Hanzo!

The tunnels groaned under the weight of war. The scent of damp earth and blood mixed into something suffocating. Shadows twisted unnaturally under the flickering torchlight, forming illusions of ghosts long dead.

Amatsu moved like a phantom, his footsteps silent against the cold stone. Higanbana followed close behind, her crimson eyes wide, reflecting the distant glow of approaching enemies.

Ryojin walked at the rear, his breath ragged with excitement, golden eyes smoldering like an ember on the verge of ignition.

They were being hunted.

Hanzo's forces filled the tunnels like floodwaters, calculated in their advance, sealing exits one after another. A net tightening. Their precision was not of reckless pursuers—it was the efficiency of an execution squad. They moved with the knowledge that their prey had no escape.

Amatsu analyzed the formations instantly. They were forcing them deeper. These men were not expendable. The real death trap was ahead. Hanzo's tactical mastery was apparent in every detail. If Amatsu stayed on this path, he would be corralled into an inevitable confrontation—one where his options would shrink to zero. An unavoidable death.

His mind worked like a blade against the constraints of reality. The environment. The enemy's psychology. The unseen variables waiting in the dark.Every detail was a potential weapon. He just needed to strike first.

"Ryojin," Amatsu's voice cut through the dim air, cold and commanding.

"Cause chaos." 

Ryojin bared his teeth in a grin, his blood roaring with anticipation. His golden eyes burned, and without hesitation, he thrust his hands forward.

Katon: Kyōenryū

A roar of fire erupted from his palms, violent and insatiable, flooding the tunnels with an inferno. The stone walls crackled under the heat, the air itself igniting in suffocating waves. The front line of Ame-nin recoiled as their shadows twisted in the blaze.

Amatsu did not wait for the outcome.

"Higanbana. The flower." 

Higanbana nodded, raising her delicate fingers. A pulse of chakra rippled from her form, and from the damp soil beneath their feet, flowers began to bloom. The higanbana—red spider lilies—unfolded with eerie beauty, their petals releasing a sickly-sweet scent into the air.

The effect was immediate.

The pursuing Ame-nin faltered, their vision distorting, the walls of the tunnels seeming to twist and close in on them. A genjutsu, subtle yet insidious, weaving confusion into their minds. It was not a grand illusion of power, but a whisper of doubt, turning perception against its wielder.

Amatsu did not waste the advantage. His fingers moved in swift seals.

Water Release: Flooding Current. 

The underground river veins, long undisturbed, obeyed his command. Water surged from the cracks in the walls, a silent tide at first—then a relentless torrent. The tunnels groaned under the force of the flood.

The weight of rushing water swallowed torches, drowning light and sound alike.

Ryojin vanished into the darkness, his flame dying as the flood consumed it.

Higanbana followed Amatsu's lead, her form a fleeting ghost among shadows.

Then—Amatsu stopped.

His dark eyes flickered toward her, sharp as a blade cutting through smoke. "Go," he said, his voice cold, final.

Higanbana froze. Her crimson eyes widened, raw with something fragile, something breaking. "Amatsu…" Her voice was soft, pleading.

"Leave."

The weight of that word crushed her, heavier than the dying tunnels around them. She clenched her small fists. "But… you—"

Amatsu interrupted. "Survive first. Mourn later."

The flood surged closer, icy water licking at their feet. The air was thick with the scent of damp stone and decay. The tunnels groaned, their collapse inevitable.

Higanbana's breath hitched. Her vision blurred. She couldn't stop the tears that welled up, hot against her cold skin. Her pale fingers trembled at her sides. She wanted to argue. Wanted to stay. But she knew Amatsu. His words were not commands—they were truths. Inevitable.

Still, she whispered, her voice barely audible beneath the chaos. "You… won't leave me, right?"

Silence.

A silence so deep it cut more than any blade.

The walls cracked. Stone shattered. A roaring current burst through the tunnel behind them.

Amatsu turned away. "Go."

Higanbana bit her lip so hard it nearly bled. A sob tore at her throat, but she swallowed it down. Her steps faltered, her legs weak, but she forced herself forward.

Then she ran.

Her figure melted into the dark, a fleeting ghost among shadows.

The sound of her footsteps lingered longer than Amatsu expected.

He did not look back.

The pursuing Ame-nin struggled against the sudden deluge. The higanbana's jutsu effect was still clinging to their senses—distorting distance, slowing reaction time. Those who hesitated were lost, their bodies swallowed by the water, their screams unheard beneath the roar.

Amatsu's mind never ceased calculating. This was not enough. Hanzo himself had yet to move. The true predator remained in waiting.

He knew Amatsu would slip through. He expected it. That was what made Hanzo terrifying.

The water continued to rise, twisting the battlefield into something unfamiliar. The hunters would now become the hunted, their movements restricted, their familiarity with the terrain turned against them.

But Hanzo would see through the deception. A second layer was needed.

The moment his feet touched dry ground beyond the water's reach, he flickered forward—fast, unpredictable. Not away, but toward the collapsing paths.

Hanzo would anticipate a retreat. But a true strategist understood that the best escape was sometimes forward.

The tunnels groaned again, this time not from battle—but from the weight of inevitability. Amatsu had already planted his final card.

Deep within the network of passages, the fragile supports had weakened. Water, time, and carefully placed seals had done their work.

Release.

A distant explosion, not of fire, but of stone and earth. A controlled collapse. The tunnels ahead, the very paths the enemy had forced him toward, gave way.

A landslide of jagged stone and debris roared into existence, cutting the battlefield in two.

Hanzo's men, the net that had sought to close around him, were severed from their commander. But Amatsu's instincts screamed. The danger had not passed. A shadow moved beyond the dust, slicing through the veil of falling stone like an unyielding specter. The air itself stiffened—an oppressive force more suffocating than the flood.

Hanzo.

Even through the chaos, even with his elite cut off, the man advanced.

For the first time, Amatsu saw him clearly—

Hanzo the Salamander, the man who ruled Amegakure with an iron grip.

His armor bore no excess weight, each plate designed for efficiency. His breath was steady, his form coiled with unreadable lethality.

The tunnels trembled under the weight of battle. Heat, blood, and chakra twisted into a suffocating storm. The air was thick with ash from Ryojin's inferno, the last embers dying against the encroaching flood Amatsu had unleashed.

But through the chaos, the predator remained.

Hanzo moved with unnatural stillness, his presence suffocating. His Ame-nin were collapsing, drowning, burning—yet he did not falter. His blade gleamed beneath the flickering torchlight, untainted by hesitation. There was no mercy in his stance, no indulgence of superiority. Only death.

The moment Amatsu flickered back, seeking distance, Hanzo reacted.

He did not allow the space to exist.

No wasted movement. The sickle did not swing—it carved through space itself. The air split, not from force, but from a precision so absolute it denied the very concept of resistance. Amatsu twisted—too slow.But even in evasion, he felt it—cold steel carving through flesh. Blood spilled, dark against his torn kimono.

Too fast. Too precise.

The next attack came before he could land. Hanzo's chakra surged, an oppressive weight that made the walls tremble. The shadows themselves seemed to bend under his presence.

Water, thick with iron, rose from the flooded tunnels in vicious tendrils. A whip of liquid death coiled toward Amatsu's throat, slicing through stone as if it were parchment. He flickered again, but Hanzo had already accounted for it.

A wall of pressurized water erupted behind him. A trap.

Amatsu's world constricted—escape routes sealed, the battlefield shrinking under Hanzo's control. He wasn't being pursued. He was being executed.

He had already struck. Amatsu's body hadn't realized it yet. The cut on his shoulder didn't come from the last attack. It was from the one before it. Hanzo had already moved on.

The clash was instantaneous. Sparks danced like fireflies in a storm. Too late. Amatsu's grip faltered—not by choice. His own muscles, bound by logic, had tried to adjust for the force. They failed. His knees dipped, betraying him for a single fraction of a second—long enough for Hanzo to see it.

A single move. That was all it took for Hanzo to show the difference.

The tunnels were dying. The stone screamed under pressure, veins of water bleeding through the cracks. Amatsu's breath felt thick—as if the underground itself wanted to swallow him whole.

The next strike came. This one faster.

No—it had already landed.

Pain bloomed across his shoulder, sharp and precise. Too deep. Too clean. The kind of wound that meant something. Not a warning. Not a mistake. A kill in progress.

Pain flared—brief, sharp. But what mattered was the failure. He had calculated wrong.

His muscles locked, betraying him for the briefest moment. A fraction of hesitation. A crack in the ice.

This is it.

For the first time in years, the thought surfaced, unbidden. He could die here. The realization carried no weight of fear—just cold acknowledgment. No righteous indignation, no desperate rejection. Just a simple, objective truth.

Death had always been near, whispering at the edges of his existence. But now, it pressed against his skin, a blade already drawn, waiting for permission to cut deeper.

His body moved—instinct and calculation intertwining. The logic of survival overruled all else.

Then, for the first time, Hanzo spoke.

"You die here." His voice was absolute. No arrogance. No malice. Just a statement of fact.

Hanzo had declared his death. But death, like all things, could be manipulated.

And then he moved. Faster than before.

This was no longer an assessment. It was the execution. The final strike descended. The moment stretched, eternity carved between steel and flesh.

Amatsu made his choice.

His fingers blurred through seals, blood dripping from his torn shoulder. A pulse of chakra. A final deception.

The ground beneath them collapsed. Not from battle—by design.

 The weight of the underground bore down upon them. The battlefield vanished in a cloud of stone and death.

For an instant, silence reigned.

Then the world caved in.

The first tremor was distant, a deep groan reverberating through the stone. But the next came instantly—closer, sharper. Cracks splintered through the tunnel walls, jagged veins of destruction racing toward him. He didn't hesitate.

Body Flicker.

The world blurred. Yet even as he moved, the collapse chased him. The force of falling stone ruptured the air, a concussive wave pressing against his back. Sharp fragments scythed past his face, hot dust searing his throat. His cloak billowed—then tore, caught in the hungry grasp of the collapsing tunnel. He abandoned it without a thought, twisting his body just as a slab of rock crashed where he had been a breath ago.

Another step— The ground he landed on crumbled beneath his feet. He pushed off immediately, but not fast enough. A jagged edge scraped across his arm, slicing deep. He didn't flinch, didn't slow. Pain was a distant thing.

Darkness surged around him. The tunnel was caving in entirely, swallowing light, space, and escape. The sound was deafening—a relentless roar of destruction, grinding stone and the hollow, snapping echoes of what once held firm.

One last flicker— The shockwave from the full collapse struck his back just as he reappeared in the next corridor. The force sent him skidding forward, his boots scraping against uneven stone. Dust and debris blasted past him, filling the tunnel with a suffocating haze.

He steadied himself, breath controlled despite the burning in his lungs. Behind him, there was no tunnel anymore. Just a wall of shattered ruin.

He had made it—by less than a heartbeat. For a single breath, he stood there, his pulse a cold drum against his ribs.

Alive.

But not safe.

He did not wait to confirm. The moment his senses reoriented, he flickered again—into the shadows, into the void beyond the ruin. Disappearing.

Survival first. Reflection later.

Amatsu did not look back.

There was no victory here.

But something was wrong.

Even as he moved, even as his body obeyed the logic of escape, the cold hand of unease refused to fade. His wounds burned, his breath ragged—but that was not it.

It was the memory of that final moment.

The strike that never came. Hanzo had him. A clean execution. Every attack before had been precise, lethal—strikes designed to kill without waste. But that last blow…

It was too slow. Not in speed, but in intent. As if he had stopped just short of something.

He was holding back.

The realization settled like iron in his stomach. Hanzo had yet to fight seriously.

Amatsu had seen it in the instant before the collapse—the lack of exertion in his movements, the way his breathing remained steady, the absence of desperation in his attacks.

The Salamander had been testing him.

Measuring him.

Amatsu had believed he was escaping death. But now, a far colder thought took root—what if Hanzo had let him?

His fingers clenched. The pain grounded him, but the unease remained.

Hanzo wasn't a predator that killed in hunger.

He was one that killed when he chose.

The tunnels groaned in their final death throes, the weight of collapsing stone muffling all sound.

 And yet, in the silence, Amatsu could still hear him.

Still feel his presence.

Watching.

Waiting.