Kurotsuchi pushed forward through the darkness.
She didn't know how long it had been.
Until, at last, the black was pierced by a thread-thin beam of light.
Kurotsuchi stopped digging and lifted her head.
Sand and grit slid off her messy short hair in little showers.
The light seeped through a fissure in the rock overhead, so unreal it made her doubt her own eyes.
She stared for several seconds.
Only then did it hit her, slow and numb.
Morning.
An entire night.
She'd spent it underground like a real burrowing animal, digging like mad, hiding, fleeing.
Now every muscle ached. Her chakra was nearly dry.
Even her wounds kept throbbing with a relentless, needle-like pain.
"I should… be out of the canyon's range, right?"
Her cracked lips barely formed the words.
Carefully, she released the faintest trickle of sensory chakra.
It was a gamble bordering on suicide.
If anyone caught the fluctuation, everything she'd done would be for nothing.
But she had to know.
Her senses rippled outward.
Through the soil. Up to the surface.
No sign of large-scale chakra. No lingering shockwaves of battle…
It felt… safe?
Outside was nothing but the desolate, brittle air unique to a desert morning.
The nerves she'd kept stretched to the snapping point finally gave way with a soft, exhausted twang.
"Hah… hahah…"
A laugh broke out of her, ragged and wet with a sob, and tears spilled out without warning.
They mixed with the sand on her face.
Leaving dirty tracks down her cheeks.
"I made it… I… I really made it out…"
But she didn't burst through the ground right away.
Iwagakure training ran deep in her bones. The closer you came to escaping death, the more you had to stay sharp.
Kurotsuchi forced down the urge to explode upward and gulp fresh air.
Curled up in the cramped dirt pocket, she began to regulate her breathing, slow and careful.
From the deepest part of her ninja pouch, she pulled out three specially made soldier pills.
She swallowed all of them without hesitation.
They scraped down her dry throat.
The hollow weakness faded fast, replaced by a near-manic fullness that flooded her limbs.
The pain was still there, but it was bearable now.
Her strength returned by more than half.
Time.
Kurotsuchi drew in a deep breath.
Her hands moved into seals.
This time, she wasn't digging brutally.
This time it was: Doton: Gan Shōtei (Earth Release: Rising Rock Ladder).
The soil overhead parted like a living thing, peeling away to both sides and forming a vertical shaft just wide enough for one person.
She climbed, scrambling upward with hands and feet.
One meter. Two. Five…
The light grew brighter.
She could even feel the faint warmth of the morning sun.
When she finally shoved through the last thin layer of dirt—
Kurotsuchi froze at the opening for a full three seconds, not moving at all.
Then she broke.
"Waaah—!"
Tears poured out again.
Not from sadness, but from the wild, wordless ecstasy of surviving.
She practically tumbled out of the hole, rolling and scrambling, before collapsing onto the cold gravel and sand.
She gulped air in huge, desperate breaths.
The rising sun hung low on the eastern horizon.
Golden light spilled across the desert, painting everything with a gentle warmth.
In the distance, the rocky mountains stood silent. Hawks circled in the sky…
Everything was so peaceful it felt like last night's world-ending slaughter had only been a nightmare.
"I'm out… I'm really… out…"
She kept repeating it.
She braced her hands on the ground to stand, wavered from fatigue, and nearly fell again.
But it didn't matter.
She was alive.
Kurotsuchi wiped her face hard with her filthy sleeve.
Fire came back into her eyes.
"I have to get back…"
She clenched her teeth, forcing the words through them. "I have to bring the intel back… tell Grandpa… tell the Third Tsuchikage…"
That silhouette returned in her mind.
The terror like ice needles down her spine.
But this time, it was crushed beneath something hotter.
Hatred.
"We mobilize. We have to mobilize against Sunagakure!"
Her fist tightened until her nails bit into her palm. "That monster… we can't let him keep growing!"
"We have to destroy them before Suna is completely under his control…"
The thought itself shoved strength back into her legs.
Kurotsuchi steadied herself.
She scanned the terrain, picked out landmarks, oriented herself…
This should be about five kilometers southeast of the canyon.
Head northeast.
Maybe three days to reach the Land of Earth's border.
Then—
She took a sharp breath.
Chakra gathered into her feet as she prepared to use the Body Flicker Technique—
In that exact instant…
"Heh."
A soft exhale of a laugh, amused and leisurely, came from behind her with no warning at all.
Every drop of blood in Kurotsuchi's body turned to ice.
"Surprised?"
The voice was unhurried, casual, like idle conversation.
"Didn't see that coming?"
Kurotsuchi locked in place.
Every muscle, every nerve, even the pulse in her veins screamed alarms.
She wanted to move. To run. To turn.
Her body betrayed her.
"Not bad."
The voice continued, with a note of approval that made it worse.
"You dug all night and finally crawled out from underground."
Footsteps.
Light. Unhurried.
Crunching over sand and stone, coming closer.
"Like a… really hardworking little groundhog."
By the time the last word fell—
The speaker had stopped less than three meters behind her.
Kurotsuchi could feel the gaze.
Cold. Mocking.
It was him.
She swallowed hard.
Using every shred of strength she had left, she slowly twisted her stiff neck and looked back.
The newborn sunlight was sharp, stinging.
She narrowed her eyes as the blur sharpened into focus.
First, the hem of a spotless black robe, stirring faintly in the morning wind.
Then long fingers hanging loosely at his side.
Upward—
A hard-lined jaw. A mouth faintly curled.
And finally—
Eyes that swallowed the world.
Teizawa stood there, backlit by the rising sun.
Light poured around him, gilding his outline in blazing gold.
His face stayed sunk in shadow.
Only his eyes were clear—too bright, too deep, and terrifyingly alive.
That face overlapped with the image of him in the carriage last night, calmly sipping tea.
Overlapped with the figure on the collapsing mountaintop, like some god or demon.
Until it fused into what stood before her now—
The nightmare itself.
"Ah…"
In that instant, all her reason and pride shattered under raw, animal fear.
Kurotsuchi let out a scream that tore at her throat.
Her body went limp like someone had yanked her bones out, and she fell backward hard onto the gravel.
She didn't even feel the pain of hitting the ground.
Because something worse happened.
Warmth.
Wetness.
Spreading beneath her, soaking through her torn combat pants.
A dark stain blooming on the cold sand and stone.
She'd lost control.
Terror had punched straight through her body's last defenses.
Teizawa's brow twitched, almost too subtle to see.
He looked down at her sprawled there, shaking like a leaf in a storm.
At the twisted, tear-smeared face.
At the glaring wet patch beneath her—
Then he clicked his tongue lightly.
The expression on his face was pure, unmistakable disgust.
That look shattered Kurotsuchi even further.
Her mouth hung open, but no sound came out.
Tears surged, mixed with snot and spit, smearing her entire face.
She wanted to curl up.
Disappear.
Die right there.
But she couldn't even manage that much.
She could only lie there, helpless and unmoving.
"How pathetic."
Teizawa frowned, openly annoyed.
He'd been thinking he might enjoy it.
But seeing a little girl covered in dust and grime was bad enough.
And now she'd pissed herself from fear.
What a mood-killer.
(End of Chapter)
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