Snow drifted across rooftops like ash.
The fourth week of audits began with silence. And silence, Daigo had learned, was its own kind of resistance.
In the High Council's reports, Snowlight was compliant. But beneath inked seals and polished floors, the valley's clans had built a second skin—one stitched from old traditions and rewritten laws. Daigo now moved not as an enforcer, but a weaver, threading loose ends together by habit and by instinct.
He met again with Clan Akomizu's elder beneath the shrine.
"The children still remember," the old man whispered. "Even when we teach them the Council's words, they remember the shape of the old ones."
Daigo didn't ask how. He had seen the mural etched faintly behind the new wallpaper at the academy—a fox with six tails chasing the moon. Genkai folklore. Forbidden imagery.
"I need your cooperation," Daigo said.
"We already give it," the elder said. "But only what you ask. You don't ask about the wells, or the ghosts, or the dreams. So we do not tell."
---
The Black Quill assigned to Daigo finally revealed her name: Ichi.
"I've been told to watch your loyalty," she said one evening as they walked the upper ward. "The High Circle believes your work is too careful. Too clean. They fear sympathy."
Daigo didn't respond. His ledger weighed heavier each night.
"I'm not your enemy," she added.
"You're not my ally either."
She smiled. "Yet."
---
Elsewhere, the Hidden Leaf continued its quiet expansion. Sarutobi Nao's genin team made contact with the trade clans on the outskirts, claiming to offer protection from rogue bandits.
Bandits funded by whom? Daigo knew the answer before the courier owl delivered confirmation: remnants of Kirigakure, fragmented and weaponized by the High Council to seed fear and justify regulation. Even now, Kiri's ghosts did the Council's dirty work.
The Hidden Stone had begun monitoring the movement of chakra ink and sealing scrolls across three provinces. They had not yet spoken. But silence from Iwa was never idle.
Even the Sand had shifted slightly, sending a merchant convoy through narrow western passes, escorted by genin whose birth records had been sealed.
Everyone was watching. Waiting. The High Council's reach was wide. But its grasp, Daigo suspected, was brittle.
---
On the seventh day of snowfall, Daigo received a sealed scroll marked not by any known sigil, but by a spiral drawn in blood-colored ink.
Inside, a list.
Names.
Some were children. Some were teachers. One was the administrator for Seal Compliance in the South Cluster.
All marked for disappearance.
Daigo stared at the parchment, pulse still.
Ichi stepped into the room behind him.
"You weren't meant to see that."
"I see many things I'm not meant to."
"What will you do?"
Daigo folded the scroll. "That depends on what they do next."
Then he opened his ledger.
And began writing in a new ink.