Hunger wasn't a feeling. It was a location.
It sat in the center of Kinkaku's gut, a hollow, screaming void that had long since digested his patience. The woods outside Tanzaku smelled of rain and pulverized stone, but beneath that—beneath the ozone of the Sannin's chakra—there was something sweeter.
Something raw.
"Brother," Ginkaku whined, kicking a piece of broken masonry. "The air tastes like iron. It's teasing me."
"Quiet," Kinkaku grunted. He was digging.
They were in the ruins of the castle courtyard. The battle had ended hours ago, but the spiritual resonance still hummed in the air like a plucked string. Kinkaku's hands, thick and calloused, shoved aside a slab of marble that had once been part of a daimyo's balcony.
Beneath it lay a chunk of purple flesh.
It was the size of a man's torso, severed cleanly by a blade so large it defied physics. The scales were still warm. The blood was still hot, steaming in the cool night air.
It was a piece of Manda.
"Oh," Ginkaku breathed, leaning over Kinkaku's shoulder. "That's high grade."
"Snake meat," Kinkaku said, his mouth watering. "Full of nature energy. Full of spite."
He didn't cook it. He didn't clean it. He ripped a handful of the raw, purple meat from the bone and shoved it into his mouth.
It tasted like sulfur and ambition.
It hit his stomach and the hunger roared. It wasn't enough to fill him—nothing ever was—but it was enough to wake the connection. The chakra in the meat vibrated against the chakra in his blood.
He swallowed. He felt the link snap into place.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
Manda did not like being woken up. He especially did not like being woken up by the smell of his own blood.
He materialized in a cloud of purple smoke, his massive head instantly rearing back to strike. His jaw ached where the blonde woman had pinned him. His tail throbbed where the toad had severed it.
He saw two figures standing in the rubble.
"OROCHIMARU!" Manda hissed, his voice a tectonic grind. "I told you! If I saw your face again, I would eat you feet first!"
He lunged.
The strike was fast—faster than any human should be able to dodge. But the figures didn't move like humans. They moved like predators who were bored.
Kinkaku sidestepped, the wind of Manda's passing ruffling his mane. Ginkaku hopped backward, landing lightly on a piece of debris.
"We aren't the snake-man," Kinkaku rumbled.
Manda coiled, ready to crush them both. He tasted the air with his tongue. He expected the sterile, chemical scent of Orochimaru.
Instead, he tasted... rot. Ancient, fermented rot. And beneath that, the sharp, acidic tang of the Nine-Tails.
Manda paused. His slit pupils narrowed.
"You have the Fox's stench," the great snake growled. "But you are not Jinchūriki. You are... leftovers."
"We are connoisseurs," Ginkaku corrected, picking a piece of purple meat out of his teeth.
Manda recoiled. "You ate my flesh?"
"It was chewy," Kinkaku said. "A bit gamey."
Manda hissed, but he didn't strike. These two were dangerous. Not in the way Jiraiya was dangerous—honorable and stupid. They were dangerous in the way a disease was dangerous.
"Orochimaru summoned me for a battle he knew he would lose," Manda spat, the memory of the humiliation making his scales itch. "What can you fools possibly offer me? I require a hundred sacrifices."
The Brothers smirked at each other. It was a mirror image of malice.
"We don't have sacrifices," Ginkaku said. "We have a name."
"Akigami," Kinkaku said.
"Gakira," Ginkaku finished.
Manda froze.
He flicked his tongue, tasting the syllables. The name felt heavy in the air, dense as lead. It was a name from the Time Before. A name that the snakes of Ryūchi Cave whispered only in the deepest pits, where the light of the sun never touched.
The Starving Archon.
"You know where he is?" Manda asked, his voice dropping to a low, treacherous purr.
"We know where the spoon is," Kinkaku said. "We just need to find the cook."
Manda lowered his head until he was eye-level with the brothers.
"First," the snake hissed, "you will find Orochimaru."
The hideout smelled of damp earth and failure.
Orochimaru sat in the darkness, his new arms aching with a phantom pain that no medicine could touch. The transfer had been... messy. The body he was in now was rejecting him, fighting the intrusion of his soul with every breath.
He heard the shouting from the entrance.
"COME OUT, FUMEIYONA KYODAI!"
Disgraceful siblings.
Orochimaru sighed. He stood up, his kimono rustling. He walked to the mouth of the cave, stepping out into the moonlight. His eyelids flickered, his eyes attempting to roll back into his skull from the strain of maintaining the vessel.
Kinkaku and Ginkaku stood there, looking like relics from a history book that should have been burned.
"We are not siblings," Orochimaru rasped.
Kinkaku stepped forward, the moonlight catching the heavy iron beads around his neck. "That's not what the snake said."
Orochimaru closed his eyes. Manda. Of course.
"Why are you here?"
The Brothers spoke in unison, a chorus of gluttony. "We're hungry."
"That wasn't the question."
Kabuto walked out from the shadows behind Orochimaru, adjusting his glasses. He looked tired. He looked like a man who was realizing that serving a god meant cleaning up a lot of messes.
Kinkaku pointed a thick finger at him. "Is he a snack?"
Ginkaku slapped his brother's hand down. "That's junk food. Too much preservatives."
Kabuto blinked, feigning insult, though his hand drifted toward a kunai.
"We didn't come for the help," Kinkaku said, turning his yellow eyes back to Orochimaru. "We came for the seal."
"It's time to bring the Devouring One back," Kinkaku declared.
"The Memory of Hunger," Ginkaku corrected.
Kinkaku frowned. "I thought he was called the WILL of Hunger?"
"No, that's Will of FIRE. The Leaf idiots say that. He was the Name-Less One." Ginkaku corrected again.
Kinkaku nodded, accepting the correction. They both turned to Orochimaru and Kabuto.
"You like forbidden knowledge, Snake," Ginkaku said, his voice dropping. "You like things that the world says shouldn't exist."
Orochimaru felt a flicker of interest stir beneath his pain. "I am listening."
Ginkaku grinned, exposing teeth that were too sharp, too many.
"The Land of Demons is not just a place," Ginkaku said. "It's a seal. And we have the key."
His whisker marks twitched, drooped slightly, and darkened at the concept.