The barrier didn't feel like a wall.
It felt like a decision.
Four pillars of violet flame stabbed up from the corners of the roof, and between them the air went wrong—dense, hot, tinted like bruised glass. Sound shinobi clung to those corners with palms pressed to the seal formation, faces blank with concentration. They weren't guards. They were living nails.
Outside, Konoha screamed.
Inside, it was muffled into something almost polite.
Hiruzen Sarutobi had lived long enough to recognize that kind of politeness. It wasn't mercy. It was etiquette for murder.
Orochimaru stood across the roof tiles like he'd paid rent.
Not the Kazekage. That skin had already been discarded, folded away like a costume someone stopped respecting halfway through a play. Beneath it was the same elegant wrongness Hiruzen remembered: pale face, hungry eyes, a mouth too soft for the things it smiled about.
"You've always loved your stages," Hiruzen said, voice steady even as the roof trembled faintly beneath his sandals.
Orochimaru's lips curved. "And you've always loved your audience."
He tilted his head, listening—like the barrier didn't just keep others out, but let him taste fear seeping up from below.
"Hear them?" Orochimaru murmured. "Your village. Your precious children."
Hiruzen didn't glance down. He couldn't afford to. His mind stayed split the way it always did now—one half watching Orochimaru's throat, shoulders, and hands for the moment before a strike, the other half reaching down through stone, feeling for the pulse of Konoha like a medic pressing two fingers to an artery.
Too many beats. Too many spikes. Threads running hot and snapping.
And beneath all of it… a deeper tremor. The wrong vibration again. Like the village had swallowed something heavy and it was shifting in its gut.
So it had begun.
Orochimaru saw the micro-flinch anyway, because Orochimaru always did. He smiled a little wider, as if rewarded.
"Still trying to be everywhere," he said softly. "It's a charming habit. And such a useful weakness."
"And you're still trying to prove something," Hiruzen replied.
Orochimaru's eyes glittered. "I already proved it."
His tongue flicked—quick, casual—tasting the air like a serpent. It made Hiruzen's stomach tighten with old memory. Not fear. Recognition.
"I'm just here," Orochimaru continued, voice almost gentle, "to watch you understand it."
Hiruzen's hands moved.
Seals snapped into place with the economy of a man who'd taught a thousand children to do the same. His chakra rolled outward—precise, controlled, and quiet in a way that didn't need to shout to be obeyed.
"Monkey King Enma."
Smoke erupted tight and clean. Enma hit the roof in a crouch, fur bristling, eyes bright with irritation.
"You really know how to pick your moments, old man," Enma growled—and then his gaze landed on Orochimaru.
His expression flattened into disgust.
"Oh," Enma said. "It's that brat."
Orochimaru's smile sharpened. "Hello, Enma."
Enma spat to the side. "Don't talk like we're friends."
Hiruzen didn't let himself savor the relief of a familiar ally. Relief was a luxury. He turned it into motion.
"Staff," he ordered.
Enma's body snapped and elongated with a crack like a tree branch splitting under pressure. Fur became dark wood and metal. Limbs became a thick staff that slammed into Hiruzen's palm with a comforting weight.
Simple. Honest. Capable of becoming a hundred answers.
Orochimaru sighed, almost theatrical. "Always the same tools."
"Tools work," Hiruzen said.
He moved first.
Not because he was faster—he wasn't, not anymore—but because initiative was a blade in itself. The roof became an equation: distance, angles, the limitations of the barrier, the enemy's habits, and the one habit Hiruzen still possessed like a weapon—
He had seen more fights than Orochimaru had lived years.
Enma's staff swept low, then high, then snapped forward. Each strike wasn't aimed at Orochimaru's body so much as his options—forcing him off the clean line, denying the comfortable rhythm, turning the roof into a narrowing hallway.
Orochimaru slid back, robe fluttering, feet barely touching tile. He didn't retreat like someone afraid. He retreated like someone allowing a demonstration.
Hiruzen's staff slammed down where Orochimaru's ribs had been. Tile split. Dust puffed.
Orochimaru was already gone, shifting sideways like a shadow being pulled.
Then his sleeve moved—
—and a blade slid out like it had been hiding there all along.
Not a normal sword. Something too long, too thin, too hungry. The steel caught the violet light and reflected it like blood in moonlight.
Kusanagi.
Hiruzen's staff met it with a ringing shock that traveled up his arms and into his bones. The impact was clean, brutal, intelligent—Orochimaru didn't swing like a man. He thrust like an idea.
Hiruzen's elbows screamed. His shoulders protested. His body reminded him, for the thousandth time: You are not built for this anymore.
He used the pain anyway.
Orochimaru leaned into the clash, smiling like the strain was entertainment. "You could stop," he whispered, close enough that Hiruzen could smell the faint medicinal rot clinging to him. "You could let go. It would be easier."
Hiruzen's jaw tightened. "Easier isn't the same as right."
Orochimaru's eyes narrowed, just slightly.
Then his hands blurred—seals, fast and familiar and sickeningly graceful.
Hiruzen felt the chakra spike a half-second before the ground answered.
The roof tiles bulged.
Wood—no, not wood, something like wood's memory—surged up pale and root-thick, trying to grab ankles, bind, pin.
Hiruzen didn't waste chakra countering what he could avoid.
He vaulted.
Old knees complained. He ignored them. Enma extended the staff midair, turning it into a pole, and Hiruzen planted it into the tile seam and swung—using leverage instead of brute strength. The roots snapped against stone where his feet had been.
Orochimaru's blade flashed.
Hiruzen's staff caught it again, but this time the clash wasn't centered. Orochimaru angled the Kusanagi along the staff, sliding steel on wood-metal like a whisper turning into a scream, trying to reach Hiruzen's hands.
Hiruzen released one hand and rotated the staff, letting the blade slide harmlessly past. The motion looked simple. It wasn't. It was a lifetime of weapon familiarity condensed into a half-second.
"Still teaching," Orochimaru said, voice light.
"Still learning," Hiruzen replied, and then he made it true.
He formed a seal with one hand—because age had stolen speed, but not economy.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu."
Two clones popped into existence—no fanfare, no army. Just enough.
One clone moved immediately toward the barrier corner nearest Orochimaru—not to attack the Sound shinobi (the barrier would eat that attempt), but to test the seam where violet flame met roof tile. Fingers brushed the heat, felt the geometry, confirmed what Hiruzen already suspected:
This wasn't a door you kicked in.
This was a lock you starved.
The second clone threw a fistful of shuriken.
Not at Orochimaru's face.
At his space.
The shuriken spread in a pattern that forced Orochimaru to choose: dodge back toward the barrier edge where Hiruzen wanted him, or dodge inward where Enma's staff would have room to swing.
Orochimaru didn't dodge.
He shed.
His body blurred—skin rippling—then he reappeared a step aside, perfectly placed, as if the shuriken had never been relevant.
A substitution without the obvious tells. No puff of smoke. No log.
Hiruzen's eyes sharpened.
Orochimaru had improved.
Of course he had.
"Your village is full of little geniuses," Orochimaru said conversationally, as if they were discussing weather. "So earnest. So desperate to be seen. You keep collecting them."
Hiruzen didn't answer.
He stepped in and swung anyway.
Enma extended, staff whistling. Orochimaru's Kusanagi stabbed forward again—aimed for Hiruzen's throat, not because it was dramatic, but because it ended conversations.
Hiruzen dropped his center of gravity, let the blade pass above his shoulder by a hair, and drove the staff's butt into Orochimaru's knee.
Orochimaru's leg bent wrong—just a fraction—then corrected instantly, because his body wasn't a normal body anymore. He flowed with the impact like a snake with bones it didn't fully respect.
Hiruzen felt something cold settle in his gut.
No clean win. No quick kill. This would be a fight of attrition.
And Hiruzen had less time than anyone on this roof.
Orochimaru's eyes flicked to the barrier corners, following the movement of Hiruzen's clone.
"You're thinking about breaking my cage," Orochimaru observed. "Adorable."
"It's not your cage," Hiruzen said. "It's mine."
Orochimaru's smile twitched. Interest.
Then he did something worse than attack.
He summoned.
The air went colder—not temperature-cold. Something deeper. Spiritual. The kind of cold that made old scars ache and made teeth want to chatter even if pride refused.
Orochimaru's palms hit the roof.
"Impure World Reincarnation," he said, voice almost reverent.
The tiles split.
Two coffin-lids punched up through stone like the roof itself was vomiting.
Hiruzen didn't breathe.
He knew those coffins.
He had spent years trying not to imagine them.
The first coffin shuddered, then settled—heavy, final.
The second rose beside it, slower, like it had to push through reluctance.
And a third—
A third started to emerge.
The wood dark and familiar. The lid marked with a single character that made Hiruzen's throat tighten around a name he carried like a bruise.
No.
Hiruzen moved without thinking.
Enma telescoped, staff extending with brutal speed, slamming into the third coffin's rising lip. Wood shuddered. Tile cratered. The coffin sank back down like the earth had been punched in the mouth.
Orochimaru's eyes widened—only a little. Not anger.
Interest.
"You still have reflexes," he said softly. "How sweet."
Hiruzen didn't answer. His attention locked on the first two coffins instead.
The lids rattled.
Then slid open from the inside.
Hands emerged—pale, cracked, dirt under the nails. Hands that didn't belong to time anymore.
The first figure pulled itself up: dark hair heavy, armor lacquered and scarred.
Hashirama Senju.
The second rose beside him with colder grace: white hair, stern face, eyes like winter water.
Tobirama Senju.
The First and Second Hokage.
His teachers.
His ghosts.
Hiruzen's chest tightened so hard it hurt—not grief yet. That would come later. First came the ugly shock of seeing them like this: eyes dull, faces slack with death held in place by a technique that spat on respect.
A war crime dressed up as a party trick.
Enma's voice came out low through the staff, furious. "He really did it."
Hiruzen's grip didn't loosen. "I won't let them touch the village."
Orochimaru watched him like a scientist watching a reaction. "You say that as if you're the only thing between them and the world."
Hiruzen tasted ash.
It was true.
And that was the point.
Orochimaru lifted two fingers in a lazy gesture.
"Kill him," he said, like ordering tea.
The dead moved.
Fast.
Hashirama lunged—strength wrong, chakra-packed, amplified by command. Tobirama followed like a blade behind a blade.
Hiruzen didn't meet them head-on. He couldn't afford pride.
He made space.
"Earth Release—Earth Flow Rampart!"
The roof heaved. A ridge rose and split the battlefield, forcing Hashirama's line to curve. It wasn't a wall—it wouldn't hold against that kind of power—but it was geometry. Geometry bought time.
Tobirama's eyes flicked, calculating like a machine remembering it had once been a man.
Then Tobirama vanished.
Not with smoke. Not with speed.
With absence.
He reappeared at Hiruzen's blind angle, kunai already mid-thrust.
Hiruzen twisted anyway, because he knew Tobirama's habits the way a student knows a teacher's voice. The kunai kissed his cheek—just a line of heat—before Enma snapped sideways and knocked the blade off course with a metallic crack.
Hashirama's hand slammed down.
Roots surged—thicker, angrier—trying to catch Hiruzen's ankles, climb his legs, pin him like prey.
Hiruzen didn't fight the roots with strength.
He fought them with the one thing he still owned in abundance.
Variety.
"Fire Release—Flame Bullet!"
He exhaled flame in a focused blast—not a wide inferno for spectacle, but a precise, concentrated jet aimed at the root mass. The fire didn't "burn away" chakra-wood like a normal campfire would burn rope. It fought it, turned it brittle, forced it to retreat from his legs.
Then Hiruzen pivoted seamlessly—
"Wind Release—Great Breakthrough!"
The gust didn't attack the Hokage's dead teachers.
It attacked the fire.
It fed it, threw it forward in a rolling sheet of heat and pressure that forced Hashirama and Tobirama to brace, to step, to react.
For half a breath, it worked.
Then Tobirama's hands moved.
"Water Release—Water Formation Wall."
Water exploded up, impossible without a source, forming a roaring barrier that swallowed flame into steam. The roof became fog. Hot, wet air slapped Hiruzen's face.
Orochimaru laughed softly behind the mist.
"Remember?" he asked. "The way they made the elements look like toys?"
Hiruzen did remember.
He remembered being a child, staring up at giants and thinking: If I learn enough, maybe I can be that too.
Now he stared at them again and understood what he'd missed back then.
Giants were just people.
And people could be dragged into coffins and turned into weapons.
The mist cleared in patches.
Hashirama was already moving again.
Enma roared—no longer a staff. He snapped back into his true form mid-motion, fur bristling, teeth bared, and launched himself between Hiruzen and Hashirama with a feral snarl.
Hiruzen didn't waste that gift.
He made a decision inside the fight.
He wasn't going to "defeat" Hashirama and Tobirama.
Not like this.
Not while Orochimaru watched and waited for the one mistake that would end it.
So Hiruzen stopped playing Orochimaru's game.
He played his own.
He formed seals slowly—not from hesitation, but from weight. Each motion felt like lifting a stone. Not because it was difficult.
Because it was final.
Orochimaru's laughter tapered off. His eyes sharpened.
"Oh?" he murmured, suddenly attentive.
Hiruzen drew a breath that hurt.
He bit his thumb.
Blood welled—warm, real, metallic on his tongue.
He slammed his hand onto the roof.
"Summoning Jutsu."
The air tore open behind him.
A presence loomed—towering, wrong, vast enough to make the barrier's violet light look childish.
A figure rose out of nothingness: skeletal, monstrous, draped in spiritual cloth, a demon with a crown and a blade.
The Shinigami.
The Reaper.
For a heartbeat, even Orochimaru's smile faltered.
Not fear.
Recognition.
"…You wouldn't," Orochimaru said, voice just a fraction too tight.
Hiruzen didn't look back at the Reaper. He didn't have to. He could feel it behind him like a cliff at his spine.
"I will," he said.
Because someone had to.
Hashirama lunged again, as if the dead could sense the shift in stakes.
Hiruzen made clones.
Not dozens—he didn't have chakra for theatre.
Just enough.
Three Hiruzen Sarutobis moved at once, each with the same tired eyes and stubborn jaw, each grabbing a different thread of the battlefield.
Clone one intercepted Hashirama—arms locking around dead armor like grappling a statue.
Clone two caught Tobirama—hands snapping onto wrists, forcing the kunai hand wide, denying the clean kill.
And the real Hiruzen—
The real Hiruzen went straight at Orochimaru.
Orochimaru's Kusanagi flashed.
Hiruzen didn't meet it with the staff.
He met it with his body.
He slid inside the blade's reach—dangerous, deliberate—grabbed Orochimaru's robe, and drove his shoulder into Orochimaru's chest, turning the elegant strike into a collision.
Orochimaru's eyes widened in irritation more than surprise.
He tried to twist free—snake-smooth.
Hiruzen tightened.
Hold.
Not glorious.
Necessary.
Behind him, the Shinigami's hand plunged through Hiruzen's chest without tearing flesh—straight into the space where the soul lived.
Pain didn't come like a blade.
It came like being pulled.
Like someone had hooked a chain through the core of him and yanked.
Hiruzen's vision went white at the edges.
He heard himself make a sound too small for what it felt like.
Orochimaru's composure cracked.
"Old man—!"
Hiruzen forced his voice out through clenched teeth. "You wanted a lesson."
The Shinigami's other hand reached forward through Hiruzen and into Orochimaru.
Orochimaru's body jolted like he'd been struck by lightning.
His mouth opened, but the sound that came out wasn't a taunt.
It was raw.
Animal.
Hiruzen felt Orochimaru's soul—slick, twisting, feral—caught in the Reaper's grip like a fish on a hook.
Orochimaru thrashed.
His hand snapped toward his sleeve—
—and the Kusanagi shot out like spite given steel.
It punched straight through Hiruzen's side.
Metal bit flesh.
Heat bloomed.
Blood splashed hot against Hiruzen's ribs.
For a fraction of a second, his body wanted to let go.
For a fraction of a second, he saw himself clearly: old, bleeding, stubborn, foolish.
Then his other mind—the one listening to the village—caught something through the barrier's muffling.
A spike of panic that felt young.
A stubborn, blazing insistence that tasted like Naruto.
And behind it, another thread—finer, ink-and-iron, the kind of focus that only happened when someone was terrified and refused to admit it.
Sylvie.
Children turning panic into stubbornness.
He couldn't be everywhere.
But he could be here.
So he didn't let go.
"HYPOCRITE!" Orochimaru hissed, face twisting, rage trembling under his skin. "You made this village. You made me."
Hiruzen almost smiled.
He had earned that word.
He had sent children to war. He had made compromises that tasted like ash. He had let Danzō exist in his shadow because the alternative always seemed worse, always seemed like it would fracture the village.
He had been tired.
He had been human.
"Yes," Hiruzen said simply. "And I'm still here."
The Shinigami's blade lifted.
Clone one screamed—not with voice, but with chakra—when the blade sank into Hashirama's soul and tore it free. Hashirama's body sagged, puppet strings cut.
Clone one dissolved into smoke.
Clone two held Tobirama as the blade did the same.
For one heartbeat, Tobirama's eyes flicked—like a moment of awareness trying to surface through the mud of the technique.
Then it was gone.
His soul tore free.
Clone two collapsed into smoke.
The roof felt emptier.
Not quieter—the muffled chaos below still existed—but the pressure of two stolen legends lifted like a hand releasing a throat.
Orochimaru's breathing sharpened. His composure frayed.
He felt the window closing.
He did what brilliant monsters always did when cornered.
He adapted.
His hands tried to form seals—
and failed.
His fingers twitched, stuttering, like a musician reaching for a note that no longer existed.
Hiruzen felt it.
The recoil of consequence.
Orochimaru's eyes dropped to his hands.
Disbelief, pure and ugly, crossed his face.
Then fury flooded in to replace it.
"You—" Orochimaru rasped.
Hiruzen's voice went low, the way it did when he taught academy children who wouldn't listen.
"Watch," he said.
He shifted his grip down—clamping Orochimaru's forearms in place.
Orochimaru's pupils tightened.
"No," he breathed, sudden and real.
The Shinigami's blade plunged—
Not toward Orochimaru's heart.
Not toward his head.
Toward his arms.
Spiritual steel bit into something invisible.
Orochimaru screamed.
Not a theatrical scream.
A real one.
His body arched. His shoulders jerked. His eyes went wide with the kind of horror that only happens when a man realizes he has limits.
The Shinigami tore.
Two chunks of Orochimaru's soul ripped free—bound to hands, to weaving, to the art of shaping the world with seals.
The air snapped like a contract ripping in half.
Orochimaru's arms went slack.
His fingers twitched uselessly, trying to remember movements they no longer owned.
Hiruzen exhaled, and the breath tasted like rust.
He had done it.
Not enough to kill him.
Enough to matter.
Enough to change the shape of the future.
Hiruzen's knees buckled.
Enma caught him by the shoulder—grip fierce, careful in the way only an old friend could be careful.
"Old man," Enma growled, voice rougher than usual. "You're done."
Hiruzen's eyes flicked, briefly, to the barrier's edge.
Through the violet shimmer he could see silhouettes outside—ANBU masks, Kakashi's silver hair, elders moving like frightened birds.
And somewhere, in the corner where Danzō always preferred to stand, he could feel that cold, bright attention.
Watching.
Calculating what came next.
Even now.
Even here.
Politics.
Hiruzen turned his gaze away.
He refused to give that corner his last sight.
Instead, he let himself imagine—just imagine—Naruto's face when he heard.
The boy would shout. He would cry. He would refuse to understand.
And Sylvie—quietly feral, ink on her hands and fear in her throat—would anchor him. Keep him from sprinting into a coffin with his own name on it.
He hoped.
He hoped they would be better than his generation.
He hoped they would make different mistakes.
Orochimaru stared at Hiruzen with something like hatred and awe tangled together.
"This isn't a victory," he hissed, voice trembling. "You're dying. You're dying and the village is still burning."
Hiruzen's lips moved.
His voice came out quiet.
"Then let my death," he said, "be a lesson."
Orochimaru's eyes narrowed. "To whom?"
Hiruzen looked at him—at the student he failed, at the monster Konoha helped sharpen.
"To you," Hiruzen said.
And then his gaze softened—not forgiveness. Something older. Weary.
"And to them," he added, thinking of children and futures and the weight of a title.
His fingers loosened.
Enma's grip tightened once—like a goodbye he would never say out loud.
Hiruzen Sarutobi, Third Hokage, Professor—
fell forward onto the roof tiles.
The barrier shuddered.
Violet flames flickered.
Then the Four Violet Flames Formation collapsed like a breath finally released.
Sound shinobi at the corners sagged, chakra spent, hands trembling. The air rushed in.
Noise flooded back—real noise, unmuted chaos, Konoha's screams no longer polite.
"Hokage-sama!" Kakashi's voice cut through, raw.
ANBU landed in masks and steel. Med-nin shoved forward.
Orochimaru stood over Hiruzen's body, shaking, face twisted like he couldn't decide whether to spit or mourn or bite.
His arms hung wrong.
His fingers would not obey.
His eyes flicked once—toward the village, toward the tower, toward the idea of what he'd come here for.
Then he moved.
Not a victory exit.
A retreat.
A wounded snake sliding away because survival was his only religion.
Enma crouched beside Hiruzen's body, shoulders hunched, teeth clenched so hard they showed.
"Don't touch him like he's an object," Enma snarled at the shinobi rushing in.
Kakashi stopped short, breath shuddering.
Outside the roofline's chaos, Danzō was already gone.
Of course he was.
The roof smelled like blood and smoke and hot stone.
And below, Konoha kept burning—
—but the shape of the future had shifted.
Just a little.
Because an old man had chosen cost.
Anko had been moving for so long that stopping felt like drowning.
She'd hopped rooftops and cut down Sound shinobi and shoved civilians toward safety with hands that shook from adrenaline and rage. Her lungs tasted like smoke. Her coat had a new tear. There was a shallow slice across her forearm and she didn't remember when she'd gotten it.
There was blood under her nails that wasn't hers.
The stadium roofline sat a few blocks away, a bruise of purple light against the sky.
The barrier.
That smug wound.
She'd tried to crack it until her palms ached, until her chakra burned hot and thin. Until someone stopped her.
Not standard ANBU.
Too controlled. Too empty.
Root.
A masked operative had landed in her path like a door closing, and for a half-second Anko had been back in that other life—white tiles, clipped voices, Danzō's shadow in every corner.
"You're in the way," the operative had said, voice muffled, emotionless.
"The Hokage's dying in there," Anko had snapped back, spitting smoke. "Move."
"Orders," the operative replied.
That word again.
Anko had laughed—one sharp, ugly bark—and then she'd attacked anyway because she'd never been good at obeying.
Root hadn't tried to kill her.
Root had tried to manage her.
Pins. Redirects. Pressure points. The kind of fighting that said: you're not the threat, you're the complication.
And Anko hated it because it was familiar.
It was Danzō's hand on her throat without ever touching her skin.
So she'd bitten elsewhere.
Killed what she could. Refused to be herded like an animal.
But the whole time—every time she looked toward that purple glow—something in her chest had twisted.
Because inside that barrier was the one person she wanted to kill.
And the one person she didn't want to lose.
Anko landed on a rooftop two streets away, knees bending to absorb impact. Her breath steamed. Her heartbeat hammered in her ears.
For a moment, the fight sounds around her blurred into one continuous roar.
And then—
Something snapped.
Not audible.
Not physical.
A chakra snap, so clean it felt like a thread being cut behind her eyes.
Her curse mark flared.
Cold heat. Crawling electricity racing up her neck and into her jaw like someone had shoved ice into her veins.
Anko's breath hitched.
Her knees buckled.
She caught herself on roof tiles with one hand, fingers splaying, palm scraping grit.
"No," she whispered, and it came out like a plea and a curse at the same time.
Because she knew that sensation.
That particular emptiness that followed it.
It was the feeling of a leash loosening.
It was the feeling of a contract breaking.
Edo Tensei.
The stolen dead.
The thread snapped—and the world exhaled.
Nausea hit her like a punch. She retched once, hard, bile splattering tile.
Her hands shook.
Not fear.
Rage so intense her body malfunctioned.
She lifted her head toward the stadium.
The purple glow was gone.
The barrier had collapsed.
For a heartbeat, Anko couldn't move because the universe had shifted and she needed to confirm it wasn't a hallucination.
Then she was up.
Then she was running.
Rooftop to rooftop, each leap fueled by spite and something dangerously close to hope.
She hit the stadium structure and vaulted up, boots skidding on stone. The air here smelled like blood and singed feathers and broken sleep.
Leaf shinobi crowded the rooftop now—ANBU, jōnin, med-nin pushing through.
And there—
There was the scorch-marked outline where violet flame had stabbed the sky.
And in that absence lay a body.
Small, suddenly.
Too small.
Old man.
Professor.
Hiruzen Sarutobi lay on the roof like a piece of Konoha had been carved out and set down gently.
Anko's throat went tight.
She didn't step closer yet. If she stepped closer, she'd have to feel it.
Instead her gaze snapped—wild, desperate—searching for the snake.
She saw him at the edge of the roofline, pale robe fluttering, posture wrong.
Orochimaru.
Still alive.
Of course.
But—
His arms hung limp like marionette limbs without strings. His fingers twitched—trying to form seals that wouldn't come, trying to remember movements his soul no longer owned.
Wounded.
Not a bruise.
Not a scratch.
A real wound.
The kind that mattered.
Anko's curse mark burned again—not obedience, recognition—like it was screaming: He's still here. He's still yours. You still don't get to have him.
Orochimaru glanced back once.
His eyes met hers across the roof.
For a second, the world narrowed to just the two of them and all the history between them—labs and corridors and his warm rot voice saying You did so well.
Anko's grip tightened on her kunai until her knuckles went white.
"Run," she mouthed.
Orochimaru's lips twitched.
Not a smile.
Something uglier.
Then he was gone—slipping away into chaos, leaving only the echo of his presence and the sick certainty that he would survive this too.
Anko's legs finally gave out properly.
She dropped to one knee.
Not dramatic.
Just gravity catching up.
Kakashi stood near Hiruzen's body, mask hiding his mouth but not the way his shoulders shook once—just once—like he'd swallowed something sharp.
Enma crouched beside the Third, a guard dog with a crown, daring anyone to treat the body like an object.
Anko's chest burned.
She wanted to scream.
She wanted to laugh.
She wanted to throw herself off the roof and chase Orochimaru until her bones snapped.
Instead she stayed kneeling and let the ugly truth settle in:
She had been outplayed again.
But not completely.
Because Orochimaru was hurt.
And the Hokage had died making sure of it.
Anko's voice came out rough, barely more than breath. "You old bastard."
Not an insult.
A fact with love stapled to it.
She pushed her palm into the tile, steadying herself. Forced her breath into something functional.
Below them, Konoha still burned. Still screamed. Still needed people with knives and bad attitudes to keep it from collapsing.
Anko stood.
Her legs trembled. She ignored them.
She stared once more at the place Orochimaru had been, the air still faintly tasting of him like snake musk soaked into stone.
"He's still beyond my reach," she muttered.
Then her eyes flicked to Hiruzen again.
"But not untouched."
The curse mark cooled from a burn to a simmer—still there, still hateful, still a reminder of what she'd survived.
Anko wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, smearing bile and blood and grit together like it didn't matter.
Then she turned away from the roof.
Not because she didn't care.
Because she did.
Because the village didn't get to lose everyone in one night.
She launched herself back into the chaos, purple-haired and sharp, moving through smoke and screaming.
If she couldn't kill the snake tonight—
She'd make sure he remembered the taste of consequences every time he tried to breathe.