The Elders' Bitter Feud and Hollow Alliance

The Daimyo Residence. The Council Chamber.

The air was thick as congealed honey, making it hard to breathe.

More than a hundred costly whale-oil candles burned quietly, but their flames could not dispel the shadows in the corners. Instead, they cast a sinister light across the ukiyo-e prints on the walls depicting the First Daimyo's great deeds.

Chief Elder Hojo Tokugawa sat at the head of the chamber.

He wore the finest twelve-layered robes. The folds of silk should have proclaimed his status, but now they felt like heavy shackles, constricting his breath.

His fingers rested casually on his knees, or so it seemed. Their tips trembled beyond his control.

Supplies cut off. Contacts lost. Silence from the Underground Black Market... One blow after another had closed around him like an invisible net.

But he could not panic.

At least, not where anyone could see.

Hojo Tokugawa looked at the other elders kneeling on either side of the chamber. He took a deep breath, forced down the chill in his bones, and put on a face full of grief and outrage.

"Gentlemen!"

He slammed a hand onto the low table before him. His voice rang out, its force meant to conceal the weakness within.

"Konoha has gone mad! That newly appointed Fifth Hokage is a tyrant through and through!"

His voice echoed through the vast Council Chamber, thick with deliberate indignation.

"He has defied the authority of the Daimyo Residence, interfered with Kyoto's trade routes, seized our strategic supplies, and cut off our medical shipments! What is that if not a declaration of war against us—against the very foundations of rule in the Land of Fire?"

Tokugawa swept his gaze across the room, searching their faces for agreement.

These pampered men were just like him: parasites aboard the same rotting