Midnight approached, and the palace grew quiet.
Most of its occupants slept or stood in silent vigil. The corridors ran between stone walls lit by torches that cast long shadows.
In a courtyard far from the main buildings, five figures gathered in darkness.
Hayato stood at the center with his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. Around him stood four samurai who had served under Michikatsu during his time as Mifune. They had remained loyal even after his disappearance.
"Are we certain about this?" Kenji asked, his voice wavering. "Attacking a diplomatic delegation is—"
"It is necessary," Hayato said. "It is what Lord Michikatsu has ordered. Moreover, the Daimyo's alliance with the Kamizuru will destroy the Land of Iron. You know this."
The others nodded. Some looked less convinced than others.
Movement came from the shadows, and the temperature dropped suddenly. Breath misted in the cold air. Then he was there, stepping out of darkness as though formed from it.
Michikatsu. Or what Michikatsu had become.
Six eyes gleamed in the torchlight. The flame-like markings on his face pulsed with their own inner light. He wore dark robes that blended with the shadows, and at his side hung a sword sheathed in what looked like flesh. The scabbard was covered in blinking eyes that tracked the samurai's movements.
Kenji took an involuntary step back. The others held their ground, but the fear in their eyes was plain.
"You came, Lord Michikatsu," Hayato said.
"Of course," Michikatsu said. "Are you prepared?"
"We are."
Michikatsu turned his gaze across the group. "Tonight you will help save the Land of Iron. The Kamizuru delegation must not leave this city unscathed. But we must be careful. This must appear as though the Daimyo ordered their deaths."
"How do we explain our involvement?" Ryota asked.
"You won't need to explain anything," Michikatsu said. "Because by morning, you will be the victims. One member of the delegation will escape tonight. That survivor will carry a story back to the Kamizuru. They will tell Ishikawa that his son is dead, that the Daimyo of the Land of Iron ordered the massacre of his delegation." He paused. "They will believe it, because that is the story we will give them."
"And us?" Hayato asked.
"You and your men will be found injured, attacked by the delegation in the night." Michikatsu moved toward the palace. "And come morning, several officials will be discovered dead in their quarters. The Daimyo will find a delegation that slaughtered his people and fled into the night." Something cold moved behind those six eyes. "He will not question the story. He will be too busy believing he was right about them all along."
"So we will frame them," Kenji said.
"We will give everyone the truth they are already prepared to believe." Michikatsu did not look back. "When the fighting starts, do not hesitate."
They moved along paths leading to the eastern wing, avoiding every patrol.
Hayato's heart hammered in his chest. Each step felt like a threshold he could never return from. He thought of the years he had spent serving the Land of Iron, the oaths he had taken, the trust placed in him. He thought about whether any of it was worth burning away for the promise of a better future, or for revenge against a Daimyo who had betrayed the previous heir, or simply because he was afraid of what Michikatsu would do if he refused.
They reached the eastern wing.
The corridor leading to the delegation's quarters was guarded by two samurai. Hayato recognized them both.
Michikatsu moved before Hayato could process what was happening. One moment the guards stood alert. The next, both lay on the ground, unconscious but alive. Michikatsu had not even drawn his sword.
"Enter," he said.
They entered the corridor. The wooden doors to the delegation's quarters stood ahead. Michikatsu paused at the first door.
"Make it quick," he said, and kicked the door open and stepped inside.
...
The first scream punched through the corridor wall and pulled Kobuchi out of a half-sleep he hadn't meant to fall into.
He was on his feet before the echo died, pressing his right thumb hard into the center of his left palm. The chakra pulse moved through him low and resonant, spreading outward through his network and into the six sealed clay canisters strapped against his torso beneath his robe. He had worn them to bed. He always did in unfamiliar places.
The canisters opened in sequence. The bees came out in a rush.
He was through his door and into the corridor before the first hundred had fully dispersed, the swarm trailing behind him and spreading into a wide halo of black and amber wings. The torches along the corridor walls caught the insects and scattered their light in every direction.
The corridor was already chaos.
Two of his people were down. One lay crumpled near the far doorway with a sword wound through the throat. The other was slumped against the wall with her hands pressed to her abdomen, her eyes going glassy, her mouth moving without sound.
Five samurai occupied the corridor. Three pressed the surviving delegation members back against the east wall. Two more moved to cut off the far exit.
Ten delegation members remained standing. For now, they still had the numbers advantage.
"Form up!" Kobuchi shouted. "On me, tight formation, move!"
The Kamizuru moved. They collapsed toward him in seconds, backs pulling together, weapons out, the scattered individuals reshaping into something with edges.
Hayato stepped forward from the samurai group.
Kobuchi recognized him from the meeting. Hayato had stood at the Mifune's shoulder the entire time, still and watchful.
He didn't speak. He looked at Kobuchi for one flat second, then swept his gaze across the delegation.
Then he moved.
He was fast, very fast. He hit the delegation's left flank where two members stood, and the first cut went low across the lead man's thigh and severed the femoral artery in a spray of blood that hit the floor in a heavy, rhythmic pulse. The man's leg collapsed and he went down sideways. Hayato was already past him, his sword coming back in a tight arc that found the second man's neck before the first had fully fallen.
Two deaths in under four seconds. Clean and precise and without hesitation.
The delegation stood at eight.
Kobuchi sent the swarm forward. Not as a wall but as a spreading wave that moved low along the floor and rose as it reached the samurai, finding the gaps in armor at the ankles and wrists and the base of the neck. The two samurai blocking the far exit stumbled back and clawed at their faces as the venom began its slow work of disrupting their chakra flow.
Hayato cut through his portion of the swarm with two swift arcs and kept advancing.
He had been briefed on the bees belonging to the Kamizuru Clan. Kobuchi could see it in the way Hayato protected his face and minimized exposed skin and didn't slow despite the stings finding the backs of his hands.
Kobuchi stepped in front of the delegation. "Genji, Suzume, on this side, keep them occupied," he said, his eyes staying on Hayato. "Daishin, Hachiko, take on the other side. Everyone else, hold the exit."
He heard them move. Then Hayato reached him and the wider fight became background noise.
Hayato opened with a feint, a high cut at Kobuchi's left shoulder that pulled back the moment Kobuchi shifted his weight to deflect it, and the real strike came low and straight at his solar plexus, fast and committed.
Kobuchi twisted at the hips and let the blade pass close enough to scrape the front of his robe, then closed the distance sharply and drove the heel of his palm up into the underside of Hayato's chin.
The impact was solid. Hayato's head snapped back and his teeth clicked together hard enough to hear. He staggered one step but recovered fast, turning the stumble into a backward pivot that put distance between them, and when he came back his eyes were watering but his grip on the sword was unchanged.
Kobuchi pressed his thumb into his palm and directed the bees at Hayato's sword hand specifically, a dense cluster targeting the exposed skin at the wrist where the glove met the sleeve. Hayato shook the hand once, then twice, then switched to a one-handed grip and dragged his sleeve down over the wrist with his off hand, covering the gap. Clever. But now his grip had less control and his off hand was occupied.
Kobuchi formed a single seal with his free hand, pressed two fingers to the floor, and pushed chakra downward through the stone.
"Earth Release: Stone Spike," he said.
The floor cracked and a narrow column of dense rock erupted upward directly beneath Hayato's lead foot. It caught the inside edge of his boot and threw his weight sideways. Hayato went down on one knee, and the swarm was on him before he could rise, covering his sword arm and the back of his neck, the venom stiffening the tendons of his wrist by degrees.
Hayato tried to push up and his sword arm did not respond. He looked at his hand with an expression that moved quickly through surprise and arrived at something grimmer.
Behind Kobuchi, the sounds of the wider fight shifted.
Genji and Suzume had driven their two samurai into fully defensive postures, neither man able to press forward without eating the swarm or catching Genji's kunai in an unprotected joint. From the other side of the corridor, Daishin called out, "Earth Release: Mud Wall," and stone ground against stone as a barrier rose between two converging blades.
The samurai were holding, but only just.
Kobuchi turned back to Hayato, who was still on one knee, working through the venom. His sword arm shook. His jaw was set. He looked up at Kobuchi with something that might have been anger if it hadn't been so completely controlled.
Kobuchi sent the swarm forward in a complete envelope, surrounding Hayato from every angle, floor to ceiling, and pressed his thumb into his palm in the specific pattern for what he thought of simply as the lock: a concentrated pulse that instructed the bees to find every gap simultaneously and sting deep, targeting the chakra nodes at the wrists and the back of the knees.
Hayato's sword arm went fully limp. His other knee dropped to the floor. He breathed through his teeth, short and controlled, refusing to make more noise than that.
"Drop it," Kobuchi said.
Hayato looked at him, and his sword hand opened slowly. The blade rang against the stone floor.
Kobuchi held the envelope for three more seconds, then pulled the swarm back to a loose perimeter. Hayato wasn't fighting again for a while. The disruption to his chakra flow would take time to clear, and even then his coordination would be unreliable.
He turned toward the rest of the fight.
Genji and Suzume had their opponents pinned in fully defensive postures. The corridor walls behind both men were chipped and cracked from Suzume's earth techniques, the stone marked with the story of how much pressure the two Kamizuru had applied.
Daishin and Hachiko were in worse shape. Kenji and Ryota were working them in coordinated rotations, one attacking while the other repositioned, the rhythm designed to keep the two Kamizuru from ever having a free moment to complete their techniques. Hachiko's stone-reinforced arm was raised in a guard that had taken at least two direct sword strikes, the stone cracked along the forearm but holding. Daishin bled from a cut above his eye and blinked it clear every few seconds.
Kobuchi moved to help, splitting the swarm to reinforce their position. The sudden pressure of hundreds of bees descending on Kenji and Ryota from behind forced both men to break their rotation and defend themselves individually.
That was the opening Hachiko needed.
She dropped the guard arm and drove it forward in a short, devastating punch aimed at the center of Ryota's chest. The stone-reinforced knuckles hit him squarely in the sternum, and the crack of impact echoed flat and hard off the corridor walls. Ryota's feet left the floor. He hit the wall with his full back and slid down it and sat at the base pressing both hands to his chest, his face the color of old ash.
Kenji pulled back. He looked at Ryota, then at the bees surrounding him on three sides, then at Genji and Suzume advancing from the other end.
He raised his sword but stopped advancing.
The corridor went almost quiet. Both sides breathed hard. The swarm hummed low and constant. Blood dripped from Daishin's eyebrow and hit the stone floor in a slow, steady rhythm.
Then the temperature dropped.
Not gradually. Between one breath and the next the corridor went from the natural cold of a late winter night to something deeper and more total, the kind of cold that does not come from the air but from the absence of something that should be present. The torches kept burning, but their light seemed to pull inward.
Every bee in the corridor slowed. Kobuchi felt the change through the chakra connection, a dulling at the edges of his awareness where the swarm lived.
At the far end of the corridor, a figure stepped out of the dark.
Six eyes, arranged in three pairs stacked vertically on a pale face framed by long black hair tipped red, all six open and watching with yellow irises set in red sclera. The flame-like markings spreading from the figure's forehead across his face and neck moved slightly, the way heat shimmer moves above stone in summer, though the corridor was cold enough to see breath. He wore dark robes in a hexagonal pattern. At his side hung a sword sheathed in flesh, its scabbard covered in open eyes that tracked slowly across the corridor and its occupants.