War has a way of loosening the world's grip on its secrets.
While the Serpentine War raged across Ninjago—armies clashing in jungles, deserts, and forgotten ruins—I moved through the chaos like a shadow between heartbeats. No banners. No declarations. No trace left behind. Everyone's attention was fixed on fangs and scales, on ancient hatred crawling back into the light.
That was when Clay succeeded again.
He returned to my castle without ceremony, carrying a sealed reliquary carved from blackened stone. The wards on it were clever—misdirection layered atop misdirection—but I felt what was inside long before he placed it on the table in my study.
An Oni Mask.
When I dismissed the seals and let the lid slide away, the air itself seemed to hesitate.
The Oni Mask of Deception stared back at me.
Its surface was darker than the Mask of Vengeance, polished to a mirror-like sheen that reflected not my face, but something… else. Shifting impressions. Alternate expressions. Possibilities of who I could be, or pretend to be. The magic woven into it was subtle in the way only truly dangerous things ever were.
Deception was not about lies.
It was about belief.
I studied it carefully, circling the artifact, letting my senses trace the enchantments without touching them directly. This mask did not impose power through brute force. Instead, it rewrote perception—of others, of reality, even of the wearer's own limitations.
A mask that made falsehoods real simply because the world accepted them.
"Impressive," I murmured.
Clay watched me from across the room. "It was well hidden," he said. "Buried beneath layers of illusion and old Oni wards. Whoever sealed it never expected someone to dismantle the protections without triggering them."
I smiled faintly. "Expectation is the first weakness of anyone who believes themselves clever."
I did not put the mask on. Not yet.
Like the Mask of Vengeance, it was sealed away in my private vault, isolated from the world and from my own mind until I chose otherwise. Power like this demanded patience. Masks had personalities—hungers. Letting them influence you before you understood them was how fools became monsters.
Two masks secured.
Only one remained.
The Mask of Hatred.
And that one… was a problem.
I knew the truth of it well. Unlike the others, it did not merely respond to magic or will. It required blood. Oni blood. A lineage long extinct, diluted, or transformed beyond recognition. None of my subordinates possessed it. None of my creations could provide it.
Even I could not.
For the first time in a long while, there was something in this world that lay genuinely beyond my immediate reach.
I did not like that.
But I accepted it.
Some doors are not meant to be opened immediately. Some keys require time, preparation—or the collapse of civilizations. If the Mask of Hatred was to be mine, it would be later, not now.
And later was something I had in abundance.
I returned my focus to the war.
Through scrying mirrors and distant observation spells, I watched Wu and Garmadon lead the Elemental Masters with surprising competence. They were young, still rough around the edges, but their synergy was undeniable. Where one was calm, the other was fierce. Where one planned, the other acted.
They were learning.
The Elemental Masters themselves fascinated me. Not as heroes, but as systems. Each elemental power behaved differently under strain. Fire grew volatile. Ice became brittle if overextended. Lightning burned out quickly without discipline. Earth endured, but lacked adaptability.
Patterns emerged.
I cataloged them all.
The Serpentine fought with desperation and ancient pride, their magic raw and instinctual. Dangerous in the opening stages of the war—but predictable. They relied too heavily on old victories, on legends of dominance that no longer applied.
Wu and Garmadon adapted.
That was the difference.
Still, the war remained useful to me. While armies clashed, my siphoning arrays continued their quiet work, drinking in stray elemental residue from battlefields long after the fighting moved on. Tiny amounts. Insignificant individually.
Collectively?
They added up.
I also noticed something else.
The Serpentine artifacts—fang-blades, venom totems, blood-sealed relics—were crude, but old. Some of them predated modern elemental alignments. They resonated strangely with Oni magic, with forbidden spells.
I did not intervene directly.
But I made notes.
Many notes.
As weeks turned into months, it became clear that the war's outcome was approaching its inevitable conclusion. The Serpentine were being pushed back, fractured, driven into hiding or sealed away once more.
Victory loomed for the Elemental Masters.
They would celebrate.
They would believe the world safe again.
And they would never realize how much the war had changed the board beneath their feet.
Two Oni Masks now rested in my vault.
My understanding of elemental combat had deepened significantly.
My resources had grown.
And most importantly—
I remained unseen.
I stood alone in my study that night, looking down at a map of Ninjago etched into living stone. Points of light marked battles, power surges, and future events only I truly understood.
"Continue," I said softly, watching the war play out. "You're doing very well."
Not as praise.
As observation.
Because when this war ended, another era would begin.
And I intended to be ready for that one too.