Darkness again.
But not the same kind.
Not falling.
Not dying.
Just quiet.
The kind of quiet that only comes after the storm has screamed itself hoarse.
He woke slowly.
To pain.
To light.
To her voice.
Soft. Sharp. Familiar.
"…you should be dead."
He blinked.
The ceiling above him wasn't stone.
It was fabric. Canvas.A tent.
Outside—wind whispered.Chimes clinked.Fire crackled low.
He sat up.
Groaned.
She pushed him back down.
Hard.
"Don't move. You lost a lot of blood."
He smiled through the pain.
"Danzo lost more."
She didn't smile back.
Her eyes were haunted.Not by what happened—By what came next.
He noticed the bandage on her hand.
"You fought too?"
She nodded.
"I held off his ANBU long enough for the tree to wake. You're welcome."
Silence.
Then she sat beside him.
Let the quiet settle.
Until finally, she asked:
"Do you know what that place was?"
He nodded slowly.
"The Grave of the Eyes."
She met his gaze.
"No. That was just the entrance."
Later that night, they moved.
The tent burned.
No traces.
No chakra left behind.
Just shadows and ash.
They walked through the forest in silence.
Their bond wasn't words anymore.
It was war.
Survival.
Trust earned through shared nightmares.
The boy kept his cloak drawn tight.
The sigil on his chest still burned sometimes.
The eye was quiet.
But not gone.
Never gone.
He asked once.
"How did you know where I'd be?"
She answered without turning.
"The eye told me."
He stopped.
"What?"
She finally turned, lifting her bangs.
Revealing—
A faint symbol.
Smaller. Different.
But related.
A lesser mark of the same dojutsu.
"The eye chose me too," she said."Just not as loud as it chose you."
He stared.
Silent.
Then nodded once.
They reached an abandoned watchtower at the edge of Rain territory.
Stone. Hollow. Forgotten.
But safe.
For now.
Inside, she unrolled a scroll.
Old.
Marked with the same sigils as the tree.
She tapped a location.
A mountain range near the border.
"In three days," she said, "they'll open the second gate."
"Who?"
She didn't answer right away.
Then finally—
"The Moon Hunters."
He frowned.
"I've never heard of them."
"You wouldn't. They erased their own names. Their chakra. Their history."
He leaned in.
The scroll burned under her finger.
Showing a temple—half-buried under snow.
"They want the eye. Not to use it. To seal it again."
"Why?"
"Because the first bearer… isn't gone."
He felt his stomach twist.
Her voice dropped.
"He's dreaming. Still. Beneath the ice. Waiting for the eye to come back to him."
Night fell harder in Rain.
The sky wept quietly.
The boy stood outside the tower, letting it soak him.
The world felt smaller now.
Every step he took, something followed.
Not Danzo.
Not ANBU.
Something older.
Inside him.
Watching.
Waiting.
Then he heard it.
A low hum.
From the sky?
No. From his eye.
He looked up.
The clouds parted.
The moon shone down.
Wrong.
It wasn't the same shape.
It was crescent…but with three tomoe embedded in it.
His heart stopped.
And the eye in his head responded.
It spun wildly.
Pain exploded in his skull.
He fell to one knee, gasping.
She rushed out.
"Hey!"
But he didn't hear her.
He saw something else.
A figure.
Floating in the moonlight.
Draped in cloth.
Eyes black.
Mouth sewn shut.
The original bearer?
No.
Something worse.
It raised a hand.
And the sky cracked.
He screamed—
And passed out.
When he woke again, she was there.
Waiting.
He sat up slowly.
"It's starting, isn't it?" he asked.
She nodded.
Eyes cold. Focused.
"They're calling the eye home."
He stood.
Body sore.
Mind sharpened.
"I'm not going."
She stared.
He clenched his fists.
"If the Moon Hunters want it, they'll have to tear it from me."
A pause.
Then she smirked.
"Good."
She tossed him a new cloak.
Black. Clean. Marked with their sigil.
"We've got three days."
"To do what?"
She grinned.
"To find the mountain… and wake the god before they do."
To be continued.