North of the Fire Country's border, a long road led toward the coast—into a vast, forgotten basin the locals once feared as a graveyard of ancient beasts. In the old days, villagers whispered that great monsters still roamed its depths and avoided it entirely.
But in recent years, fear had turned to reverence.
Daily offerings of food and cloth appeared at the stone altars.
Shadows moved in the caves etched across the sheer cliffs.
Deep below, an enormous cavern had been carved by hand—bedrooms, armories, storerooms: an entire hidden sanctuary.
There, atop a stone bed covered in layered mats, a broad-shouldered man in a black robe and red lamellar armor erupted in thunderous laughter.
"Ha—ha—HA! Tobirama… at last you see your day!"
"What a pity I wasn't there to watch you die with my own eyes!"
His laughter shook the chamber. He wiped a tear from one eye, strode to a carved nook, and ran his hand across a row of weapons until stopping at a prized relic:
A pair of ornate, gourd-shaped war fans—embossed with the three-tomoe Sharingan pattern, famed for being able to deflect even a tailed-beast bomb.
"The Flame-Gourd Fans…" he murmured.
There was no need for secrecy.
The man who stood alive in this underground crypt—long believed slain by Hashirama Senju at the Valley of the End—was none other than:
Uchiha Madara.
The Shinobi Asura.
The man whose very name had once reshaped nations.
Madara touched the fan and felt memory ripple across his features—fury, grief, the taste of death, and the determination of a phoenix clawing its way back to life.
"If I had stayed in Konoha… your heir would have been that boy."
He loosened his robe, exposing an old, deep scar across his chest—a wound that had once pierced his heart.
"Hashirama… you always were iron-hearted."
Without Izanagi, the forbidden ocular technique that cost him an eye, he would have died that day. Hashirama's own life had withered afterward; the God of Shinobi had passed soon after the battle. Yet Konoha continued under Senju rule, a reality that satisfied Madara… and stung him.
He reached for a sealed vessel on the shelf.
Inside floated a living, pulsing piece of Senju flesh—vital, rich with potential, preserved perfectly.
Beneath Nanga Shrine, the ancestral Uchiha tablet had told him the truth:
only by uniting the power of Uchiha and Senju could one awaken the Rinnegan—the power of all creation.
Madara clenched the vessel.
"It's time."
"Senju and Uchiha… fused into the eye of the Sage."
But he would not simply graft the flesh crudely; Hashirama was gone, and the world had grown soft. He had time. He would find a laboratory—whether in the Land of Lightning, Wind, Water, even Fire itself.
He prepared to leave.
Then news shook the shinobi world like a thunderclap—
Kumogakure had split in two.
A political and military cleaving, right across the gorge known as the Kumo-Thunder Rift.
South Cloud
Ruled by Kinkaku and Ginkaku—rebels who had slain their own Raikage.
North Cloud
Claimed by the rightful heir, Third Raikage Ai, who rallied the loyalists.
The world erupted with rumors.
The Lightning Daimyō, upon hearing of the split, flew into a rage. Priceless porcelain gifted by Fire Country lay smashed across the palace floors. Courtesans and entertainers fled as the ruler raged.
The daimyo's command was absolute:
"No funds until the two sides reconcile! Fix this disgrace at once!"
His envoys carried the message…
…and were promptly beheaded by Kinkaku and Ginkaku.
Even Ai's northern court drove out the daimyo's emissaries.
The shinobi world watched the spectacle with morbid fascination.
Humiliated, the daimyo cut off all financial support.
South Cloud answered by loudly declaring:
"If you don't give—then we'll take."
Raiding parties swept across Lightning Country within days, pillaging merchant routes and border towns. North Cloud's Ai saw opportunity; as long as South Cloud caused chaos, the daimyo would pour supplies into Ai's hands.
Indeed, caravans of food, steel, and rations arrived overnight.
Ai's scouts sent back glowing intelligence.
He requested more.
The daimyo, terrified South Cloud might plunder the treasury outright, granted everything.
Soon the nobles of Lightning Country whispered that ninja villages had grown too powerful—that no daimyo could fully control the military titans they had birthed.
Within five days, the Lightning Country had become a roaring storm.
Other great villages reacted instantly:
Iwagakure sent spies.
Kirigakure sent assassins.
Sunagakure sent envoys and opportunists.
All were eager to carve a slice from the chaos.
In the forests bordering the Land of Hot Water, Konoha's garrison observed the unfolding mess and realized:
Lightning Country would not threaten Fire anytime soon.
After reporting back to the village, the majority of Konoha's border forces were recalled—leaving only a light watch.
Thus, as the First Great Ninja War's fires guttered into an uneasy quiet…
Uchiha Soren—whose blade had helped push the world into this transformation—stepped once more onto Fire Country soil.
The first great war had ended.
The world had changed.
New lines had been drawn.
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