The forest was breathing.
Not like a living thing.Like a trapped one.
Each tree twisted toward the boy.Bark warped like veins.Leaves shriveled.Branches cracked with no wind.
He walked.
Alone.
His footsteps made no sound.
His chakra was calm. Too calm.
Even the dojutsu, always pulsing—now watched silently.
As if it knew where he was going.
As if it remembered.
He stopped before a hill of black roots.
Dead, but pulsing faintly.
Like arteries.
Something was buried beneath.
The Grave.
He felt it.
A chill scraped down his spine.
Then a whisper. Not external. Not internal.
"Step forward."
He didn't hesitate.
The roots twisted, shifting.
Opening.
Creating stairs. Spiraling down into the hill.
He walked.
The earth swallowed him whole.
It was darker than night.
No torches. No jutsu. Just the faint glow of his eye.
The passage breathed.
Stone walls lined with markings. Ancient.
Each one pulsed as he passed.
Some wept blood.
Some shimmered like stardust.
He reached the bottom.
A circular chamber.
Empty.
Except for one thing.
A tree.
Dead.
Charred black.
Roots spread like veins across the floor.
Its trunk hollow. Cracked.Inside—dozens of eyes embedded in the bark.
All closed.
The boy stepped forward.
Something shifted.
Each eye opened.
Together.
All at once.
The chamber screamed without sound.
The boy staggered.
A pressure gripped his skull.
Each eye stared at him.
Not seeing him.
Recognizing him.
Not as friend.
Not as threat.
As mistake.
Then—a figure appeared.
He didn't sense it.
It was just there.
Standing by the tree.
Wearing bandages. Robes of ash and ink.
Its face—covered.
But its eye…
One.
Singular.
On its forehead.
Shaped like the moon.
Spinning.
Alive.
The boy stepped back.
"What are you?"
The voice that answered wasn't human.
It spoke from cracks in the wall.
From the eyes in the tree.
From his own chest.
"I am the Warden. Keeper of the Eyes. Sentinel of the Old Vision."
The boy clenched his fists.
His eye spun slowly.
The Warden tilted its head.
"Why have you come, Fragment?"
He blinked. "I'm not a fragment."
"You are."The Warden stepped forward.The chamber pulsed.
"You wear a stolen dojutsu. You walk a borrowed fate."
The boy's voice trembled. "Then give me the truth."
The Warden paused.
Then raised a hand.
Roots twisted, forming a pedestal.
Upon it—a scroll.
Old.
Sealed with the same sigil from before.
"Read. And remember."
The boy stepped forward.
His hands shook as he unrolled it.
Ink danced.
Not words.Images.
Visions.
Burning skies.
Men with eyes like suns.
Wars fought in silence.
Eyes that could unwrite time.
Then—
The first.
The origin.
A child born beneath the real moon.
An eye already open.
A power that defied gods.
He saw the child fall.
He saw the body sealed beneath a tree.
This tree.
His tree.
And before the child vanished—
That eye.
The exact one now spinning in his own head.
He staggered.
Memories that weren't his tried to crawl into his mind.
The Warden spoke.
"You see it now. The eye remembers its first bearer. And rejects the rest."
The boy dropped the scroll.
His knees hit the ground.
"I didn't choose this," he whispered.
"No. But it chose you."
The Warden stepped back.
"And now you must choose."
A root curled up, revealing two paths behind the tree.
One—lined with mirrors.The other—lined with empty masks.
"Will you become its vessel… or bury it forever?"
The boy looked up.
Blood leaking from his eye.
He couldn't answer.
Not yet.
He needed her.
The girl.
She had seen it too.
Maybe she knew more.
Maybe… she was part of it.
The Warden turned to leave.
"Choose soon. Others are coming."
The ground shook.
From above.
Voices echoed down the spiral.
Multiple.
Shinobi.
Tracking him.
Not hers.
Strangers.
Then one voice reached him clearly.
Familiar.
Cold.
"I know you're here, thief."
The boy froze.
That voice—
Danzo.
To be continued.