There was a moment...
...when Michel stopped breathing.
But it wasn't sudden.
It was like the final note of a well-played melody.
Conscious. Serene. Perfect.
He had lived many lives in one.
As a young man, a warrior. As an adult, a teacher. And in his old age, a wise man who found his deepest peace in the eyes of his grandchildren as they shared stories of impossible worlds.
Stories of warriors, eternal battles, mysteries of energy and fate…
Tales he had learned for their sake, and grown to love on his own.
In that final moment, as his heart exhaled for the last time, his life passed before his eyes.
Days of training beneath the burning sun.
Fights that nearly cost him his life.
The faces of those he had helped.
His family's laughter.
And the small things:
Hot tea, the scent of rain on tatami, the wrinkled hands of his wife.
It all flowed by like a slow river.
And Michel smiled.
Because he knew he had left the world just a little better than when he found it.
<<<< o >>>>
And then... he fell.
Not toward sky nor earth.
He fell between worlds, through a passage where time folded upon itself.
A place with no north or south.
A vortex where all that ever was unraveled and was born again in fragments.
As he fell, time and space felt achingly real.
The currents of energy around him, the flashes of other lives, fragments of wars and joys—all seemed unbelievably vivid, as if he was moving through the very history of another reality.
There was something hauntingly familiar in it all, but the pain and intensity were too real, too deep, to be dismissed as fantasy.
Finally, when he opened his eyes—if he still had any—he saw a broken world.
A moon shattered into drifting fragments hovered across a lifeless sky.
And on one of those fragments, a female figure floated, suspended in the void.
She was not dead, but neither was she alive in any human sense.
Tears streaked her eyes, a third eye remained closed on her forehead, and small horns curled softly from her head.
The vision was overwhelming—strange, sorrowful, and beautiful.
Michel could not hear her cries, but he felt the wave of suffering that swept through him, cold and profound.
He didn't know who she was.
But something about her stirred a sense of echo within him.
Not recognition… but resonance.
<<<< o >>>>
That was when the darkness awoke.
It was not sound that announced it, but the total absence of everything else.
A tremor passed through that unreal space.
Something manifested, as if it had always been there, simply waiting.
First a whisper.
Then a wind of voices.
Then an ocean of torn souls, screaming and crying from a single body that was not a body, in a voice that was not a voice:
"Michel…"
The name rippled through the void, carried by countless mouths.
A form began to manifest—not in shape, but in weight.
A shifting mass of screaming faces, devoured hopes, eyes and hands and twisted limbs, all speaking in unison with one voice that pulsed like disease.
"Master with no disciples."
"Enlightened soul."
"What a mistake to have let you come."
Michel did not tremble.
He had not before death. He would not now.
"Who are you?"
The creature did not answer with a name.
It answered with intention.
The souls spun, wept, laughed, begged for help.
A chorus of horror trapped within itself.
And in the middle of that broken symphony:
"I am Shikashi."
"Devourer of what remains."
"The last song of all that ever was."
"She thinks you can change destiny."
"I hope you try."
"Because that will make it all the sweeter to destroy you."
Michel could not move or speak,
but his inner light did not fade.
"There is a pact."
"If you realize the purpose of the one who weeps, I will cease to exist."
"But you will not understand it."
"Not even she fully understands."
"And yet... she clings to you."
Shikashi dissolved and reformed, its existence fluctuating without stable shape.
"We will send you."
"To an unborn soul."
"A pure girl."
"If you fall upon her... she will cease to exist."
"And your consciousness will replace hers."
Michel felt the pull.
Felt the force dragging him toward a life not his own.
Toward a soul--new, innocent, unaware.
He did not know her.
But he knew that if he descended, he would overwrite her completely.
Time lost all meaning as he was cast from an apocalyptic future into a distant past.
Through that strange tunnel dragging him toward a fate not his own, Michel saw... a world of people doing the impossible.
A world of symbols he vaguely recognized.
And the images that surged through him... began to take form.
This is the world of Naruto.
"No."
Not with voice, but with soul.
Not with words, but with decision.
And in that instant, he resisted.
He extended his energy—not like a ninja, but as a harmonious soul.
He touched the vibration that upheld the world's balance.
With that impulse, he stopped the impact.
He did not merge with the girl.
He did not destroy her.
But he became bound to her.
Suspended.
A luminous shadow, a guardian who never asked to be one.
From afar, the woman on the broken moon wept again.
And from the abyss behind him, the voice of Shikashi twisted once more, cruel and amused:
"Not the first, soul of light…"
"…but you'll be the last she wastes."
"One more, little goddess. One more attempt before your hope shatters completely."