Darkness.
Cold.
Weightless.
The boy drifted.
Not in water. Not in air. In something else.
Limbo.
His eyelids twitched.
His thoughts flickered.
"I'm not… dead."
He felt pressure.
No pain. Just pressure. Like something squeezing his soul.
Then—light.
A slit of it, cutting through the dark.
A red moon hung above him, cracked like glass. Floating upside down in a starless sky.
His body touched something.
Ground?
He looked down.
Black dust.
Ash.
An endless wasteland, scorched and dead.
The red moon pulsed.
Like a heartbeat.
Thump.
The boy stepped forward.
No wind.
No sound.
No chakra.
Yet something watched him.
From far. From within.
He didn't flinch.
He had been watched his whole life.
But this was different.
This was… inside.
He turned around.
There was no one.
Just a shape—slowly forming from the ash.
Human-like.
But faceless.
Its eyes opened. No pupils. No sclera. Just red.
Same red as the moon.
"Who are you?" the boy asked.
The thing didn't answer.
It stepped forward.
Its feet didn't disturb the dust.
Its body flickered.
Like a mirage.
Then it spoke—without lips.
Without sound.
"You are not him."
The boy narrowed his eyes. "Who?"
"The one you stole from."
Silence.
His fists clenched. "Stole?"
"You wear his body. But the soul isn't whole."
"I reincarnated," the boy said. "This body was empty. No soul in it."
"There was. A sliver. Trapped. Screaming."
The boy's breath caught.
He looked down at his hands.
They were trembling.
The figure stepped closer. Now towering.
"You broke the dojutsu. But not alone."
"What do you mean?" he asked, voice cracking slightly.
The figure tilted its head.
"He saw the moon. Before you. He reached for it. Before you."
"No…"
"He failed. You succeeded. But you are… fragments. Two souls… in conflict."
The boy staggered back.
The red moon brightened.
The wasteland trembled.
Then—screams.
Faint.
Childlike.
Dozens of them.
He dropped to his knees.
Clutching his ears.
The faceless entity faded… and reformed behind him.
Its whisper dug deep into his mind.
"You were not chosen. You were… pulled."
By what?
By who?
The boy's eyes widened.
Suddenly, memories flashed.
A burning village.
A glass mirror.
A woman's whisper.
A hand pulling him from the river of souls.
Not his mother.
Not a god.
Something else.
The presence. The void. The eye.
His dojutsu.
It wasn't his.
It had a will.
Of its own.
He screamed.
Darkness surged from his eyes.
The red moon cracked again—splitting down the center.
Then—everything shattered.
Ash scattered.
The figure dissolved.
And he woke up.
Gasping.
Back in the cave.
His real body.
Sweating.
Heart racing.
His dojutsu was active.
But something was wrong.
The left eye burned. Hard.
He rushed to the reflection in the stream nearby.
The iris was spinning.
Violently.
Unstable.
And then—new lines etched themselves into the pupil.
Foreign.
Unfamiliar.
The dojutsu evolved.
Without his will.
He heard footsteps.
Behind him.
He turned.
It was the girl. Silent. Watching.
"You screamed," she said.
He didn't reply.
She looked at his eye.
Then said something strange.
"You saw the other side… didn't you?"
His breath stopped.
She knew.
She saw it too.
But before he could speak—
The cave trembled.
Stone cracked.
An enormous pressure dropped from above.
Both of them felt it.
Chakra.
Wrong. Malicious. Ancient.
He stood.
Ready.
But his eye kept spinning.
And the voice from the dream whispered once more—
"The moon will break. And so will you."