Deep in Root's secret chamber, Shimura Danzō's brow furrowed. Anger at being played began to rise within him.
"So this was a trick after all! Naraka!"
He was on the verge of deciding it was nothing but scrap paper and tearing it apart when—
Something changed!
Creak—
A faint metallic scrape, almost lost beneath the sound of his heartbeat, came from a dark corner high above the chamber.
It was no attack. The clasp on an old scroll case had finally snapped because of a change in temperature.
B's eyes did not even turn upward, but his senses had already locked onto the source: an inconsequential Ninja Tool case falling through the air.
In a microsecond, his mind reached a verdict: no need to dodge. Its trajectory would take it nowhere near him.
The case tumbled as it fell. Its lid came off, and the polished Senbon Poison Needles inside spilled out like silver rain.
Most of the Senbon scattered across the floor with a clatter, without any discernible pattern.
But one Senbon followed an oddly unnatural path.
As it spun through the air, its tip just happened to graze a tiny metal projection securing a pipe overhead.
Ting!
A crisp sound, seemingly too faint to matter.
That faint sound made B's pupils contract.
It was not the volume. The timing and location revealed a fatal discrepancy from the trajectory his mind had calculated.
The collision gave the Senbon a tiny burst of horizontal acceleration. It veered from its vertical fall and shot toward the wall.
An ancient decorative metal shield hung there.
Age had left its surface oxidized and dull, but a small patch at its center had somehow been polished to a mirror shine.
All of this happened in a flash.
As an elite Root ninja, B had the extraordinary reflexes to sense the Senbon's change in course and the angle at which it flew toward the wall.
In an instant, he even calculated its likely rebound path. It would pose no threat to him.
But just before the Senbon struck the shield, the air disturbed by the falling scroll case reached it.
The decorative shield tilted inward ever so slightly.
Perhaps by only one degree.
It was enough.
Clang!
A sharper ring sounded. The Senbon struck the shield's smoothest spot at a treacherous angle and reflected perfectly from its mirrorlike surface.
The deadly silver glint changed course in an instant. Instead of flying into empty space, it became a bolt of death too fast for the eye to track.
At almost the same moment, B made a tiny evasive movement, driven by a ninja's caution and a split-second doubt about his first calculation.
He turned his head left, trying to confirm the Senbon's final destination from the corner of his eye, while shifting his weight slightly right.
For an elite Root ninja, it was the perfect reaction.
But by turning his head, he brought his right temple directly into the path of that reflected silver bolt.
Pfft!
The sound was faint, like a ripe fruit hitting the ground.
B froze mid-motion.
His senses, stretched to their limit, registered it with perfect clarity.
A length of cold Senbon was lodged firmly in his skull, its exposed end still trembling from the force of impact.
His powerful Chakra ebbed away in an instant. The Kunai slipped from his suddenly limp fingers and struck the floor with a sharp clatter.
In the deathly silent room, the sound was piercing.
To Shimura Danzō, the entire sequence had been silent and impossibly fast.
The powerful elite Root ninja had offered no effective resistance.
It was as though an invisible stroke of misfortune had fallen precisely upon him, fulfilling the Contract called "death."
Shimura Danzō's lone eye narrowed sharply. For the first time, a flicker of fear crossed its depths.
Then a fiercer emotion displaced it: greed and excitement bordering on madness.
He looked down sharply at the paper in his hand, still so ordinary in appearance.
The inked name, Kurihara Ranmaru, seemed a shade darker, as though it had drunk its fill of some unseen nourishment.
Naraka had not lied to him!
This seemingly ordinary paper truly possessed a bizarre, indefensible power to kill instantly!
Shimura Danzō's fingers trembled with excitement. Slowly, with immense care, he smoothed the paper as though caressing the most precious treasure in the world.
His gaze lifted again, as though it could pierce the layers of stone and reach Kage Rock.
Minato Namikaze! Soon your name will be written on this paper, just like that test subject's.
And those eyes of the Uchiha, too.
His lips curved into a cruel smile of absolute certainty.
Then Naraka gave one of his grating, rustling chuckles.
"Heh, heh, heh... It seems the 'gift' has arrived. How does it feel, Lord Danzo? Are you satisfied with this 'convenience'?"
Shimura Danzō turned slowly, his lone eye sharp as a blade as he tried to read something in Naraka's indistinct face.
He did not say whether he was satisfied. Instead, he asked what mattered most to him.
His voice remained calm, though his fingertips unconsciously rubbed the paper.
"If I had intervened just now and done everything I could to save him, what would have happened?"
It was a ruler's instinct: test the boundaries of the rules and learn the limits of this power.
Naraka's laughter grew more delighted, as though he had heard a fascinating question.
"Save him?" Naraka's voice carried an almost mocking amusement. "You could try. But even if you revived him with Medical Ninjutsu right now, you would only keep him breathing a little longer.
Then his tone shifted, and his crimson gaze seemed to pierce Danzo's soul.
"But once the Curse of Death takes effect, the threads of fate have already wound tight around him.
"If the Senbon Poison Needles don't kill him today, a Shuriken might inexplicably ricochet during training tomorrow and pierce his throat.
"The day after, he might take a sip of water, inhale it into his lungs, and suffocate.
"The next day, an ordinary roof tile might come loose and happen to crush his skull..."
Naraka's figure swayed slightly as he spoke, as though acting out countless bizarre ways to die.
A faint chill flickered deep in Shimura Danzō's lone eye.
An endless cycle of fatal accidents? This power went beyond Ninjutsu. It was closer to an inescapable curse—or a law of fate itself.
It was far more terrifying than Mahito of the Nine Nether, whose soul could not die and whose body could not be destroyed!
After a moment of silence, he asked the most important question.
"Is there a way to break this curse?"
He needed to know, both for his own safety and for whatever the future might demand.
Before you continue