A silence, profound and unnervingly absolute, hangs within the walls of a palace built deep within the core of the moon. For millennia, this celestial body has been the silent guardian of a sealed god, its interior a hollowed-out tomb and a sanctuary for a lineage long forgotten by the world below. It is here, far from the familiar scent of earth and the warmth of the sun, that Hinata Hyuga was brought after being torn from her world by Toneri Otsutsuki.
"Hmm..."
A soft groan escapes her lips as consciousness returns, pulling her from a black, dreamless void. Her eyelids flutter open, heavy and slow. The world swims into focus, a disorienting tableau of opulent, alien architecture. A canopy of shimmering, silk-like material hangs above a bed far grander than any she has ever seen. The air is thin, sterile, and carries a faint, metallic scent. This is not Konoha. This is not anywhere on Earth.
Realization strikes like a bolt of lightning. With a gasp, Hinata sits bolt upright, her heart hammering against her ribs. Her ninja instincts scream at her, overriding the lingering haze of unconsciousness.
"You're awake."
The voice is soft, almost melodic, but devoid of emotion. Hinata's head snaps to the side. Standing by her bed is a girl, perhaps twelve years old, with pale skin and lifeless eyes that give her the disturbing appearance of a porcelain doll. She is dressed in an immaculate maid's uniform, her hands clasped neatly before her, waiting with unnerving patience.
"I remember... I was attacked," Hinata murmurs, her mind racing to piece together the fractured memories. The sudden assault, the strange puppet-like ninja, and the face of the man who called himself Toneri. Her gaze lands on the silent girl again. "Where am I?"
Before the doll-like maid can answer, the grand doors to the chamber swing open with a silent, graceful sweep. A figure steps through, his silhouette framed by the strange, ethereal light of the corridor beyond. It is Toneri. His eyes are wrapped in thick, white bandages, as if he has just undergone some delicate and profound surgery.
The sight of him ignites Hinata's training into action. In a single, fluid motion, she leaps from the bed, landing silently several meters away. Her hands snap into the iconic starting posture of the Gentle Fist, her body coiled with focused intent.
"Byakugan!"
A network of thick veins bulges around her temples as her pearl-white eyes transform. The world shifts into a 360-degree panorama of muted grays and blacks, every object and person rendered as a vessel for the flowing, vibrant river of chakra. Her gaze locks onto Toneri, and what she sees makes her blood run cold. A powerful, unfamiliar chakra pulses from him, but it's the energy concentrated behind those bandages that makes her breath catch in her throat.
"What is your purpose?" she demands, her voice low and steady despite the tremor of fury rising within her. Her Byakugan sees the truth with terrifying clarity. The chakra signature is unmistakable.
"Those are... Hanabi's eyes," she whispers, the words tasting like ash. The realization hits her with the force of a physical blow. Stunned disbelief gives way to a white-hot, protective rage she has never felt so intensely before. Her expression hardens, her gentle demeanor vanishing beneath a mask of cold fury. "What did you do to my sister?!"
Toneri offers a faint, serene smile, completely unfazed by her hostility. "As expected of the Byakugan Princess. The one I have chosen sees the truth so quickly." He takes another step into the room, his posture relaxed, almost casual. "I required her eyes. Their purity was the final key needed to awaken my own. To open the Tenseigan."
"Tenseigan?" The name is foreign to her, a dōjutsu she has never heard of in all her clan's extensive histories.
"The ultimate eye of the Otsutsuki clan," Toneri explains, his voice taking on a messianic fervor. "With its power, I will enact the will of our ancestor, Hamura Otsutsuki. I will pass judgment on the failed world the Sage of Six Paths created—a world of shinobi who have forgotten the meaning of chakra and turned it into a tool for endless war."
A wild, ecstatic smile spreads across his face. He moves forward, then drops to one knee before her in a gesture of profound reverence. "To create a new, peaceful world from the ashes of the old, I must have a partner. A progenitor for a new humanity." He lifts his bandaged face towards her, his smile unwavering. "You are that person, Hinata. Please, do me the honor of becoming my wife!"
His sudden, insane proposal leaves Hinata momentarily speechless. The sheer delusion of his words is staggering. Her shock quickly curdles back into righteous anger.
"I have no idea what madness you're spouting," she snarls, her voice sharp as splintered ice. "Give me back Hanabi's eyes!"
Swoosh!
Pushing off the balls of her feet, she launches herself across the room, a white-and-lavender blur of motion. As a master of the Gentle Fist, her speed in close quarters is immense, her palm aimed precisely at the tenketsu point over Toneri's heart.
Yet, the man before her, his vision completely obscured by bandages, simply tilts his head. It's a subtle, almost lazy movement, but it's enough. Her palm strike, which could cripple a jōnin, slices through empty air. Before she can recover, his hand darts out, clamping around her attacking arm with the unyielding strength of steel bands. She tries to yank her arm free, channeling chakra to enhance her strength, but it's like pulling against a mountain. He doesn't move a single inch.
"I understand," Toneri says, his voice laced with a condescending pity that only fuels her rage. "To see your home world destroyed is a difficult truth for anyone to accept. But I am merely fulfilling the thousand-year-old decree of my ancestors. Be patient. Listen to my words, and you will come to understand."
Back on Earth, a strange phenomenon is occurring. As if some unseen celestial gear has shifted, the moon's terrifying descent has begun to slow. Its looming presence still fills the sky, a harbinger of doom, but the rate of its approach has noticeably decreased. Across the globe, the constant rain of meteorites lessens, granting the battered ninja world a brief, precious respite.
Deep within an ancient, subterranean world, Minato Namikaze looks up at the artificial sky, a vast dome of rock that cycles through an approximation of day and night. "The passage of time in here seems to be synchronized with the outside," he observes, a thoughtful frown on his face. The dimming light tells him evening is approaching.
At that moment, a flicker of movement resolves into a figure landing gracefully before him. It's his daughter, Chiharu.
"Dad, I found something!" she says, her voice tight with a mixture of excitement and dread.
"Lead the way," Minato replies, his tone calm and reassuring. He rests a hand on her shoulder. At sixteen, Chiharu stands tall, only half a head shorter than him. Like her mother, Kushina, she favors practical, simple ninja attire over anything ornate, her fiery red hair tied back severely. But even in her spartan gear, her sharp features and intense, intelligent eyes hold a striking beauty that she herself seems completely unaware of.
Minato focuses, locating Naruto's nearby chakra signature. With a silent application of his will, the world dissolves in a yellow flash. The scent of ozone fills the air for a split second before they reappear in a different chamber, this one shrouded in absolute darkness. Naruto is already there, holding a torch aloft, its flickering flame pushing back the oppressive gloom and revealing the secrets of the cavern.
The walls are covered in massive, ancient sculptures carved directly from the living rock, depicting scenes of forgotten history and strange, celestial beings.
"Dad, look at this," Chiharu urges, pulling him toward one specific relief sculpture.
Minato's eyes trace the carved lines. The sculpture is peculiar, depicting a massive, intricate pattern that immediately reminds him of a dōjutsu. His extensive research into the Uchiha's Mangekyō Sharingan has trained him to recognize such symbols. Following Chiharu's pointing finger, his gaze falls upon a line of archaic script etched into the stone beside the carving.
[When the Tenseigan awakens, the fist of the moon shall cleanse the world of man.]
Minato's pupils contract. "So it's true," he breathes, the pieces clicking together with dreadful certainty. "This entire crisis… it originates from the moon." He glances at his daughter, seeing the deep anxiety etched on her face. "This so-called Tenseigan… you believe it evolves from the Byakugan?"
Chiharu nods grimly. "The sculptures, the prophecy, the fact that they specifically targeted Hinata and Hanabi… it all points to it. They need the Hyuga clan's pure bloodline."
"But if that's the case," Minato muses, his strategic mind dissecting the enemy's actions, "why abduct two people? Why risk exposing their position and allowing Konoha to track them? It's a flawed strategy unless there was no other choice."
As the words leave his lips, a subtle fluctuation, entirely distinct from chakra, ripples through his heightened spiritual senses—a unique ability he has honed since his return. It's a cold, ancient feeling, like the echo of a long-dead soul.
"This sensation..."
He follows the feeling, his eyes moving downward, past the sculptures to the stone floor.
RUMBLE!
The entire cavern shudders. With a deep, grinding groan, a section of the floor retracts, revealing a hidden stone staircase descending into an even deeper darkness. Naruto and Chiharu tense, kunai appearing in their hands as they stare into the newly opened passage.
Minato is already moving, descending the steps with a silent, measured tread. He reaches the bottom and stops dead, his breath catching in his chest. The sight that greets him is both staggering and deeply somber. Before him stretches a colossal cemetery, an underground necropolis of countless graves extending as far as his senses can perceive into the oppressive darkness.
"What… what is all this?" Naruto asks, his voice hushed with awe and shock as he and Chiharu join their father at the bottom of the stairs.
Minato's eyes narrow. From the depths of the shadows ahead, a lone figure slowly emerges, walking toward them with a stiff, unnatural gait. It is the source of the spiritual disturbance.
No life signs… it's a puppet, Minato determines instantly. His mastery over Yin and Yang Release allows him to perceive the fundamental forces of life and death. The approaching figure is an empty vessel, but one animated by an incredibly powerful, lingering will.
As the ancient puppet draws near, its jaw unhinges with a dry crackle, and it spits out a small, pulsating sphere of pure white light.
"Dad!" Chiharu and Naruto exclaim, stepping forward to intercept it.
"Wait," Minato commands, raising a hand to stop them. He feels no malice from the orb, only an immense, ancient sorrow. Trusting his instincts, he steps forward and extends his palm, allowing the ball of light to drift into it.
The moment it makes contact, an explosive torrent of information floods his mind. It's a psychic echo, a memory from a forgotten age, as overwhelming as the moment his own past life's memories returned to him.
The world of the cavern vanishes, replaced by the sights and sounds of a brutal, primitive war. Armies clash on a blasted plain under a blood-red sky. But even as a veteran of the Third Great Ninja War, the scene that follows makes Minato's stomach clench. From one side of the conflict, a colossal weapon is wheeled forth—a terrifying construct built in the exact shape of the dōjutsu from the sculpture outside. It hums with a power that feels fundamentally wrong, a violation of nature itself.
The weapon fires. A blinding beam of pure energy erupts from its core, sweeping across the opposing army. There are no screams, no explosions, just a wave of silent, white annihilation. When the light fades, the battlefield has become a sea of molten glass and raging fire. All life within its path has been utterly, completely erased.
Staring at the instrument of god-like destruction, Minato whispers its name in horrified recognition, the knowledge flowing into him from the memory itself. "The Tenseigan..."
Suddenly, the vision shifts. He is back in the subterranean cemetery, but now it is no longer empty. Tens of thousands of translucent, ghostly figures stand among the graves—the souls of those who were annihilated in that ancient war. Standing in the place where the puppet had been is the spirit of its former master, his face a mask of eternal grief.
He steps aside, and from behind him, another figure glides forward. This new spirit commands an aura of power so immense it makes the air itself feel heavy. Minato's eyes widen. Floating behind the old man's back, arranged in a perfect halo, are nine black orbs—Truth-Seeking Orbs. The sight is chillingly familiar, an almost perfect mirror of his encounter with the Sage of the Six Paths, Hagoromo Otsutsuki.
The ancient spirit stops before him, its ethereal eyes studying him with a deep, penetrating gaze. A voice, ancient as time itself, echoes not in Minato's ears, but directly in his soul.
"You do not share my blood," the old man states, a note of profound surprise in his tone. "So tell me… why is it that you carry the echo of my brother?"