“Where are we even going?” Mikoto demands.

The creature chuckles, and as Genma watches his upper body shifts, changes. He loses the more monstrous features, and a moment later a blue-skinned man with a shark’s tail is hauling himself all the way up to sit on the bank, his tail still dangling in the water. “No one has to get hurt,” he says, and deliberately sets Genma's knife on the grass. “You unlocked my prison. I'm not going to eat the guy who helped me out.”

There's something moving in the depths of the armory.

“Still breathing?” Madara asks, and the words are harsh in his throat.

There's something in the water.

In the center of the spring is a listing signpost, one of several long since faded into incomprehensibility. If there were directions there, Tsume can't see any trace of them, but there's an angel perched atop the signpost, wide white wings sending feathers drifting across the breeze.

It’s a gateway, but he doesn’t seem to realize that.