He'd been caught in genjutsu from the very start.
No seals.
No Sharingan glare.
No flicker of chakra.
Just—somehow—his senses and thoughts had slipped sideways.
A cold so deep it felt like it might crack his bones sank into Aburame Ryoma's chest. His instincts screamed, the wordless animal terror drowning out everything else.
This man is no ordinary jonin.
This thing must not be left alive.
He didn't hesitate for even a heartbeat.
Forget the mission.
He turned and ran, pouring every ounce of strength into escape.
If he could just fight his way out of the Forest of Death, he'd be safe. However dangerous Uchiha Sogetsu was, he wouldn't dare publicly slaughter an ANBU in broad daylight.
Do that, and he'd mark himself as a missing-nin on the spot.
"Running away, huh?"
Sogetsu rested his fingertips lightly against his forehead and sighed.
"So very ANBU of you."
"Can't you ever just stay where I put you?"
Madness.
Ryoma's world exploded.
Pain detonated in his mind—a white-hot bomb going off behind his eyes.
"Aaaagh—!"
He screamed, dropping from the branches like a dead insect, smashing into the dirt hard enough to leave a crater.
Pain.
Pain.
Every nerve felt like it was being chewed apart by ants.
The agony came twined with whispers—thousands of overlapping mutters, shrieks, sobs—that clawed at the inside of his skull. His thoughts shattered like glass.
Blood burst from his nose, ears, and eyes. He writhed, smearing his mask in mud and red, howling like a beast.
"Uchiha Sogetsu… what the hell… did you do to me?!"
He clutched his head and rolled in the muck, veins bulging under his skin, his gaze going wild and feral.
"Me?"
Sogetsu spread his hands.
"Nothing much."
"Everyone knows I'm a psychiatrist, after all."
"I just… 'detonated' your psyche a little."
Madness was one of the Spectator path's basic tricks—one of the abilities of a Rank VII Psychiatrist.
By seizing on a target's emotions—their fear, their rage, their guilt—and pulling hard, he could throw their mind into chaos and inflict savage damage on their spirit.
Sss—
Sogetsu's brow twitched.
A searing ache stabbed along his own nerves, his focus starting to fray at the edges.
"Not good."
He clamped fingers over the bridge of his nose, withdrawing his spirit vision as he felt the potion in his veins stir, restless.
"I've burned too much spirituality in too short a time…"
"Keep this up and I'll be the one losing control."
The potion system was a double-edged sword.
It let humans climb into the realm of gods.
It also lined the path with madness and distortion, one step from turning into raw "materials."
Sogetsu exhaled slowly, tamping down the agitation in his blood.
Then he walked toward Ryoma.
Time to put a clean period on this little incident.
Intimidate.
"D-don't—don't come any closer!"
Ryoma's voice broke.
The moment he saw Sogetsu approaching, his body reacted before his brain. He scrambled back on all fours, leaving gouges in the dirt, eyes rolling, face twisted with animal panic.
"Stay away from me, Uchiha Sogetsu!"
Just now—just for a heartbeat—he'd seen something.
A dragon.
A titanic shape coiled behind Sogetsu, scales inscribed with twisting sigils that made his thoughts blur. A pair of pale-gold vertical pupils burned like suns, searing his spirit just by looking his way.
Is this man… really human?
"Are you afraid, Aburame Ryoma?"
Sogetsu's voice was low, but not cold.
If anything, it sounded like he was speaking to an old acquaintance he hadn't seen in years.
"D-don't come any closer."
Ryoma's back hit a tree; there was nowhere left to retreat.
His hands flailed, as if he could push the other man away with air alone.
"What are you, Uchiha Sogetsu?!"
"Human. Monster. Whichever makes you feel better."
Sogetsu kept walking.
The sunlight filtering through the leaves stretched his shadow out long and thin behind him.
In Ryoma's eyes, that shadow crawled—distorting into the hunched outline of a beast waiting to pounce.
Unease and terror wrapped around his heart in coils, the whispers in his ears rising to a maddening pitch.
"Don't come any closer. Please. Please don't come any closer…"
The elite Root operative was crying.
Snot and blood streaked his face behind the mask as he begged.
"Please, I'm begging you, I'm begging you, I'm begging you—"
The whispers finally began to fade.
The dragon from his earlier hallucination, its body inscribed with writhing glyphs, retreated to the back of his mind. The world straightened out. The insane twisting of space and sound ebbed.
His breathing steadied.
Sogetsu stopped walking.
He stood with his back to the sun; light spilled around him in a soft halo.
From Ryoma's angle, it looked like he was wreathed in gold—like a saint in an old painting, framed by holy radiance.
The last shreds of whispering dissolved into silence.
The pain receded.
His mind… quieted.
It felt like surfacing from deep, black water and finding a hand there, hauling him up.
"I have a question for you, Aburame Ryoma."
Sogetsu's tone was mild.
"Have you ever thought about what people live for?"
Streaks of sunlight filtered through the canopy, scattering around them like dust motes.
Ryoma swallowed.
"I… don't know."
The words slipped out before he could stop them.
Maybe he didn't realize it himself, but in that instant, somewhere deep down, he'd started to feel a thin thread of awe toward this man.
"I think the answer is simple," Sogetsu said.
"Peace of mind."
"Peace… of mind?"
A frown creased Ryoma's brow.
"Exactly. That feeling of being able to relax," Sogetsu went on gently.
"Everyone lives to overcome anxiety and fear. To feel safe."
He strolled a slow circle as he talked, like a priest pacing before a pew.
"You chase fame and status, so you can control others. Why?"
"To feel safe."
"You hoard money, chase profit, take bigger and bigger risks. Why?"
"Because having that wealth makes you feel safe."
"You fall in love, get married, make friends. You throw yourself into sacrifice, into 'justice,' into 'peace.' All of that—"
He spread his hands.
"—is just so your heart can unclench for a while."
"In the end, everything humans do is just… chasing that sense of peace."
Peace of mind.
Three simple words.
But they hit Ryoma's chest like a hammer.
He remembered Root's underground corridors.
Danzo's single visible eye.
The constant pressure, the constant fear: displease your master and you're a corpse by morning.
"People feel fear because they feel unsafe," Sogetsu continued.
His eyes seemed to look through Ryoma.
"The more unsafe they feel, the more fear gnaws at them."
"And you… are very unsafe right now, aren't you, Ryoma?"
He didn't need spirit vision to see it.
The man's aura, his posture, his voice—all reeked of someone who'd spent years waiting for the axe to fall.
"Since that's the case," Sogetsu said softly, "why not choose to serve me instead?"
He came to a stop behind Ryoma and leaned down, placing his hands lightly on the man's shoulders.
His breath warmed Ryoma's ear.
"If what you seek is peace," he whispered, "what's wrong with offering loyalty to the one person who can give it to you?"
He's right…
Humans lived for peace of mind.
If he couldn't find that in Root—under a master who only ever fed his anxiety—then why not kneel to someone who made that anxiety melt away?
"Sogetsu-sama…"
Ryoma's head bowed on instinct.
Not in fear.
In submission.
"Good."
Sogetsu smiled.
His right hand rose and ruffled Ryoma's hair as if he were taming a large, dangerous dog.
"Then I'll grant you what you're looking for, Ryoma."
"I'll give you your peace."
The weight of that hand, the warmth of that touch—Ryoma had never felt calmer in his life.
Yes.
This is it.
This is what I've been chasing all along.
Not the approval of a shadow hiding in some dark corner of the village.
But the quiet conviction that someone would stand above him and say:
It's fine. You're safe now.
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