Blood Soaked Wings

[Niro]

The sky above Iwagakure was overcast, a blanket of gray that seemed to press down on the village as though it too could feel the weight of what had occurred. The ground was soft beneath Michi’s boots, damp from the morning mist and the scent of freshly disturbed earth. Bodies lay in neat rows—soldiers and civilians alike, their lives claimed by the events that had unfolded with the invasion of Sunagakure.

Michi stood at the edge of the graves, his posture unwavering, his eyes fixed ahead. He was a high-ranking shinobi, one of the village’s most respected, and yet in moments like this, when the war was over but the bodies were still piling up, there was no difference between him and the men and women who had fought beside him. The dead were all the same now. Silent. Forever still.

The funeral was quiet, solemn. The air was thick with the murmurs of mourning families and comrades who had fought in the battle. Michi heard the chants, the whispered prayers, the cries of the broken. But even through it all, he remained an observer, distant. Detached. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand the pain of loss—it was simply that he had learned long ago not to feel it too deeply. In his line of work, emotions were a luxury he couldn’t afford.

He had seen enough death to fill a lifetime. The young, the old, the strong, and the weak—war didn’t care. It took whoever it pleased, without mercy, without reason. The faces of the fallen flashed before his eyes, each one familiar. Friends. Rivals. Soldiers who had bled beside him in the trenches, each one now a memory, a name on a stone. They were gone. And in their place, only this—a ritual of remembrance that served to remind those still breathing of how easily they too could be claimed.

Michi's hand rested lightly on the hilt of his blade, the metal warm beneath his fingers. The weapon had seen countless battles, just as he had. He had held it through every fight, every life he had taken, every life he had watched fall. But even now, as he stood here, a part of him couldn't help but wonder if he would ever grow accustomed to the cost of it all. He had killed. He had survived. But in the end, what was it all for?

Victory. Wasn't that what they had been fighting for?

He glanced at the caskets, some draped with the insignia of their clan, others unmarked. Names lost to time. Faces blurred by the dust of battle. He thought of the soldiers he had commanded, the ones who had called him sensei, the ones who had trusted him to lead them through it all. The young ones, full of fire and ambition, now extinguished in the blink of an eye.

Did they ever understand? Did they truly grasp the fragility of their existence, how easily their lives could be taken? Did they have the same quiet resignation Michi had come to adopt, or did they die still believing they were invincible? He had tried to teach them, to show them the cost of war, but it was something no one could fully understand until they faced it. And even then, there was no real understanding. Only acceptance.

Michi’s eyes moved over the faces of those who remained. He saw grief, yes. But also a strange sense of relief. The war was over, but at what cost? The village was safe, but at what price? And in the quiet aftermath, what was left to do but mourn, to carry on, and to rebuild?

He had spent his life in service to Iwagakure, and yet, he couldn’t help but feel a hollow emptiness in the wake of victory. The dead had given their all, but what had they truly gained? Their sacrifice, their courage, was no longer for the future. It was only for the moment, and in that moment, all they had to show for it was a plot of earth and the memory of their sacrifice. It wasn’t enough. It never would be.

A familiar face caught his eye—a young soldier, barely out of his teens, kneeling before the grave of his mentor. Michi had seen them together on the field, fighting side by side. The young one’s hands were pressed against his forehead, his shoulders shaking with the force of his grief. Michi’s gaze lingered, the weight of that grief pressing down on him like a physical thing. He had seen it before, too many times. The way the young ones broke when faced with death, as though they could not comprehend it, could not accept that the people they cared about could simply disappear.

Michi felt a pang in his chest, but he didn’t let it show. Grief, he had learned, was a selfish thing. It was something you felt when you could no longer protect the ones you loved, when you could no longer keep them safe from the reality of the world. He had learned to bury it deep, to lock it away behind the walls he had built over the years.

He wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to do. But it was the only way he knew how to survive.

The ceremony drew to a close, the bodies lowered into the ground one by one. The mourners began to leave, some walking slowly, others with their heads held high, as if they were trying to prove that they could carry on despite the weight of what had just transpired. But Michi didn’t move. He stayed where he was, rooted to the spot, his eyes tracing the slow march of the soldiers and families leaving the gravesite.

He had fought in countless battles. He had lost friends, comrades, mentors—people he had known, people he had trusted. But it was different now. It had to be. The world had changed. The village had changed. And Michi had changed.

Death had come to Sunagakure. And though it had claimed victory for Iwagakure, Michi couldn’t shake the feeling that it had claimed something from him, too. Something irreplaceable.

There was a price for everything. He knew that. He had always known that.

But today, as he stood at the edge of the graves, watching the last of the mourners depart, he couldn’t help but wonder—what was the price of victory? And was it worth the cost?

[Niro]

The world was quiet. Too quiet.

Michi stood at the edge of the high balcony overlooking Iwagakure, his eyes tracing the horizon where the sun dipped low, casting long shadows over the village. The air was still, calm, like a breath held in the chest of a sleeping giant. It was a far cry from the chaos and bloodshed of the recent Suna-Iwa War. The war that had claimed so many lives and irrevocably changed the course of their history.

The wind that used to howl through the mountains of Earth Country, carrying with it the sounds of battle and the scent of death, now carried nothing but the quiet whispers of a peace that felt both earned and uneasy.

Michi had fought in the war with a singular purpose—to secure Iwagakure’s dominance. As one of the Tsuchikage’s closest advisors, he had been a leader on the battlefield, guiding their forces, making decisions that would shape the future of his village. He had been among the few who had personally led the conquest of Sunagakure’s territories, watching as the once-proud village crumbled beneath the weight of Iwa’s might. Cities had fallen, borders had shifted, and entire villages were swallowed up in the tide of war. Now, in the aftermath, those same lands lay in the hands of Iwagakure, territories that had once been home to people who had called Sunagakure their own.

The world was different now, but it wasn’t just the land that had been changed. It was him.

Michi’s gaze shifted from the distant peaks to the village below, his thoughts growing heavy. It wasn’t just victory he had gained. It was the burden of it. When the war had first begun, he had fought without question, without hesitation. The mission was clear: Iwagakure’s supremacy needed to be secured. For the greater good of the village. For the future of his people.

But now, in the quiet aftermath, Michi couldn’t escape the questions that had begun to gnaw at the edges of his mind. What was the cost of this victory? Was the bloodshed worth the peace that had followed?

In the quiet, he had begun to understand something that had been difficult to admit before. War—real war—was not something that could be easily justified. The faces of the fallen flashed through his mind: soldiers, civilians, children. Lives lost not just in battle, but in the destruction of homes, the breaking of families. The war had been brutal, and even now, there were parts of it that haunted him, parts that made his heart ache when he allowed himself to feel.

Yet, despite the toll, Michi felt no regret for his role in the war. His duty to Iwagakure, to his people, had been clear. And it was a duty he would never forsake. The Tsuchikage had entrusted him with a great responsibility, and Michi had fulfilled it without faltering. But now that the war was over, he found himself at a crossroads.

He had not been back to Sunagakure since the final victory. What would be the point? What was there left for him to see? The city, once proud and bustling with life, was nothing more than a shadow of its former self. The people of Sunagakure were either dead, scattered to the wind, or subjugated under the weight of Iwagakure’s rule. There was no longer anything to gain by returning.

Michi had seen enough of their broken lands. He had seen the remnants of their culture, their pride, reduced to rubble. He had seen their leaders fall, their will broken. He had fought for peace, but it was a peace bought through blood. And now that it had been achieved, he was left to wonder: what was the future of a village that had been so thoroughly crushed beneath the boots of Iwa?

The future of Sunagakure was no longer his concern. It was up to the Tsuchikage, and those who followed him, to decide what to do with the remains of their enemy.

But Michi had his own future to consider.

Iwagakure had emerged victorious, yes. The war was over, and the village had won. But it wasn’t just the victory that mattered—it was what they did with it. The lands they had annexed, the territories they had claimed—would they be used to strengthen Iwagakure, or would they be a new source of strife in the years to come? Would the Tsuchikage seek to extend Iwagakure’s reach even further, or would he allow the village to rebuild, to focus on healing the wounds of war?

Michi’s gaze hardened as he turned his thoughts inward. He had spent his life as a warrior, and he had seen the consequences of unchecked ambition. He had seen villages torn apart, families shattered, and children orphaned. The victory in Sunagakure had been a testament to Iwagakure’s might, but Michi wondered if it would be their downfall if they were not careful. He had never been one to look too far ahead, but now, in the quiet of peace, he found himself thinking of the future—thinking of the kind of world he wanted to leave behind.

For now, Iwagakure had peace. But it was fragile. The world was still in flux, and Michi knew that there were always those who would seek to disturb it. There were always those who would look for new battles to fight. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to be part of that anymore.

He didn’t need to conquer the world. He didn’t need to see Iwagakure’s borders expand beyond what they already were. The Tsuchikage had accomplished what was needed for the village to thrive.

What Michi wanted now, more than anything, was to ensure that the victory they had won—no matter how costly—would not lead them into the same cycle of violence and conquest that had marked so much of their past.

Perhaps it was time for something different. Time for Iwagakure to focus on healing, on rebuilding—not just its walls and its borders, but its people.

He wasn’t sure what that future would look like. But he knew that whatever came next, it would be up to him, as much as anyone, to guide it.

And for the first time in a long while, Michi felt something stir within him. Hope. A quiet hope that perhaps, just perhaps, peace would be more than an absence of war. Perhaps it could be something more. Something lasting. Something worth fighting for.