We marched down like we were being fed to something.
The tower's spiral stairs emptied into a huge circular space carved out of the stone, a bowl with its sides bitten away to make room for balconies. Columns marched up the walls like ribs. Overhead, there were viewing platforms and railings and little clusters of adults already leaning over, eyes sharp.
The floor in the middle was bare, just scuffed stone and old blood stains someone had half-heartedly scrubbed away.
"Whoa," Naruto breathed beside me. "This is… awesome."
"It's a death pit," I said. "But, sure. Awesome."
He grinned anyway, blue eyes sparkling like there wasn't a giant invisible sign overhead that said BREAK YOUR CHILD HERE.
We were herded into a loose crowd with the other surviving genin. Sand, Rain, Grass, other minor villages, all collected into a messy ring. Sasuke drifted toward the side that gave him the best vantage point, hands in his pockets, dark eyes scanning faces like he was already fighting all of them in his head.
At the far end, up on a slightly raised dais in front of the central wall, the Third Hokage stood with his little escort cluster—Chūnin, some jōnin, a couple of officials with clipboards and "I thrive on paperwork" shoulders.
A massive black screen took up most of the wall behind him, blank for now. Light caught on its surface so it looked like a closed eye.
We weren't tightly packed enough yet for conversation to feel rude. My brain immediately made a list: people I wanted to check on, people I wanted to avoid, people I wanted to neutralize with duct tape.
Top of the first column: Hinata.
I spotted the pale lavender jacket first, then the dark hair huddled inside it.
I veered.
"Hinata!"
She jumped like I'd thrown a kunai at her. When she turned toward me and actually saw me, her eyes went round as coins.
"S-Sylvie," she squeaked.
"You made it!" The words burst out of me too loud, too relieved. I grabbed her hands like I needed physical proof. "You made it through that forest."
Her cheeks went from white to bright pink in about half a second. It matched my hair. Cute.
"I–I mean, y-yes," she stammered. "Our… our team, w-we—Kiba and Shino were very strong, and I just—"
"You made it," I said again, softer this time. "I'm serious. That place was… a lot. I'm proud of you."
Her chakra—soft violet in my head, like bruised lilacs—flared, then scrambled all over itself. She made a noise that might have been a thanks or might have been her social skills dying.
I backed off a step so she could breathe and looked her over like a medic. No obvious bandages beyond a few peeking out from her collar. No limp. Tired eyes, sure, but everyone had those.
Someone bumped my shoulder as they pushed past, muttering. I turned and got a faceful of fur.
Kiba had his jacket zipped almost to his nose. A little white shape shifted under the fabric, the zipper bulged, and two tiny dog paws kicked at his chest.
"Akamaru," I said, pointing. "I see you."
Kiba hunched like a smuggler. "Shh. He's not supposed to be here."
"You're on a team with a bug colony and a living radar system," I said. "He's the most normal one of you."
Akamaru wriggled and stuck his head out through the hoodie gap, tongue lolling happily. He yipped when he saw me and Hinata, tail thumping against Kiba's ribs.
"Traitor," Kiba muttered, but he gave the dog's head a quick rub with his thumb like he needed the contact.
Up close, I noticed how tense he was. Shoulders up, eyes bouncing between people, nostrils flaring. Jumpy, even for him.
"You okay?" I asked. "You look like you drank seven espressos."
His gaze cut past me, over my shoulder, toward the edge of the crowd. He sniffed again, short and sharp.
"Fine," he said. "Just… keep your distance from the sand freak, yeah?"
I blinked. "The… what?"
He jerked his chin across the arena.
I followed it.
The Sand siblings stood together like a weird little constellation: Temari all folded arms and fan and irritated tilt to her hips, blonde hair pulled into four stiff pigtails; Kankurō in his black hood and face paint, hunched over whatever was on his back; and in front of them, the gourd.
No, not the gourd. The boy carrying it.
Red hair, chopped ragged and vivid against the light stone. Barely any visible eyebrows. The kanji carved into his forehead looked like it hurt.
His chakra hit me like a slap.
I didn't even have my senses pushed out that far; it still smashed into my perception as soon as my brain put a name to him. Dry, grinding, a desert shoved into human shape. The color wasn't just red. It was the red of rust and dried blood and overripe fruit left to rot in the sun. It scraped along the inside of my teeth.
Hinata shivered beside me. I glanced down; her hands had curled into her sleeves.
"What…" I started.
"He's like that all the time," Kiba muttered. Akamaru whined quietly under his jacket, nose shoved against Kiba's throat. "Even in the forest. Smelled like killing intent dipped in… I don't know. Bad sand. Just… watch yourself, okay?"
He wouldn't look directly at Gaara while he said it. That, more than the words, made my skin crawl.
"Okay," I said slowly. "I'll… keep that in mind."
Before my brain could spiral too far down the "sand freak" rabbit hole, a new presence rolled across the arena like a heavy, steady weight.
The Third Hokage stepped forward to the edge of his dais. The adult murmur up on the balconies died down. So did most of the kid noise.
Naruto nudged into my other side with all the subtlety of a flying knee. "Hey, hey, look, look, old man Hokage's gonna make a speech."
"I have eyes," I whispered back, but I kept watching. Couldn't not.
His chakra always felt like smoke to me. Warm, gray, complicated. Tonight it had a sour edge underneath, a thin greenish thread of something like guilt or stomachache.
"First of all," he said, voice carrying effortlessly in the stone bowl, "I would like to congratulate you all on surviving the second exam."
A ripple went through the genin. Some people cheered weakly. Someone in the back made a strangled "hell yeah." I saw Rock Lee straighten up like someone was pulling a string from his spine.
"You have shown resolve, teamwork, and the will to overcome great danger," the Hokage went on. "You should be proud."
Naruto puffed up like a pigeon. I elbowed him lightly so he didn't explode during the praise.
"However," the Hokage said, and the warm smoke feeling in him thinned a little, like he was opening a window. "There is… a small problem. As you may have noticed, there are more of you here than anticipated."
He gestured lazily with his pipe hand toward us. A few nervous laughs scattered around.
"In the final exam, in front of the daimyō and invited guests, it is customary to have a limited number of matches," he continued. "To properly showcase the skill of each candidate, and to fit within the allotted time. This time, too many of you passed the second test."
The words landed with a dull thud in my head.
Too many of us passed.
I knew on some level that it was just math. Time slots, attention spans, whatever. But something about the way the gray of his chakra twisted when he said it made it taste like a lie. Not a big, mustache-twirling lie. A small, tired one. The kind adults told kids when adults didn't want to explain the real reasons.
Naruto leaned in, whispering, "Wait, is he saying we were too awesome?"
"Sure," I muttered. "That's exactly it."
"So," the Hokage concluded, "before we proceed to the final stage of the Chūnin Exams, we will hold a preliminary round. One-on-one matches. Those who win will advance. Those who lose…" He spread his free hand. "Will have to try again next time."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop three degrees.
"They're just gonna cut people," Kiba muttered. "Figures."
Up on one of the side balconies, I saw some of the jōnin shift. Kakashi had his usual slouch in place, but his visible eye sharpened. Gai looked like someone had just told him the power of youth came with a cancellation fee.
The Hokage's gaze swept over us. It lingered a moment on the Sand team. On the Sound trio. On Naruto, too, because Naruto was hard to miss in any setting.
"If any of you feel that you are in no condition to continue," he added, "you may withdraw now. There is no shame in recognizing your limits."
That made a little knot of relief pulse in my chest. Then I watched who moved.
Almost no one.
Of course.
One hand went up, though. From the Leaf side.
Kabuto.
He adjusted his glasses with that same polite little half-smile he always wore. "I'm sorry," he said, rubbing the back of his neck like an embarrassed older brother. "But I'm still not fully recovered from my last injury. I'll withdraw."
A few kids around him made surprised noises. Some from other villages glared. Coward, their faces said.
His chakra was pale and tidy, like organized shelves. Nothing about it screamed "hurt" to me. But my head was already pounding from the forest; I didn't trust my senses enough to call him a liar.
"Very well," the Hokage said. "Your decision is respected. Proctors, please record Yakushi Kabuto's withdrawal. Now…"
He turned slightly and nodded to the side.
A thin man stepped out from the shadows near the dais, wearing a flak jacket and the haunted expression of someone who had seen every bad decision of his life flash before his eyes and decided to keep going anyway. He kept a cloth over the lower half of his face, and when he coughed into it, it sounded like his lungs were made of damp paper.
"This is Gekkō Hayate," the Hokage said. "He will serve as the referee for the preliminary matches."
Hayate gave us a short bow, then immediately had to straighten to cough again.
"Great," I whispered. "The coughing guy who keeps showing up finally has a name."
Naruto squinted. "Have we seen him before?"
"He was lurking around the written exam," I said. "And the registration. And the hallway. Pretty sure he haunts standardized testing."
Hayate cleared his throat, then regretted it, because more coughing. When he finally got a breath, he said, "I'll be, ah… explaining the rules."
His voice was surprisingly steady considering his lungs were trying to quit.
"These are one-on-one matches," he said. "Victory is determined by one of four conditions: opponent is knocked out, opponent is rendered unable to continue, opponent surrenders, or I judge that continuing would be too dangerous and call the match." His gaze swept across us, flat and professional. "Killing is not permitted. If I deem that someone is attempting to kill their opponent, I will stop the match. Understood?"
Everyone nodded. No one looked convinced.
Hayate jerked his thumb up toward the big black rectangle behind the Hokage. "Match-ups will be determined randomly. Names will appear on the screen. When you see yourself and your opponent, come down to the center of the arena. Medical teams are standing by."
He paused to cough again. It echoed horribly.
Naruto practically vibrated next to me. "Random!" he hissed. "I could get anybody! I could fight that bushy-eyebrow guy! Or the bug kid! Or—"
"Maybe it'll be someone weak," I said. "Like a particularly aggressive houseplant."
"I'll take on any houseplant!" Naruto declared. "I'll be Hokage of the plants too!"
"Please don't start an agricultural revolution," I said. "We're busy."
Sasuke had stayed quiet this whole time. That was usually a warning sign.
He wasn't watching the Hokage or Hayate. His focus was locked on the opposite side of the ring, where the Sound trio stood together.
Zaku was in the middle again, like a pivot point. His arms were wrapped in fresh bandages, but he had full range of motion, rolling his shoulders, flexing his fingers. He looked bored, even a little cocky, talking to Dosu with a half-smirk.
My stomach clenched.
I remembered those arms pinned in my trap—bone and muscle shredded, skin peeled open. The way his chakra had spasmed when the seal had gone off. The wet, gory mess.
Even with med-nin, that kind of damage didn't just… go away.
Sasuke moved closer without really seeming to decide to. One moment he was ten feet away; the next he was right beside me, staring past my glasses.
"You got a problem?" I asked, because a reflexive jab was easier than acknowledging that his sudden proximity flared my nerves.
"How bad were his injuries?" he asked quietly, like we were talking about the weather. His eyes stayed on Zaku. "In the forest. You saw them up close."
I swallowed.
"Bad," I said. "Like… 'if this was a civilian hospital, they'd get a priest' bad. The bones were shattered. The muscle was torn apart. You heard him screaming."
Sasuke's jaw tightened. "Could he really have recovered already?"
There was something ugly, brittle-blue in his chakra when he asked it. Fear, wrapped tight around anger.
I looked again at Zaku, at the easy way he flexed his hands, shoulders rolling like nothing had ever hurt.
My own hands itched, remembering blood under my nails, seal ink smeared across my fingers.
"No," I said. The word came out flat as a dropped stone. "He can't heal that fast; nobody can. He shouldn't be fighting."
Sasuke's eyes finally flicked down to meet mine. For half a heartbeat, the mask slipped and I saw the kid under the revenge mission—the one who'd watched a monster in human skin mark his neck and now had to stand in the same room as three more unknowns from that same monster's village.
Then the board behind the Hokage flickered.
A soft whirring hum filled the air. White text blinked onto the black surface, then blurred as lines of names began to spin, cycling through rapidly like someone was shuffling our lives.
Naruto's head snapped up. "Here we go!"
The names blurred faster, then slowed. It felt like the whole arena was holding its breath.
One name stopped.
UCHIHA SASUKE
Naruto let out a low whistle.
Sasuke exhaled through his nose, that half-scoff thing he did instead of acknowledging actual feelings.
The second name spun a moment longer, then clicked into place beside the first.
YOROI AKADŌ
A man up on the balcony with the other Leaf jōnin adjusted his glasses.
Hayate coughed himself halfway across the arena, then managed, "First match: Uchiha Sasuke versus Yoroi Akadō. Everyone else, clear the floor."
Around us, genin began to shuffle back, splitting into two rough arcs to leave the center open. Naruto clapped Sasuke on the back hard enough to be illegal in several countries, yelling something about "don't lose, bastard!" and "I've gotta beat you later!"
Sasuke shrugged him off, eyes still distant. For a second, I thought he was going to say something to me. He didn't. He just stepped forward, hands in pockets, heading for the center like the world had narrowed down to that patch of stone.
I stayed where I was, between Hinata's trembling and Kiba's low growl, staring across at the Sound team.
Zaku laughed at something Dosu said and rolled his bandaged arm again, casual as anything.
My fingers tightened around the strap of my weapons pouch, nails biting into the leather.
He shouldn't be fighting, I thought, and the thought didn't feel like an opinion. It felt like a fact, wrong and sharp, wedged under the skin of this whole exam.
The board hummed overhead. The arena lights seemed a little too bright.
Too many survivors, the Hokage had said.
Looking at Zaku's miraculously healed arms and Gaara's grinding red aura, at the way adults watched us like pieces on a board, I couldn't help thinking it wasn't that there were too many of us.
It was that something else had decided how many we were allowed to be.