Kaito's blade, slick with blood and shaking in his grasp, finally fell from his fingers.
With a silent scream caught in her throat, Hinata launched forward, soul ablaze. Her boost ignited violently, more powerful than ever before. A silver aura crackled around her, not delicate like before, but raw and honed.
She crashed into the last Jashin cultist that had struck Kaito, her reverse-edged katana slamming with monstrous force. Bones shattered, flesh gave way, and the enemy was hurled through a stone wall with a sickening crunch. Dust and debris rained down.
Hinata dropped beside Kaito, catching him just as he collapsed. His breath was ragged, blood spilling over his lips. Her arms shook as she held him close.
Above them, a shadow loomed—a shinigami, emerging from the veil between worlds.
Kaito smiled weakly, his vision was already fading. "My goddess... you came to take me? Is Lady Hinata safe?"
Hinata couldn't stop her tears. "Yes... I came to bring you to my world, to the Silver World. The gates are open to those connected to it. You don't need to go to the Pure Lands."
And the Silver World responded.
Her sorrow, her love, her faith—it twisted reality. The rules bent not before her will, but before her pain. A silver gap swallowed Kaito's spirit. The shinigami paused, uncertain. Now the soul that came to collect was beyond his reach.
Hinata's voice deepened, layered with divine resonance. "Then... I suppose the Silver Lady must reveal herself."
Silver light consumed her.
Her hair lengthened, her body matured, her presence shifted into something otherworldly. Her face was veiled behind the ceremonial mask tied to her waist. Her tears still fell, streaking past the delicate metal.
Before her, the shinigami stood silent. Around her feet, the scattered limbs of the cultists twitched and hissed, still crawling, still laughing.
"You shall not take the ones under my protection," she whispered. "But these... these broken mockeries of life. They are yours to claim. I will help you restore balance."
With his death, all of Kaito's life force was flowing towards the Silver World but Hinata's sword resonated with his desire to protect a feeling that in his last moments integrated with his entire being, she felt the remnant of Kaito's life and intentions and allowed them to manifest in reality... like a torrent his pure yang was flowing towards her sword, giving solidity to the little fragment of her spirit that resides within, the sword then began to shine in a silver color.
The light of her sword pulsed silver. She advanced, not running, but walking with purpose. Each step forward, a flick of her blade. Strings snapped, black tendrils severed. The limbs once full of unnatural life now fell limp, their dark connection undone.
The cultist she had slammed into the wall had risen again, bones half-broken and twisted. He staggered forward—until the tip of her blade touched his forehead.
The unnatural black threads that tied him to this reality obliterated.
He froze.
And behind him, the shinigami reached out.
Hinata continued walking.
<<<< o >>>>
The great hall was a field of ruin.
Dozens lay fallen. Blood smeared the sacred stone. The scent of smoke and death hung in the air.
Mifune bled from a gash across his chest. Takama held his sword with one arm, the other dangling limp. Around them, their samurai still fought on, wounded and weary.
The cultists were different now. Bodies that refused to die. Eyes glowing with manic light. Even the paralytic poison had begun to lose its potency—but it had already done its damage.
And then...
A breeze. A chill.
From a corridor untouched by battle, she appeared.
A woman of impossible beauty. A white kimono without blemish. A mask upon her face. A sword bathed in silver fire.
She walked in silence, her steps echoing in stillness.
The moment her presence filled the room, time seemed to stutter. Eyes turned. Breath halted.
Before the eyes of Takama and Misfune, the tears falling down the mask of this Silver Lady were evident.
To the fallen, her aura brought peace. To the defenders, strength. To the enemies—terror.
She vanished, leaving one of her tears in its place and reappeared meters away.
Each movement was a blur of silver light. Wherever her blade passed, enemies fell—not in blood, but in silence. Their strings severed, their unnatural animation undone.
Mifune and Takama both recognized the fallen samurai she passed. Men from Takama's and Misfune's holds, those trained in the Silver World.
Within minutes, the cultists were gone.
The Silver Lady spoke.
"Tend to the wounded. I will go where the battle still rages."
And with a final flare of power, she vanished, only a faint silver glow moving beyond the walls remained.
<<<< o >>>>
In Tenshō's compound, Hinata's clone—still disguised as a maid—stood silently, hands clenched.
She knew. They had known. This had been orchestrated.
Tears slid down her cheeks. Not just of sorrow. Of fury.
<<<< o >>>>
In Renga's quarters, the second clone trembled as she stared at the ground.
In front of her, Kuro was sitting on top of a pair of cultists and further ahead, Sasori and Deidara were having a discussion, surrounded by the bodies of fallen cult agents... that discussion was of little importance now.
"Kaito..."
She couldn't move. Her heart was breaking, a mirror to the real Hinata.
<<<< o >>>>
At the shattered gates of the compound, the old high priest of Jashin stood with an eerie calm. His body was a canvas of scars, his skin disturbingly vital despite the absence of a heart—an organ he had long since sacrificed in a grisly ritual to prove his devotion. That faith had sustained his cursed life far beyond natural limits.
Beside him stood a grotesque servant, wrapped in tattered bandages from head to toe. His body was bloated, half-decomposed, and his stench was so foul it seemed to warp the very air. Yet the priest paid it no mind.
"The attack is a success," the priest rasped, voice like bone scraping stone. "Your contact has provided us with the tools we needed. Soon, this nation will fall. Their greatest protector weakened, their heirs divided, and the spirit of Jashin will reign unchallenged. Sacrifice shall never cease. His glory will be eternal."
He stepped toward a paralyzed samurai, eyes frozen wide with rage and despair, unable to move even as his comrades lay dead or dying nearby. The paralytic agent, subtle and cruel, had rendered him a statue, helpless as the high priest raised a cruelly curved dagger toward his throat.
And then—a flash.
A blur of white and silver descended with impossible speed. The priest's strike halted as a shining katana met his own weapon with such force that it flung him backward, crashing through what remained of the gates.
The Silver Lady had come.
The diaphanous form of the High Priestess, fully transformed, her silver eyes glowing beneath her mask, the samurai saw in a blink of an eye she landed soundlessly beside the corpse-wrapped servant. The undead creature collapsed—its life snuffed out by her mere presence.
From the rubble, the priest rose again, chuckling low. "I have not seen a creature like you... divine or not, you bleed."
He raised a second a curved dagger, now slick with faintly silver blood. "You're not so divine after all."
Symbols erupted beneath his feet, dark and pulsing. His body turned pitch black as he licked the blood from his blade. "Now you'll witness Jashin's glory yourself."
He drove the blade into his own chest.
But before the ritual could complete, the Silver Lady stepped forward. She sliced the very air, and a thin black thread shimmered and snapped in front of her.
"Your intentions are clear," she intoned.
A second form—another image of the Silver Lady—materialized behind the high priest. With divine grace, it struck. The blow launched him straight back into the Silver Lady first form, which shimmered and vanished as if never there.
The impact shattered what remained of the priest. His cursed life came to an end, not by mortal hands, but by divine reckoning.
Unbeknownst to any present, one of Sasori's marionettes—perched far above the chaos—had silently observed the entire encounter, recording every detail. The puppet's glass eyes shimmered in the darkness, capturing a vision of divinity none were meant to see.
The young samurai, still trying to understand what he saw, was now surrounded by silence.
And as suddenly as she had come, the Silver Lady vanished once more, her light trailing in her wake.
He had no words. Only the certainty that what he saw would shape the rest of his life—even if he could never speak of it.