The old site of Otogakure lay on the western edge of the Land of Rain. It had been abandoned land handed over to Konoha after Kabuto Yakushi finished reorganizing the remnants of the Akatsuki. Now, only rows of resonance pipes made of copper remained, half buried underground.
When Serina arrived, an old woman at the village entrance was humming a modified version of "Moonlight Bridge" to her grandson: "...No more crying, no more calling, leave your ears to the wind..." The tune was utterly flat, without a single rise or fall, like a melody drawn with a ruler. After two lines, the child fell into a dead sleep, drool hanging from his mouth and veins throbbing at his temples.
"They've turned the nursery rhyme into a low-frequency sedative." The Anbu recorder accompanying her had gone pale. "Thirty-seven children in the camp haven't woken up for two days. All their vital signs are within normal ranges. We just can't wake them."
Serina crouched and checked the child's pulse-heart rate: 38, body temperature low. A textbook case of the vagus nerve being forcibly hijacked by an externally imposed rhythm. She looked up at the array of resonance pipes. Their ends connected to the abandoned Resonance Stage in the village center.
A man in gray silk with loose sleeves stood on the stage, his face pale and beardless, twirling an ebony Law Staff.
He was neither a member of the Akatsuki nor a void mimic like Soval. His introduction consisted of a single name: "Silence-Sound Guest."
"Little girl from the Shinobi World." He smiled and tapped his Law Staff. The sound wave knocked a bird out of the air straight into the mud. "Soval wanted to devour brains with rhetoric. Too slow. I tune the frequency directly-even 'fear' becomes unnecessary. So clean."
Serina