Kaito vanished into the treeline, a shadow eating the darkness.

They emerged from the shadows: three of them, clad in dark shinobi shozoku , their faces wrapped in crimson scarves. The leader, a hulking brute named Kuro, carried a nodachi—a greatsword no ninja should have been able to wield silently.

The blade did not take Hidetora’s life. It took something worse: the tendons in both of the warlord’s wrists. A living death. A message carved in flesh.