A week passed. Slowly. Painfully.
The battlefront, once soaked in blood and echoed with the constant clash of steel and jutsu, had fallen into a tense, unnerving silence. The thick forests that had served as the arena for countless skirmishes between Iwa and Konoha stood still, as though holding their breath.
But this silence… wasn't peace.
Both sides knew what this was—a brief calm before the final storm. A temporary pause in the slaughter, during which both armies sharpened their blades and hardened their hearts.
We knew it too.
In that time, Iwagakure had not been idle. Far from it.
Every hour was used with ruthless precision. Supplies were gathered. Weapon caches refilled. Ninja scrolls and forbidden techniques unearthed from hidden vaults. Entire caravans streamed into the outposts, and among them, fresh reinforcements—ninjas straight from the heart of the Hidden Stone. New blood brought in to replace the hundreds of comrades we'd lost in the earlier offensives.
The name whispered through the camps was the same.
Operation: Falling Tree.
The plan that would uproot Konoha from its forested stronghold and cast it into the dirt.
While Iwa prepared to crush its enemy, across the frontlines, deep within the woodland shadows, the Hidden Leaf was also making its final move. Under the cold, calculating eyes of Orochimaru, and with the full acknowledgment of the Yellow Flash himself—Minato Namikaze—Konoha turned its forest into a death trap.
Explosive tags were sewn into tree trunks. Tripwire-bound traps disguised as harmless wildlife. Poisoned spikes hidden in fallen leaves. Every inch of forest surrounding the Leaf's defensive line became a living maze of murder.
Their objective was simple: slow down the advancing Stone, bleed them, break them, bury them.
Then, the silence shattered.
Iwa was ready.
Without warning, our forces surged. The ground shook under the thunder of thousands of footsteps. From one end of the front to the other, Iwagakure's forces launched a full-scale assault.
Not a strike in one place.
Everywhere.
An attack across the entire front—something even Konoha hadn't expected. It was reckless, it was brutal, it was ambitious.
And it worked.
The defenders of the Hidden Leaf, caught off guard by the sheer scale of the assault, reeled. Their outposts were hit with relentless force. Defensive formations crumbled. Explosions bloomed like deadly flowers in every direction.
But victory did not come cheap.
The forest, laced with Konoha's hidden traps and rigged with burning jutsu, punished every step we took. Earth-style walls crumbled under surprise fire bombs. Entire squads vanished into pits camouflaged beneath foliage. The bodies piled high on both sides, until the soil itself turned red.
By the end of that first day, the death toll eclipsed every other front of the war combined.
Konoha fought back with terrifying efficiency. Orochimaru issued orders at lightning speed—reassigning platoons, sending in reinforcements, and even launching counter-assaults to stabilize his collapsing lines.
Still, it was not enough.
No matter how cunning the Snake Sannin was, Konoha was forced to do the one thing it never wanted: retreat.
But even that retreat was calculated. Minato and Orochimaru ordered their men to fall back slowly, deliberately, creating a scorched earth behind them. With each step they gave, they took blood as payment.
Then came the breakthrough.
By the second day, a massive Iwa force finally carved its way through the densest part of the forest. They breached the Leaf's defensive line, pressing forward with brutal momentum. Their target was clear—the first city designated in Operation Falling Tree.
With the entire Leaf front preoccupied trying to hold the line, they had no room left to redirect enough ninja to stop this assault.
All Konoha could do was scramble to fortify the city—to delay the inevitable.
But the fall came fast.
The Siege of the First City was swift… and devastating.
The Iwa shinobi didn't even wait for the cover of darkness. At high noon, they began their assault. They shaped the very earth beneath their feet—creating massive domes and walls of hardened stone to shield their advance.
Konoha's defenders launched volleys of Fire Release techniques in desperation, scorching the horizon with blazing waves of chakra. But it wasn't enough.
The Iwa ninja moved forward like a tidal wave of rock and steel.
When they reached the walls, the defenders knew it was over. The city's defenses, hastily reinforced and poorly designed for such a siege, were no match for Iwa's earth techniques. The walls shattered under pressure—crumbling like sand before a flood.
And then… chaos.
Fire and stone rained down across the city. Explosions lit the sky. The scent of ash and blood filled the air. Civilians cowered in locked homes, praying the war would pass over them like a storm.
It didn't.
Despite their courage, despite their last-stand resistance, Konoha's shinobi were overwhelmed. Outnumbered, exhausted, and backed into the narrow streets of the city, they fought to the bitter end. But as night fell, their bodies lay in heaps.
The Iwa dead were treated as heroes. Their remains gathered, their names marked for their families back home. The Konoha dead? Their blood still soaked the walls and streets.
The first city had fallen.
The psychological blow to Konoha's forces was immense. Their outer line collapsed, and retreat became the only option. They fell back once more, deeper into the forest, trying to regroup and secure the second city before Iwa could reach it.
This time, Orochimaru didn't wait.
With grim determination, he personally took charge of the next city's defense. He ordered it fortified, battlements expanded, and traps doubled. Portions of Konoha's remaining forces were sent there immediately. He would not let another city fall without a fight.
Then came the message.
The Hokage, sitting in the heart of the Hidden Leaf Village, read the disaster reports with a heavy heart. The death tolls. The collapse of the city. The growing strength of Iwa's advance.
And Orochimaru's request.
A demand for reinforcements.
The Hokage—torn between battles on four fronts—had no choice. With grit in his voice and resolve in his eyes, he redirected every available shinobi to face the Stone.
Fresh graduates from the Ninja Academy—barely trained genin—were conscripted into emergency combat squads.
Veterans fighting on the fronts against Kumo, Kiri, and Suna were pulled back. Elite units were reassigned.
Altogether, nearly 1,000 new shinobi were committed to the Iwa front.
It wasn't a flood, but it was hope.
The only thing the Hokage asked in return?
"Orochimaru… protect the Leaf. At any cost."