cracked, and fitted with manacles. Tools lined the walls. Not shinobi tools. Not weapons.
Implements.
The kind that were made to open things — people, minds, secrets.
A man was already there. Stripped to the waist. Eyes swollen. Cuts layered like scales. He twitched when we entered.
"Spy," Kisame said simply. "Mouth is closed. Not by seal. By fear."
He looked at me. Only me.
"You want to survive in Kiri, you learn what fear opens."
I didn't blink.
This was the Mist. Survival wasn't about morals. It was about momentum. Every step deeper, every breath held longer. You either drowned or you adapted.
But I wasn't reckless.
I stepped forward slowly, ignoring the others, who remained by the wall, half-shadowed and unreadable. Even Teeth, for once, didn't grin.
The prisoner watched me. There was clarity in his gaze. Desperation, yes — but also calculation.
He expected pain. Screams. Theatrical threats.
I did none of that.
Instead, I pulled a chair up beside him and sat.
I didn't say anything for a long while. Just stared, breathing slow.
Inhale. Exhale.
Let the silence bloom.
And then, I spoke.
"You're not from Uzushio."
His brow twitched.
"You don't move like a sensor. Your seals are wrong. Too precise. Too narrow. You've studied Uzushio techniques, but you don't know them. You're not one of them. You're a contractor."
Still no reply.
"But the way you resisted — that tells me something else. Not just fear. You've trained for pain. You expected to be caught."
I leaned in slightly.
"So the only question is — what's more important than what you were sent to find?"
His jaw twitched.
Behind me, Kisame chuckled once. Just once.
And then the man broke.
Not with screams, not with blood.
With three whispered names. Three locations. And one phrase:
"They're already inside."
We didn't waste time.
Kisame snapped orders in quick succession. Haku was gone first — into the mist like a ghost. Kimimaro followed, bone-pale and blade-sharp. Suigetsu vanished last, body rippling into water before dissolving.
I was left alone with Kisame.
He turned toward me, a strange look in his eye — something unreadable, thoughtful, heavy.
"You didn't break him. You outpaced him."
He said it like a statement, not praise.
"Why?"
I didn't answer right away. My thoughts were clear. Focused.
"Because I don't need to scream to be heard."
Kisame gave a grunt of something like amusement.
"Good. Kiri doesn't need screamers. It needs those who can listen to silence."
Then he tossed me a scroll — heavier than most, thick with multiple chakra seals.
"Take this to the Observation Tower. Hand it only to the Seer."
I raised an eyebrow.
"Thought I was Mist, not a courier."
"Everyone in Kiri runs messages," he said, mouth quirking. "Sometimes the message is death. Sometimes it's just ink. Doesn't matter. We all deliver."
I left with the scroll under my arm.
The Observation Tower loomed over the northern cliffs — an obsidian spike riddled with carved runes, anti-scrying seals, and deep, blood-bound jutsu lines. Only those marked could enter.
At the base, I met two guards. They didn't speak. Just cut a small slice on my forearm and marked it with a blood sigil. It burned — cold, not hot. Like saltwater on bone.
Inside, the tower was silent. No footsteps echoed. The floors absorbed sound. Hallways twisted — spatial displacement runes, I realized. Old ones. Kiri had secrets buried deeper than most realized.
At the heart of the tower, behind a wall of salt-crystal and mercury glass, sat the Seer.
Old. Hooded. Blind.
But chakra pulsed from her like pressure from the ocean floor. She felt like depth. Like drowning, slowly and eternally.
I handed her the scroll.
She didn't open it.
Just held it, then spoke, voice like crumbling paper.
"The one who sees the Sanbi's Eye walks deeper than any."
I blinked.
"What?"
"You'll see."
When I returned to the barracks, Kisame was waiting.
"So?"
"She took it. Said something cryptic."
"Sounds about right."
He crossed his arms, sharkskin cloak heavy with the scent of seaweed and steel.
"You held your own. You're learning fast."
He looked at me for a long moment, then added:
"And soon, you'll lead for real."
I didn't ask what that meant.
Not yet.
That night, the Sanbi stirred again.
Not violently. Not with rage.
But with presence.
I stood at the edge of a cold dream — an endless underwater temple, coral pillars rising into black nothingness. Bioluminescent runes shimmered across the walls.
Depth. Pressure. Silence.
And then a voice, from nowhere and everywhere.
"You walk the silent path. Keep walking."
When I awoke, I was sweating salt.
My heart beat slower than usual.
But stronger.
The path was opening.
And I had no intention of turning back.