Clashes at the negotiating table were never settled in a single stroke.
The two sides' first formal meeting ended with Genji still considering their proposal.
The night was black as ink, spread thickly across the sky above Kirigakure.
The hazy moisture of daylight condensed into a colder, damper mist at night, silently shrouding the land that had only just emerged from the policies of the Bloody Mist Village.
Far from the lights of the Mizukage Building, Hyuga Hiashi led Neji away from their assigned lodgings. Like two ghosts blending into the night, they slipped toward the ruins of the Kaguya Clan marked in the letter, outside the village.
The air carried the briny tang of the sea breeze and an indescribable scent of old blood, mingled with rust and bone dust, as though it had seeped deep into the soil.
An immense expanse of ruins lay before them.
Broken, enormous stone pillars stabbed menacingly at the night sky like the skeletal remains of giant beasts.
The collapsed buildings were covered in slippery moss and twisted vines. Huge, deathly pale pillars of bone, grotesquely shaped, lay scattered among the ruined walls.
They were the last traces left by Shikotsumyaku, the ability that had once made the Kaguya Clan famous.
Moonlight struggled through the dense mist, casting mottled, distorted patches of light and shadow over the ruins like ghostly claws.
The entire area was so deathly silent that it made the heart quail.
Hyuga Hiashi stood at the entrance to the ruins. The veins around his eyes bulged instantly as he surveyed this realm of death.
Just as I thought...
Hiashi understood.
The Kaguya Clan had been wiped out in the bloody internal conflict years ago. This place was truly a land of the dead.
Still, quite a few people lay in