Night in Konoha was never silent — not truly. Even when the wind stopped and the fires dimmed, something always moved just beneath the surface.
Tonight, the silence felt heavier. Watching.
---
Akari was on the rooftop of the training barracks, eyes scanning the darkened village. He hadn't slept since the symbol appeared. Each time he closed his eyes, the voice grew louder. The figure in the glass, the whispers in the scroll vault, the name—Kagura—they all beat like a second pulse behind his thoughts.
He hadn't told Raien.
Not yet.
But Raien had begun to suspect.
---
"Something's changed," Raien said that morning.
"You've gone quiet."
Akari had only given a tired smile.
"I was never that loud."
Raien frowned. He wasn't wrong.
---
Now, that night, the wind shifted.
And Akari felt it before it happened.
A chakra pressure — foreign, raw, crawling against his skin.
He moved fast. From rooftop to alley to forest edge.
He wasn't the only one.
Raien appeared moments later, dropping beside him like a shadow. "You felt it too."
Akari nodded.
Neither spoke again as they advanced.
---
The trees opened into a clearing — the old Senju training grounds, overgrown and forgotten. In the center stood a lone figure cloaked in rags, arms limp, face hidden beneath a cracked porcelain mask.
The rogue didn't attack. Didn't speak.
He simply reached out…
…and touched the air.
And something rippled.
The trees bent inward. The light dimmed. A seal carved into the earth beneath him began to glow. And Akari's chest burned — the mark from his dream pulsing red under his shirt.
Raien saw him stumble. "Akari?!"
But Akari couldn't answer.
The mark was feeding off the seal. Reacting. Awakening.
His knees hit the ground.
Then… the world split.
---
Inside his mind, or something deeper—
He stood once again in the burned clearing, except now it wasn't empty.
The figure was there — eyes like violet glass, skin of shifting ink.
"Kagura."
"No," it said.
"I am what they sealed inside the name. You are what they forgot to destroy."
The ground cracked. Roots of black chakra slithered up from below. They wrapped around Akari's legs, climbed his chest, gripped his arms.
"You opened the door. Now you can't close it."
Akari screamed — but it was both pain and fury.
The roots sank into his skin.
---
Back in the real world—
Raien took a step forward.
The masked rogue had vanished — no movement, no chakra. Just… gone.
But now the earth beneath Akari was glowing red with the shape of a lotus, drawn in jagged lines of burning chakra. The air stank of iron and ozone. And Akari was no longer on his knees.
He floated.
Hair rising. Veins black. Eyes glowing violet like twin embers. His skin shimmered as if something beneath it was trying to break through.
"Akari?" Raien whispered. His voice was tight with fear — not of Akari, but of what was taking him.
Akari's mouth opened.
But it wasn't his voice.
> "This vessel remembers pain."
"And pain always returns."
He raised his hand.
The trees around them groaned — not from wind, but from pressure. A sphere of raw chakra erupted around him, pushing Raien backward.
Then, suddenly—
Akari's eyes flickered.
And he screamed — himself again.
The mark dimmed. The chakra collapsed.
He dropped to the ground like dead weight.
Raien rushed to his side, grabbing his shoulders. "Akari! Hey!"
Akari's breathing was shallow. His lips were cracked. But his voice came, broken:
> "I saw him…
I was him…"
Then he passed out.
---
Later that night – Council Room
Tobirama stood silently, arms crossed, staring at the burned field reported by scouts.
An ANBU captain whispered:
"We believe it was a failed rogue summoning. Nothing more."
Tobirama didn't respond immediately. His eyes narrowed.
He'd seen that seal before.
But not in a century.
> "Inform the elders," he said at last.
"Kagura has returned."