They had reached Step 3,500. The world was no longer wet; it was jagged.
The freezing sleet of the lower fjord had solidified into a heavy, clumping slush that threatened to drag their momentum into the abyss. Above, the granite cliffs of the fjord loomed like bone-white titans, their peaks lost in a ceiling of bruised, violet clouds. It was noon, but the "Blue Hour" had already descended, casting the vertical landscape into a permanent, freezing twilight.
Kakashi stood on a wider landing—a rare platform of reinforced timber where the iron penstock pipes curved into the mountain. His lungs burned, the air tasting of frost and electricity.
The damp cold of the fjord soaked through his flak jacket, heavier and crueler than the dry snow of the higher peaks, smelling of wet slate and ancient, frozen minerals.
"You're slowing down, Kakashi," Nadare Rōga taunted.
The Snow ninja stood twenty steps above them, silhouetted against the rime-covered rock. His teal eyes were cold, mirroring the ice-choked water a thousand meters below.
"I'm just enjoying the view, Nadare," Kakashi replied, his voice calm despite the rhythmic creak of the frozen wood beneath his sandals. He adjusted his headband, revealing the Sharingan. The crimson eye spun, cataloging the subtle hum of the machine strapped to Nadare's chest.
"Let's see how you view this!" Anko barked.
She blurred forward, her trench coat snapping in the gale. Her hands blurred through a sequence of signs. "Hidden Shadow Snake Hands!"
Three massive serpents erupted from her sleeve, fangs bared, lunging for Nadare's throat. They didn't connect. As the snakes reached him, the mechanical plates on Nadare's chest flared with a brilliant, electric blue light.
The snakes didn't just stop; they dissolved. Their chakra was pulled inward, unspooling like thread into a needle, vanishing into the glowing nodes of the armor.
The gauntlet hummed—a low, predatory vzzzzzt—a vibration so intense it resonated in Kakashi's own forearm bone.
"What?!" Anko skidded to a halt, her eyes widening. "He just... ate them."
"It's the Mark II," Nadare sneered, the armor's cooling vents hissing steam into the frigid air.
PSSHHT. A valve on Nadare's shoulder purged pressure, blasting a jet of scalding white steam that smelled of hot copper and ozone.
"It doesn't just block your parlor tricks. It eats chakra. Your Will of Fire is nothing more than fuel for our steel."
"Anko, stay back," Kakashi warned, his Sharingan tracking the sudden spike in the armor's energy output. "He's converting what he took."
Nadare slammed his hands together. The ground beneath the landing vibrated- whoOoOOOomph -that signaled an impending avalanche.
A "whoomph" sound echoed from the heights—the deep, guttural warning of the mountain's foundations shifting under the weight of the ice.
"Ice Style: White Whale!"
The moisture in the air crystallized instantly. A massive, horned whale made of translucent blue ice manifested in the void above the fjord. It was a leviathan of frozen malice, twenty meters long, its weight alone enough to shatter the wooden trestles holding the staircase together. It began its descent, a crushing white shadow meant to erase the landing from existence.
The whale's horn whistled as it cut the air—shreeee—a sound like a giant blade being honed on a whetstone.
Kakashi didn't flinch. His Sharingan bled into a frantic whir. He didn't look for a way to dodge; he looked for the architecture of the jutsu.
In a heartbeat, Kakashi's hands became a blur of motion—Ox, Toy, Boar. He felt the chill of the Land of Snow's natural energy fighting his own, but he forced the mold.
"Ice Style: White Whale!"
A second leviathan erupted from the mist, a perfect mirror of the first.
The two massive constructs collided mid-air, directly between the landing and the cliff face. The impact was a physical blow, a thunderous roar of ice grinding against ice that shook the very foundations of the mountain.
The impact was a thunderous roar of ice grinding against ice—a sound like a knife scraping against bone, amplified a thousand times by the canyon walls.
Shards the size of kunai rained down, clattering against the iron pipes and splintering the wooden steps.
Shards of ice struck the iron railing—tink-tink-tink—sounding like thousands of invisible fingers drumming on a hollow coffin.
The spray of pulverized snow blinded the world for a second. When the air cleared, the landing was a wreck of shattered rime ice and splintered railing, but it remained standing.
Nadare staggered, his teal eyes wide with a rare flash of irritation. The armor on his chest was glowing a dull, angry red—overheated from the sudden, massive discharge required to match the Copy Ninja's mimicry.
The scent of burning rubber and scorched wiring drifted across the landing—the acrid perfume of a machine being pushed to its thermal limits.
"Stalemate," Kakashi panted, his breath pluming in the blue twilight. "Your armor might eat chakra, Nadare, but it still has a stomach capacity. You're red-lining."
"A temporary setback," Nadare hissed, looking up at the howling wind of the plateau above. He tapped a button on his gauntlet, and a sudden burst of pressurized steam launched him backward, propelling him fifty steps higher into the blinding white of the snow line.
The wooden steps groaned—creeeak—under the sudden hydraulic force of his departure, vibrating long after he had vanished.
"Come, Kakashi! Let's see how your eyes handle the true winter!"
Nadare vanished into the rime ice of Step 4,000.
"He's retreating to the plateau," Anko said, spitting a bit of slush from her lip. She looked at Kakashi, noting the slight tremor in his hand. "You okay? That was a hell of a drain."
"I'm fine," Kakashi lied, pulling his headband back down to cover the Sharingan. "But we're out of time. The sun is almost gone. We need to reach the top before we lose the light entirely."