Freeze the Wounds, Change the Disguise, Hide in the Chaos

The night wind high above was bitterly cold, heavy with the stench of smoke and blood as it rushed into his lungs.

The menacing wings of ice crystals behind Mizuki Han had been pushed past their limits, and now they groaned under the strain. Along their edges, blade-thin shards kept flaking away and shattering into fine ice dust that vanished beneath the crimson night sky.

His chakra was completely spent.

The meridians in his body felt as if countless red-hot steel needles were stabbing through them again and again. Every heartbeat brought a ripping pain, especially in his forcibly abandoned left arm. The agony at the stump clung to him like a bone-boring parasite, gnawing furiously at his nerves.

Haku, held in his arms, was deathly pale. She clutched the torn lapel of his shirt as tightly as she could. The rapid ascent and violent jolting had left her dazed; instinctively, she could only entrust everything to the boy who had just pulled her out of hell.

"Pfft—"

Mizuki Han could no longer hold back the blood surging up his throat. He spat out a mouthful.

The ice wings lurched in midair. With their last reserves of chakra gone, they began to disintegrate at an unstoppable pace.

He had to land immediately!

Mizuki Han's gaze swept over the area below, cool and sharp as a hawk circling overhead. It had already become a living hell.

He couldn't land in the open; that would expose him to every Kirigakure Ninja in sight.

He couldn't land among the crowds, either. The panicked civilians would only get in his way.

At last, his eyes settled on a narrow, deep alley in the ruins' outskirts, squeezed between two half-collapsed homes. It lay in the dead angle beyond the light and fire, an island amid the chaos.

Without hesitation, Mizuki Han used the last of his strength to adjust the angle of his failing ice wings. Like a falling falcon, he swept down toward his target in an almost vertical dive, carrying Haku with him.

"Thud!"

The two slammed into a pile of garbage deep in the alley.

Just before they hit the ground, Mizuki Han twisted his body and took most of the impact on his uninjured back.

"Ugh..."

The violent jolt aggravated every wound. Blood rose into his throat again, but he clenched his teeth and forced it back down.

"Cough... cough, cough..." Haku had been badly shaken and started coughing violently, but Mizuki Han had protected her, and she was not seriously hurt.

Mizuki Han paid her no heed. He struggled up from the stinking garbage and leaned against the damp, cold wall, gasping for breath.

His face was paler than the wall. The wound in his chest, pierced by the Kisame Water Blade, had reopened from the rough landing. Warm blood seeped through his torn clothes, staining the front of his shirt an even darker red. Blood poured from his severed arm.

At this rate, he would bleed to death before the Mist Anbu even found him.

Mizuki Han's gaze was utterly still. He raised his only uninjured hand and pressed it over the wound in his chest.

No chakra flowed. Not even a glimmer of light appeared.

But he pushed his understanding of the Ice Release Kekkei Genkai, along with the most primal ice-aspected power still left in his body, to its limit.

The next instant, an indescribable cold burst from his palm, freezing him from the inside out.

"Hiss..."

He could feel countless ice crystals, too tiny to see, rapidly forming inside his mangled wound. Like the most precise surgical blades and sutures, they sealed the ruptured blood vessels and forced the flow of blood to freeze.

The pain was even worse than being pierced by a blade. It was a bone-deep torture, the feeling of his flesh being frozen alive.

Mizuki Han's body shook violently from the agony. Cold sweat sprang across his brow, but he didn't make a sound. Gritting his teeth, he spread the freezing power to every wound that was still bleeding.

A few seconds later, he lifted his hand.

The bleeding had stopped.

A thin layer of faintly blue ice had sealed the wound from within. It was a desperate measure, and the crystals would continue damaging his cells, but at least it had bought him precious time.

When he finished, he seemed to have used up the last of his strength. He leaned against the wall and slowly slid to the ground.

"Han... Han, you..." Haku finally recovered from her shock. Seeing Mizuki Han's pale face and grotesque wounds, she looked at him with fear and worry.

Mizuki Han didn't answer. His gaze had already shifted to the far end of the alley.

Some debris, thrown about by the earthquake, lay piled there. Beneath it were two bodies, long since cold: a man and a woman. From their clothes, they had been ordinary civilians, killed by a collapsing wall when disaster struck.

"Not bad luck, after all," Mizuki Han muttered. His voice was as hoarse as sandpaper scraping against stone.

He struggled to his feet and walked toward the bodies.

Haku had no idea what he intended to do. She could only stagger after him.

Mizuki Han crouched before the bodies and began removing the still-intact coarse shirt from the man's corpse, his expression blank. His movements were calm and practiced, without the slightest hesitation or unease, as if he were handling not a person who had once lived, but a useful prop.

"Ugh..."

Haku couldn't bear to watch. She covered her mouth and gagged. The sight of the dead, and Mizuki Han's ice-cold behavior, filled her with instinctive dread and revulsion.

Mizuki Han paused.

He slowly turned around. In the shadows, his dark eyes looked especially deep.

"Do you want to wear those bloodstained clothes and tell every Mist Anbu who sees us that we're the culprits who fought our way up from underground?"

His voice was quiet, but it doused Haku like a bucket of ice water. She stopped gagging at once, left trembling uncontrollably.

Mizuki Han turned away and quickly stripped the clothes from the corpse. Then he tossed the coarse shirt, still holding the corpse's warmth and the smell of dust, at Haku.

"Change."

Just two words.

Cold, terse, and impossible to refuse.

Tears welled in Haku's eyes. She looked at the filthy shirt on the ground, then at Mizuki Han's emotionless profile. In the end, she gave in. Biting her lip, she turned away and hurriedly changed into the clothes that didn't belong to her, her hands trembling.

Mizuki Han also changed into a gray jacket stripped from the corpse, one with several holes in it. Its loose fit concealed his severed arm and most of the blood on his body.

Still not satisfied, he scooped up some dust and rubbed it casually over his own and Haku's faces and hair.

In an instant, the blood-soaked, murderous boy and the sweet-faced little girl had vanished. In their place were a pale older brother who had lost an arm in the disaster, and a filthy, terrified younger sister who had no idea what to do.

It was the perfect disguise.

"Come on."

Mizuki Han took Haku's cold little hand. His own palm was just as cold, but it held an unmistakable, unyielding strength.

He led Haku carefully out of the dark alley.

The scene outside was even more horrifying than it had looked from above.

Towering flames lit the night sky over the Village of the Bloody Mist as bright as day. Panicked civilians fled in every direction through the streets. Their heart-wrenching cries, the roar of collapsing buildings, and the Anbu ninja shouting orders blended into a chaotic symphony of the apocalypse.

The air reeked of smoke, blood, and dust, so thick it was nearly impossible to breathe.

Holding Haku's hand, Mizuki Han kept his head down and blended into the fleeing crowd.

Unlike everyone else, he didn't scream or run in panic. He moved slowly, even limping a little from his injuries. With eyes terrifyingly calm, he quickly observed everything around him.

He watched the flow of the crowd, the Anbu patrol routes, and the temporary checkpoints.

He was like a drop of water, silently merging into the flood called chaos and using everyone else's panic and flight as the perfect cover.

Just then, an even greater commotion rose ahead.

The crowd seemed to hit an invisible wall and began surging aside.

"Everyone, stop! No running!"

"Gather at the Central Plaza! You'll all be screened!"

Dozens of Kirigakure Ninja formed a human wall, forcibly blocking the fleeing civilians and roughly herding them toward the village's central plaza.

Mizuki Han's heart sank.

Screened?

He let himself be carried backward with Haku by the flow of the crowd, but peered through a gap between people at the Anbu behind them.

Suddenly, a figure radiating powerful chakra landed like a ghost atop a tall water tower nearby.

The figure wore a specially made mask unlike the ordinary Anbu masks, one marked with blue fangs. He stood there without moving, yet a cold, savage presence spread across the entire district, silencing the cries around him.

A powerful Anbu squad leader!

"Take my orders!"

Amplified by chakra, the squad leader's voice rolled like thunder, reaching everyone's ears with ruthless authority.

"The entire village is going on the highest alert! Seal every harbor and main road! No one enters or leaves without permission!"

"Activate the Bloodline Detection Barrier covering the entire village! Screen every civilian by force!"

"Dig up every inch of the ground if you have to—find those two rats who crawled out from underground!"

"Boom!"

The final order exploded in Mizuki Han's mind like a bolt from the blue.

A Bloodline Detection Barrier covering the entire village?

He looked up at the figure on the water tower, as still as the god of death. Crimson moonlight reflected in his dark pupils, where a cold light glimmered.

He had overturned the board with his own hands and freed himself from that cramped death cell.

But he hadn't expected the enemy to react so quickly. In the blink of an eye, they had turned the entire Kirigakure into a larger, more heavily guarded, and even deadlier... giant prison!