The ANBU didn't wait.
One moment they were standing in the rubble with him, the next they had formed a tight, protective circle around Kushina.
Two masked operatives gently but firmly took her arms, supporting her weight as she clutched Naruto to her chest with desperate, trembling strength.
The baby was still wrapped in the blood-stained blanket, his tiny face pressed against her.
Hiruzen Sarutobi walked beside her, his aged face etched with exhaustion and quiet urgency, pipe long forgotten in his hand. They moved quickly and silently toward the eastern edge of the ruined district — toward a private, high-security medical shelter built specifically for jinchuriki emergencies.
The kind of place where important people could be treated away from prying eyes, away from the village's chaos, away from everything.
Kael was left standing alone.
No one spoke to him. No one even glanced back. The group disappeared into the smoke and firelight within seconds, Kushina's crimson hair the last flash of color before the night swallowed them completely.
He stood there, frozen, arms hanging useless at his sides. The cold night wind cut through his torn jonin vest, but he barely felt it. His mind was a storm of confusion and disbelief.
They just… left me here. Like I was nothing. Like I didn't just do something impossible back there.
His heart hammered against his ribs. The new body he was in felt alien — too strong, too fast, too wrong. He had shattered a wooden beam earlier with barely any effort.
He could feel chakra flowing through his veins like liquid fire. But right now that power felt useless. He was just a guy who had died in a car crash and woken up in someone else's nightmare.
What am I supposed to do now? Stand here forever? Run? Hide? This isn't my world. This isn't my life. I don't even know the rules.
He stared at the spot where they had vanished. The baby had stopped crying.
Kushina had looked so relieved when that strange crimson-golden chain of light had flashed between them — that one heartbeat where something inside him had reached out and pulled her back from the edge of death. He could still feel a faint echo of it in his chest, warm and pulsing, like something alive and reaching.
What was that? How did I do that? I don't even know what I did. I just… reacted.
His hands trembled. He wiped them on his pants, leaving streaks of dirt and blood. The ground was still trembling faintly from the aftershocks of the battle.
Distant screams carried on the wind. Somewhere a child was crying for a mother who would never answer. The village was burning, and he was standing in the middle of it like a ghost who didn't belong.
Follow them, something inside him whispered. She's the only real thing here. The baby too. Everything else is smoke and death and questions I can't answer.
He didn't know why that thought felt so certain. Maybe it was the faint warm pulse in his chest. Maybe it was just pure terror of being truly alone in a world that wasn't supposed to be real. Either way, he started walking.
He chose the same direction the group had gone. That had to be toward the village center, right? In the anime he had watched years ago, once the fox was sealed into the baby, the danger should be over. No more rampaging bijuu. No more immediate threats. Just the long, painful cleanup and mourning.
It's fine, he told himself, repeating it like a mantra with every step. The Nine-Tails is sealed. Naruto's safe. Kushina's alive because of… whatever the hell I did. Everything's going to be okay. Just keep walking. Find the shelter. At least see if she's okay.
His new legs carried him faster than he expected. Each stride was long and smooth, the super-human strength making the rubble feel like nothing. He tried to focus on the movement to keep the panic at bay. The night was a blur of orange firelight and black smoke.
He passed destroyed houses with roofs caved in, overturned carts spilling goods no one would ever claim, a child's wooden toy half-buried in the mud. The air grew thicker with smoke the further he went. It clung to his throat, made his eyes water.
This is real, he thought, the realization hitting him again and again. This isn't a dream. This isn't a game. People are actually dying out here. And I'm… what? A side character who somehow saved the main heroine?
He kept walking.
The outer wall came into view sooner than he expected — or what was left of it. The massive stone barrier that had once protected Konoha was now a jagged ruin of broken masonry and twisted metal.
Smoke poured through the gaps like blood from a wound. The smell hit him before the sight did: thick, coppery blood mixed with charred wood and something sweeter and worse that he didn't want to name.
Kael slowed, swallowing hard.
His foot caught on something soft and heavy.
He stumbled forward, arms windmilling, and barely caught himself on a broken section of wall. His palm scraped against rough stone, drawing blood that healed almost instantly. Heart pounding, he looked down to see what had tripped him.
A woman.
She lay on her back in the rubble, arms still locked around a small child no older than four or five. Her upper body was crushed — ribs caved in, skull partially shattered where debris had fallen.
The child's tiny frame was similarly broken, face pressed into the mother's chest as if she had tried to shield him even in death.
Their blood had soaked into the ground and dried into dark, sticky patches. The mother's fingers were still curled protectively around her child's tiny hand.
Kael stared.
For three full seconds his brain refused to process it.
Then his stomach lurched violently.
He doubled over and threw up everything in his stomach — bile and acid burning his throat. His knees hit the dirt hard. Tears blurred his vision. He wiped his mouth with a shaking hand, gasping for air that tasted like death.
"Impossible…" he whispered, voice cracking. "This can't… this isn't real… this isn't happening…"
The words wouldn't come. His mind fractured. He had seen violence in movies. In anime. In the news back home. But this — this was real. The smell. The way the mother's fingers were still curled protectively around her child's tiny hand. The absolute stillness of bodies that had once been people with names and futures and bedtime stories.
A scream tore out of him — raw, animal, desperate.
It echoed uselessly into the night, swallowed instantly by the roar of distant fires and the cries of other survivors. No one came running. No one cared. He was just another broken thing in a night full of broken things.
He staggered upright, legs trembling, and kept walking. He had to. If he stopped, he would never start again.
Ten steps later he found another body — a jonin in a tattered flak jacket, half-buried under a fallen beam, eyes wide and glassy in death. Then an elderly couple curled together near a destroyed food stall, their hands still linked. Then three children in a small pile, as if they had tried to hide together under a collapsed cart.
Each discovery chipped away at him.
His breathing grew ragged. The smoke was thicker here, clawing into his lungs with every inhale. His new super-human body should have been able to handle it, but his mind was breaking faster than his body could heal. Tears streamed down his face. His chest heaved with sobs he couldn't control.
Why am I here? Why did I wake up in this? I was supposed to be done with everything. I was supposed to be finished.
The smoke burned his lungs. Every breath was harder than the last. His vision started to blur. The crimson pulse in his chest — that strange chain he still didn't understand — throbbed once, weakly, as if trying to reach somewhere far away.
Kushina.
The name surfaced through the panic like a lifeline.
But even that wasn't enough.
His screams turned into broken, gasping sobs. He crawled forward a few more meters on pure instinct, hands scraping over blood-soaked dirt, before his body finally gave out.
Darkness rushed in.
The last thing he felt was the ground slamming against his cheek and the distant, muffled sound of footsteps — ANBU boots crunching through rubble — growing closer.
Then nothing.