Midnight.
Konoha slept.But Raien couldn't.
He sat on the rooftop.Eyes on the stars.His body still.Mind racing.
The well.The message.The vision.
He remembered the masked man.
The same one…He saw during the Third War.
No name.No face.Just the mask…And those eyes.
Mangekyō.
Raien's hand trembled.
That man had the same aura…As the voice in his head.
Across the village…They gathered.
In silence.
Four figures.
Hidden by black cloaks.
Not ANBU.Not Root.Something else.
Each one bore a mark.Old. Cursed. Powerful.
Their leader spoke.
"She's awake."
"She?" one of them asked.
"The girl from the vision. She will soon awaken the other half of the eye."
Raien was unaware.He wasn't the only one touched by that well.
Another…Was beginning to stir.
Meanwhile.In the hospital.
A girl lay unconscious.
Bandages around her head.Monitors steady.No visitors.No name on the chart.
But her left eye—It twitched.
A faint red glow leaked out.
Just for a second.
Then silence again.
Back to Raien.
He looked down at the village.
Everything looked the same.But nothing felt the same.
He could see faint outlines around people.Threads.Lines of thought.Like ghostly whispers.
And the more he stared,The more the world bent.
He stood quickly.Shut both eyes.
Breathed in.Calmed himself.
"I'm not losing it…""But something's changing."
Back at the Hokage Tower…
Sarutobi wasn't sleeping either.
He looked at the report from the Academy.Raien's name circled in red ink.
Unstable chakra surges during Taijutsu training.Unregistered eye fluctuation.Untraceable jutsu signature.
He sighed.
Then turned the page.
Another name.
Reina Uchiha.
Status: Deceased.
Body missing from Uchiha morgue.
He folded the paper.Lit his pipe.
"Danzo's already moving pieces…"
He walked to the window.
"I need to decide whose side I'm on."
Elsewhere.
Danzo stood in a dark room.
Hands behind his back.Dozens of ROOT operatives knelt before him.
"Begin surveillance on the boy."
"Observe. Do not engage."
"If the eye manifests again… we move."
He turned away.
Whispered to himself.
"That eye… is not from this world."
In Raien's room.
The candle burned low.
He sat at his desk.Writing.
But not in ink.
In blood.
Letters he didn't understand.Symbols that wrote themselves.
His hand moved on its own.
He didn't stop it.
When he finished—He passed out.
Collapsed on the floor.
Hours later.
The sun peeked over the mountains.
Birds chirped.The village woke.
But in Raien's room—
The candle had burned out.
The scroll with blood writing had vanished.
And Raien lay there…
Eyes open.
Breathing steady.
But seeing something else.
A memory?
A dream?
A truth buried in time?
We see through his vision.
Flames.
Smoke.
Children crying.
A man with a sickle mask.Standing over corpses.
Then—
That same masked man.
Mangekyō spinning.Hand reaching toward Raien.
Voice echoing in his skull.
"You are not ready to remember."
A sharp pain.
Then black.
Raien woke up.Eyes wide.Heart racing.
His left eye burned.
He stumbled to the mirror.
Looked.
The sclera had turned black.The iris—red.Pupil split into three pieces.None shaped like a Sharingan.
Different.Strange.Unstable.
Like shattered glass.Held together by chakra.
He blinked.
Gone.
Just his normal eyes again.
But the headache remained.
He whispered to himself…
"What the hell am I becoming?"