One day earlier, somewhere within the Land of Fire.
"Cough!"
A mouthful of blood burst from Iwama's mouth along with despair and rage, running down his cheeks and splattering across the cold ground.
How... how could this happen? How could it possibly happen?! His eyes were wide with fury and disbelief. The icy touch of the ground, the blood continuously seeping into the earth, and the grief and indignation in his chest that seemed ready to explode made his eyes bulge as though they might split from their sockets.
"Squelch!"
The next moment, the sound of a blade plunging into flesh rang beside his ears.
A sharp longsword—a standard Konoha weapon—pierced the chest of Kisak, his vice-captain, who had followed him for so long and was staring wide-eyed with equally indescribable grief and rage. It froze all the sorrow, indignation, and confusion on his face into his death mask.
Blood flowed out once more from the chest of the vice-captain who had just brought him a bowl of hot soup, the captain of his guard and a comrade who had risked life and death alongside him countless times in this Ninja World War.
"Y-you... what have you done, Hui Tian?!"
Watching this unfold, he spoke in a trembling voice, his eyes wide with grief, fury, and disbelief.
Over and over, the events from moments ago replayed in his mind. They had been traveling for a little over a day, marching at speed, so they had found a place to stop and rest. They were still within the Land of Fire, and the Konoha Anbu assigned to protect them—though they were actually there to monitor them—had not interfered much. Of course, they could not have interfered with anything. Their mission was likely only to observe; as long as the group did