CHAPTER 5

  The assassin collapsed.

  His body seemed to forget how breathing worked. His chest heaved uselessly as air scraped into his lungs and vanished just as fast. Fingers dug desperately into the gash in his neck, trying to hold his life together, but blood pushed through them anyway — warm, slick, unstoppable.

  It spilled down his wrists.

  It soaked into the dirt beneath him, darkening the ground inch by inch.

  His knees trembled, then gave out entirely.

  He hit the earth hard.

  His body twitched once — a reflex without purpose — and then nothing followed.

  The assassin lay still.

  Michio watched the entire thing.

  He didn’t blink.

  Didn’t turn away.

  He watched the blood spread. He watched the man’s hands loosen. He watched the moment the struggle ended and the body became just another object on the battlefield.

  Only then did he laugh.

  Not loudly.

  Not wildly.

  It was a thin sound, fractured and wrong — a laugh that felt too small for the space around it, a sound that didn’t belong in a child’s throat. It cracked halfway through, like something inside him had splintered long ago and never healed properly.

  “I told you,” Michio said.

  His voice was calm. Too calm. Not angry. Not afraid. Just tired — the kind of disappointment that comes from knowing the outcome before the choice is even made.

  “I don’t need gods.”

  The shadow behind him reacted.

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  It moved with sudden intent, coiling and surging forward as if it had been waiting for that exact sentence.

  A massive cylindrical blade burst from the darkness.

  It screamed through the air, the force of its movement bending the space around it, pressure crushing outward as it cut a perfect line toward its target.

  Michio’s spine.

  Precise.

  Merciless.

  One strike to end everything.

  The blade closed in.

  Then thin white lines appeared.

  At first they were faint — almost invisible — but they multiplied rapidly, crawling across the blade’s surface like fractures in glass. They twisted and branched, racing along the metal with unnatural speed.

  Cracks followed.

  Hairline fractures spread faster than anyone could track, tearing through the weapon’s structure from the inside out.

  For one heartbeat, the world froze.

  The screaming air went silent.

  The battlefield held its breath.

  Then—

  WHOOSH.

  The blade did not explode outward.

  It collapsed through itself.

  The weapon shattered from within, breaking apart into a storm of fragments that surged forward with brutal force.

  They passed Michio without touching him.

  They tore into the assassins behind him.

  Armor split apart. Flesh ripped open. Bodies jerked violently as shards punched through them. One man was thrown backward, his form twisting midair before crashing into the ground. Another fell mid-step, his eyes wide, mouth open — frozen in disbelief as his legs gave out beneath him.

  Blood sprayed across the walls.

  Across the ground.

  Across the remains of the battlefield.

  The metallic stench filled the air, thick enough to taste.

  Then came the sound of bodies hitting the earth — dull, heavy, final.

  Silence followed.

  Michio stood at the center of it all.

  Fragments drifted down around his feet like ash after a fire. His breathing remained even. His eyes did not glow. His face did not change.

  The shadows hesitated.

  For the first time since the fighting began, they did not move forward.

  For the first time, they understood.

  When the figure stepped into the light, the truth could no longer be hidden.

  He was a soldier.

  Ten years old.

  A child standing among corpses, unshaken, unbroken.

  He had been fighting beside Michio the entire time.

  A presence appeared in front of him.

  Hayato.

  A kunai clenched between his teeth, his posture loose but ready, like a blade resting just before the strike. His gaze never left the threat ahead.

  The child did not flinch.

  Did not step back.

  Did not cry out.

  The cannon ignited.

  The explosion roared, heat and force surging outward as the mechanism came alive. The ground trembled beneath the weight of it.

  In the same instant, Hayato moved.

  He crossed the distance in a blur, slicing cleanly through the firing mechanism. White lines flashed across his blade as metal parted effortlessly beneath it.

  —WHOOSH—

  The weapon shattered.

  Metal collapsed inward, breaking apart violently.

  Fragments tore through the assassins clustered nearby, cutting them down where they stood. Some didn’t even have time to react.

  When the dust settled, the child was still standing.

  Alive.

  Unharmed.

  Hayato did not look at him.

  Behind Hayato, the giant shadow shifted.

  It was already there — towering, violent, its form trembling with restrained fury. Its presence pressed down on the battlefield, heavy and suffocating.

  Then something changed.

  This was not a new summoning.

  Not a command.

  The shadow transformed.

  White light bled through its massive form, carving through the darkness like a star tearing open the night sky. The blackness peeled back, reshaped, purified.

  Not something crafted to be used.

  Something meant to be cherished.

  Hayato’s own.

  Its eyes ignited — glowing purple as it fully awakened.

  The shadows clashed.

  The scene cut.

  Their father fought the assassins head-on.

  Behind him stood the silhouette of a deity — calm, unmoving, overflowing with divine energy. It did not intervene. It did not need to. Its presence alone bent the world around it.

  The father drove a kunai into a ninja’s heart and pulled it free. Blood poured onto the ground, spreading outward in a widening circle.

  He stepped back.

  The circle revealed itself as a summoning ring.

  Smoke erupted upward, thick and suffocating, swallowing the space in front of him.

  From within it, a red kunai — forged with the embers of hell and bound to a chain — shot toward him.

  It struck—