The morning was too still.
Mist pooled low along the coast, heavy as breath before confession. Kozan stood barefoot on the slick stones, eyes half closed, his chakra pulsing outward like ripples on a sleeping pond. The fog answered him in whispers familiar ones, old as grief, carrying echoes of the sea.
Something was wrong.
The rhythm of the water wasn't right. It moved with purpose.
He knelt, touching two fingers to the surface of the tide pool. His chakra laced through the mist, expanding until it met resistance: a shape moving beneath the waterline, slow, deliberate, human.
Not one of ours.
He exhaled, the mist darkening around him.
Far below, the intruder moved.
Raiken of Iwagakure felt the pressure of the sea like a mountain on his back. His armor was lined with volcanic glass to muffle sound and scatter chakra. Each breath burned. But he kept crawling, hands dragging through the cold silt of an undersea tunnel the scouts of the Stone had mapped generations ago.
He didn't hate the Mist. He didn't even know its people. But Iwa was restless, the elders whispering about the "quiet monster" in the east the boy who ended the Bloody Mist and rebuilt it under Mei Terumis hand.
Raiken's orders were simple: find the monster, measure him, and return alive if the gods allowed.
He doubted they would.
The current shifted. His instincts screamed. Then the world went silent.
Above, Kozan opened his eyes. The fog began to rise, curling like living smoke. It wrapped the coastline, swallowing the cliffs, erasing the horizon. Birds fled inland.
He spoke a single word.
"Bind."
The water obeyed.
Tendrils of vapor condensed into near-invisible threads, shimmering faintly in the dim light. Kozan felt the pulse of foreign chakra caught in his trap. It was dense earth-aligned, disciplined, like the veins of a mountain forced into motion.
So. Iwa had sent someone to test the fog.
He waited.
Raiken surfaced into nightmare.
He broke through the water gasping, only to find no sky, no shore only endless white. His sonar jutsu failed; every sound bounced back distorted. He drew a kunai, the blade trembling.
"Kirigakure's ghost," he muttered. "Show yourself."
A voice answered from everywhere at once.
"Leave while you still have a name."
Raiken spun, but there was nothing just mist and the faint smell of rain. He launched a volley of stone spikes, each guided by chakra, but they vanished into vapor without impact. Something tugged at his wrist; his weapon melted away as if the air itself consumed it.
He realized then the stories weren't exaggerations.
The Mist didn't kill fast anymore.
It watched.
Inside the Mizukage's tower, Mei leaned over a map. Reports had piled like waves. Missing patrols. Sabotaged supply lines. Shadows moving in the water. Her council bickered some urged retaliation, others restraint. Only Chōjūrō kept silent, his eyes flicking toward the door.
"He's gone again, hasn't he?" Mei asked quietly.
Chōjūrō nodded.
"He said he'd handle it alone."
She sighed. "That's what Yagura said before the madness took him."
Mei looked out through the rain-slick window. The fog beyond shimmered faintly with chakra light. Kozan's presence steady, cold, protective stretched across the village like a heartbeat she could feel but not reach.
"Don't lose yourself in the silence, Kozan," she whispered. "We need you human."
In the fog's heart, Raiken crawled on hands and knees, blood mixing with seawater. His armor cracked from unseen pressure. He could feel another chakra pressing against his, not striking but *listening*. Every thought, every memory felt exposed.
He screamed.
The mist whispered back in his own voice, repeating fragments of childhood, of the day he swore loyalty to the Tsuchikage. He fell to his knees, shaking. "What are you?" he demanded.
Kozan's form emerged from the haze like a reflection solidifying. Barefoot, unarmed, calm.
"Just the consequence of your orders," he said softly.
Raiken charged. The fight lasted seconds. Kozan moved like a wave meeting stone no wasted motion, no anger. When it ended, Raiken's weapon lay shattered and his will with it.
Kozan stood over him. "Why now? Why risk your life to test the Mist?"
Raiken coughed saltwater. "They fear you," he rasped. "They think silence hides monsters."
Kozan looked away. "They might be right."
He pressed two fingers to the man's temple. A pulse of chakra surged. Raiken's eyes rolled back not death, but deep unconsciousness. Kozan marked the Iwa symbol on his armor, then dragged him to the water's edge and let the tide take him.
"Tell them," he murmured to the waves, "the Mist remembers."
By nightfall, the fog withdrew.
Kozan returned to the tower soaked and silent. Chōjūrō met him at the door, words failing. Mei waited by the map table, candles flickering in her eyes.
"Well?"
"One," Kozan said. "He'll live. They wanted a message."
"And what message did you send?"
He looked at her. "That the Mist no longer bleeds."
Mei's expression flickered between pride and dread. "You can't keep carrying this alone."
"I'm not." He glanced toward the window. "The fog carries it with me."
Outside, thunder rolled over the sea. In Iwagakure, a battered operative would soon awaken with terror carved into his memory and one sentence echoing in his mind.
The Mist remembers.
The war had not begun.
But somewhere deep within the mountains of the Stone, a crack had formed.