The exhaustion was a physical weight, pulling me back down into the dark before I could even process the reality of my bandaged hands. I drifted, not into sleep, but into a chaotic dissolution of self.
In the dream, I was standing in the middle of a crosswalk in my old city. The air smelled of exhaust and rain. People were rushing past me, their faces blurred like long-exposure photography. I reached into my pocket for my phone—a reflex, a tether to my reality—but my fingers brushed against something cold and rough. I pulled it out. It wasn't glass and silicon; it was a sharpened kunai with a wooden handel.
I looked up at the skyscraper across the street. The digital billboard, which should have been advertising a movie or a brand of soda, was flickering. The image of a woman laughing over a salad began to distort. Her skin turned to grey stone; her eyes bled into a pale, pupilless white.
"What was her name?" I whispered.
I was thinking of my sister. Or was it a friend? I tried to scream her name, but the sound that came out was a hollow rattle. Panic, cold and sharp, spiked in my chest as I realized the memory was dissolving. It was like watching a polaroid photograph being dipped in acid. The colors of my old life—the specific shade of my bedroom walls, the melody of my favorite song, the taste of a burger—were being bleached out, replaced by the suffocating grey of the Land of Earth.
I was being erased. The "me" that lived in the 21st century was being overwritten by the "Mu" that had survived decades of clan warfare.
Then, the sky split open.
The city sounds—the honking of horns and the chatter of the crowd—were silenced by a sound so loud it felt like the atmosphere itself was being torn in half. A shadow fell over the city, larger than any skyscraper.
I looked up.
Madara Uchiha, the Ghost of the Uchiha. He stood in the heavens, perched upon the nose of a Susanoo that was the size of a mountain range. It wasn't the glowing, translucent blue avatar from the anime. This was a physical god, a titan of concentrated, sapphire-colored malice that hummed with enough power to vibrate the marrow in my bones.
In the dream, I wasn't a bystander. I was back in the moment of the defeat.
I felt the heat before I saw the blade. Madara didn't even look at me; he looked through me, as if I were a speck of dust on a lens. He raised his hand, and the Susanoo mirrored the gesture, drawing a blade that seemed to be forged from the cold vacuum of space.
"Your 'Will of Stone' is nothing more than the stubbornness of a pebble beneath my heel," his voice boomed, echoing not in my ears, but directly in my soul.
The blade swung.
It wasn't a quick death. I felt the shockwave first—a wall of pressurized air that shattered every bone in my body before the steel.... no the chakra even touched me. Then came the light. A blinding, searing blue that stripped the skin from my muscles. I felt the agonizing sensation of my Jinton—my pride, my ultimate defense—being swatted aside like a child's toy.
The fear was absolute. It wasn't the fear of dying; it was the fear of being insignificant. Madara didn't hate me. He didn't even respect me enough to hate me. I was just an obstacle in the path of a man who intended to rewrite reality.
I fell. I fell through the burning skyscrapers, through the dissolving memories of my old life, falling until the blue fire consumed everything.
I snapped awake with a scream that died in my throat, choked off by the bandages.
My body was drenched in a cold, sickly sweat. I was shaking so violently that the stone plinth besides me rattled. I clutched at the edge of the bed, my bandaged fingers digging into the rock until the tips bled.
"Master! Master Mu, breathe!"
Onoki was there, his face pale with terror. He was holding my shoulders, trying to keep me from thrashing.
I stared at him, my vision swimming. For a moment, I didn't recognize him. I saw the red eyes of the Uchiha in the shadows behind him. I saw the blue fire licking at the corners of the room. I reached out and grabbed Onoki's collar, pulling him close. My breath was coming in short, jagged bursts.
"He... he is still there," I wheezed, the voice of the Mu-side of my brain clashing with my own panic.
"Who, Master? Madara?" Onoki asked, his voice trembling. "He is gone. He went back to the Leaf. We are safe in the mountain."
Safe. The word felt like a lie. How could anyone be safe in a world where a single man could swing a sword and change the geography of a nation?
I sat there for a long time, forced into a silence that felt like a tomb. I tried to find the office again. I tried to remember the name of the company I worked for. It started with an S... or a P? It was gone. The more I tried to grasp it, the faster it slipped through my fingers, like sand in an hourglass.
The shift wasn't a clean break; it was an invasive species taking root in a dying garden.
As the specific, warm details of my past life—the curve of my mother's smile, the exact smell of my first car's upholstery, the name of the girl I had hoped to marry—slipped away like water through a sieve, the void didn't remain empty. The "Will of Stone" surged into the gaps. It wasn't a choice. It was an anatomical necessity. My brain was reconfiguring itself to survive the trauma of a body that had been literally cooked by Uchiha fire.
I clutched my head, my bandaged fingers pressing into my temples. The terror was different now. It wasn't just the fear of Madara; it was the realization of the absolute, lawless brutality of the world I had inherited.
In my old life, there were rules. There was a social contract. If someone wronged you, there was a system. Here? I looked at the stone walls and saw them for what they truly were: a fortress built because the alternative was extinction. I was the leader of a village that was essentially a target painted on the side of a mountain range.
'I am the Second Tsuchikage,' I thought, and the weight of that title nearly crushed my remaining ribs. 'Every Kage in this era dies a violent death. Tobirama is torn apart by the Gold and Silver Brothers. Gengetsu and I kill each other. The Third Raikage fights ten thousand men until his chakra gives out. This isn't a story. This is a meat grinder.'
I wasn't a prisoner in this body, I realized with a sudden, jarring clarity. I was the successor. The old Mu was gone—his soul either extinguished or moved on—leaving me with his high-performance machinery and a checklist of looming assassinations. I was a man who had inherited a Ferrari in the middle of a demolition derby, and I didn't even know where the brakes were.
The danger wasn't just Madara. It was the sheer volatility of the era. Right now, the Five Nations were like five gunpowder barrels sitting in a room full of smokers. One border skirmish, one misinterpreted messenger, one ambitious clan head, and the world would drown in blood.
And I was the one responsible for the survival of thousands.
"Master? You're shaking again," Onoki's voice was a tether to the present. He looked at me with a mixture of awe and pity. To him, I was a hero suffering from the wounds of a god-tier battle. He didn't know I was a ghost trying to remember how to breathe in a world without oxygen.
I forced my hands to go still. I focused on the "Mu" memories—the technical ones. The way Earth chakra feels when you densify it. The way Wind chakra vibrates when you sharpen it. Those memories weren't fading; they were as sharp as glass. My personal history was being purged to make room for the data required to keep this village alive. My name, my childhood home, the faces of my friends—they were the price of admission.
"The danger..." I whispered, the word sounding like a landslide.
"Master?"
"The danger is that we think we are safe because we have walls," I said, my voice finally finding a steady, cold rhythm.
I stood up, and this time, I didn't let my knees buckle. I couldn't afford it. If I showed weakness, the "Hawks" in the Council would smell blood and drag this village into a war we couldn't win. If I showed confusion, the internal stability of Iwa would shatter.
I looked at the stone door. My past life was a dream I was slowly forgetting, a movie I had seen a long time ago. My current life was the cold, hard rock beneath my feet. I knew the names of the techniques. I knew the names of the enemies. I knew the names of the dead.
I didn't need my old name anymore. It wouldn't help me survive a Susanoo or outmaneuver a Hiraishin.
"I am not a prisoner," I muttered to myself, the words a vow. "I am the architect."
I gripped Onoki's shoulder. The boy winced under the strength of my hand—a hand that was now pulsing with a steady, controlled flow of chakra. I wasn't just Mu, and I wasn't just 'me.' I was something new. A modern mind with the most dangerous power set in history, forged in the fires of Uchiha's hate.
"Let's go, Onoki," I said, my white eyes glowing faintly through the linen wraps. "The Council wants to see the Tsuchikage. Let's not keep them waiting."