When Itachi's blade falls, fate should be sealed—until a Mangekyō opens in the one person no one expected to fight back.
Uchiha Clan Head Residence.
Master bedroom.
"Come in. There are no traps."
Uchiha Fugaku and his wife, Uchiha Mikoto, knelt on the floor with blank faces, answering the screams outside not with words… but with surrender.
The bedroom door opened.
Uchiha Itachi stepped inside, his body splashed with the blood of his own clan.
A Leaf forehead protector sat on his brow. He wore ANBU gray armor. In his hand, a sharp ninja blade gleamed under the lamplight.
Fugaku sensed his son's hesitation.
He lowered his head as if understanding everything.
"So that's how it is…" Fugaku murmured. "You chose their side."
"Dad… Mom… I…"
Itachi's eyes were red, but he couldn't bring himself to look at their backs.
"We understand, Itachi," Mikoto said coldly.
"Itachi," Fugaku continued, voice steady, "promise me one last thing."
"Sasuke… is in your hands."
"I know…" Tears overflowed from Itachi's three-tomoe Sharingan. His hands trembled around the hilt.
"Don't be afraid," Fugaku said firmly. "This was your decision, wasn't it?"
"Compared to you… our pain will last only a moment."
"Even if our beliefs differ…"
"We're still proud of you."
Itachi's blade, reflective as a mirror, hovered between his parents.
On both sides of the steel, their faces were reflected—calm, distant, resolved.
Finally, Fugaku spoke again, as if giving his son absolution.
"You really are… a kind child."
Something in Itachi's chest spasmed.
He bit down hard, jaw tight, tears spilling uncontrollably—dripping onto his hands, onto the blade.
Konoha's peace.
The clan's ambitions.
A dead-end situation with no path back.
A friend's oath.
For a world without war.
Everything—everything—
became black lines wrapping around his heart, strangling him until he couldn't breathe.
In that suffocating web, Itachi pointed his blade at the closest line.
The one labeled:
Clan.
As if cutting it would finally bring silence.
He didn't hesitate for long.
"I… understand."
The next instant, Uchiha Itachi—already committed to falling into hell—swung his blade down with all his strength.
Shhk—
Blood splashed across the wooden floor like a painter's careless stroke of crimson.
Fugaku collapsed.
And at that very moment—
Mikoto's body trembled.
Red light flared within her pupils.
A blade-shaped Mangekyō spun to life in her eyes.
Itachi's blade lifted again.
He swung—
And Mikoto's sleeve suddenly released a kunai into her palm.
She gripped it, spun, and blocked his blade head-on.
Clang—!
Metal screamed against metal.
Sparks exploded between kunai and sword.
Itachi's brow furrowed. He froze, stunned.
Then he snapped his gaze up with his own Sharingan and stared at his mother.
"Mangekyō…?!"
Mikoto's mouth parted slightly.
Her expression was blank—lost.
Her body, at that moment, wasn't hers.
It moved as if it had a will of its own—one message pulsing through muscle and instinct:
Not here.
Not now.
I don't want to die like this.
Mikoto retreated without hesitation, widening the distance—then slammed into the bedroom window.
Crash—!
Glass shattered.
She burst into the darkness outside, never once looking back.
"…"
Itachi stared at his father's corpse.
Then stared at his mother's fleeing silhouette.
His emotions lurched and buckled, unable to connect into anything coherent.
What… just happened?
Itachi was praised by Hiruzen as someone with the mind of a Hokage.
And after only a moment of thought, he reached an answer.
"Is it because she couldn't abandon Sasuke?"
"Father is dead."
"Mother awakened the Mangekyō…"
"But even if she's alive…"
"…it won't change anything now."
Itachi left the clan head residence and returned to the main street, scanning the darkness.
No sign of her.
"If both Mother and Father had possessed the Mangekyō…"
"…the one who would've died… would've been me."
With that grim thought, he continued deeper into the district.
As he moved, he glanced toward the Police Force Headquarters.
The sounds of fighting there had already stopped.
He had about fifteen minutes left.
…
…
Uchiha District outskirts.
Forest.
Dark. Silent. Cold.
Light footsteps and the whisper of swaying branches layered over one another as squad after squad arrived—three-man teams moving with practiced precision.
They wore blue-green patterned masks and gray-white harness armor.
Tattoos marked their left arms. Ninja blades were strapped across their backs.
They were Danzō's personal fangs.
An independent organization created under the name of ANBU training—
Root.
They crouched or stood on branches, motionless and predatory, like beasts raised in darkness.
Tap.
Tap.
The heavy sound of a cane striking the ground traveled through the trees.
Root members turned immediately.
Heads lowered. Bodies shifted aside, opening a path.
A figure emerged from shadow step by step—old, yet steady.
He passed through his subordinates and reached the front.
Moonlight washed over a face carved with wrinkles and crossed scars.
Shimura Danzō.
Left hand on his cane.
White bandages wrapped his head, covering his right eye.
His right arm was shrouded in a black robe and held close to his chest.
He lifted his chin, peering into the forest's depths.
His cloudy left eye narrowed.
His shadow swallowed the moonlight behind him.
As if wherever he stood… light simply didn't belong.
"Shimura Danzō…!"
Up in the branches, Nanpū and the others—still disguised among Root—felt their pupils tighten.
Their breathing stalled.
Kazuki brought them here… for Danzō?
Was this… suicide?
The thought struck like a hammer to the heart, yanking them out of grief by force.
This wasn't something you could accomplish.
Not against the Hokage's advisor.
Not against over a hundred Root elites.
Even with Kazuki's Mangekyō.
He controlled nine of them—but there were over a hundred Root here.
Was he going to control them all too?
That was the unspoken terror vibrating through the surviving Uchiha.
This was impossible.
Whoosh—
Two Root shinobi flickered back from deeper in the forest, landing in a half-kneel before Danzō with heads lowered.
"Danzō-sama. The battle in the Uchiha district will end shortly."
Danzō kept his chin raised, gaze lowered like a judge peering down from the bench.
"Good," he said in a low voice. "Go."
"Gather the eyes. Quickly."
"Yes… Danzō-sama!"
The Root member on the right suddenly lifted his head.
Behind the mask, his eye sockets bloomed red.
A blade-shaped Mangekyō pattern rotated silently in his right eye—an unmistakable provocation.
"Gather these eyes, you mean?"
He rose slowly.
The mask came off.
Uchiha Kazuki's face appeared.
The crimson glow of his Mangekyō—dense with Yin Release—pierced straight into Danzō's widened left eye through nothing but eye contact…
and met resistance.
A familiar resistance.
Three tomoe.
For an instant, a three-tomoe Sharingan fought back.
Then—
the Mangekyō's power crashed down like a collapsing mountain, a tsunami swallowing a creek.
Up in the trees, Root members reacted to the movement and looked down—
their eyes meeting that red light for a single heartbeat.
Every one of them froze.
Bodies locked.
Minds seized.
Like stone statues carved in the dark.
The Uchiha in hiding went rigid.
Kazuki… did it.
In one instant, he controlled everyone in the area.
It was proof of how overwhelming his Mangekyō truly was.
"What—?"
"Danzō-sama!"
"Enemy—!"
Root members couldn't speak.
They couldn't move.
Their minds screamed, but their bodies betrayed them.
Danzō's expression tightened as his thoughts snagged mid-stride.
"An Uchiha… here?"
He tried to shift—
and realized, too late, that even his muscles no longer belonged to him.
"Body… won't move."
Kazuki had appeared without warning.
How could Danzō have predicted that while he hunted the Uchiha like prey…
one Uchiha was hunting him back?
Then—
the Root member on the left lunged.
His mask fell midair, revealing Tamayū's baby-faced grin twisted into something savage.
"Old bastard—eat my blade!!"
Shhk—!
Tamayū lunged forward and drove his ninja blade straight through Danzō's heart.
Clean.
Efficient.
Tamayū moved under Kazuki's synchronized control—
but he was still thrilled.
Because he finally got to cut the man he'd always wanted to cut.
At the same time—
Kazuki's hand shot forward like a hawk's talon.
He tore through the bandages around Danzō's right eye.
Blood sprayed.
And Kazuki ripped a Sharingan from the socket.
Red-white.
Not ordinary.
A Mangekyō.
—Kotoamatsukami.
From nearby branches, the hidden Uchiha stared at that eye as anger ignited like gasoline catching flame.
In an instant, they understood.
Shisui's death…
…had Danzō's hands all over it.
Blood bloomed like flowers—simultaneously from Danzō's right eye socket and the hole in his chest—soaking his bandages and staining his clothes as he sagged toward the darkness.
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