The final battle was over.
Sasuke remembered pain—bright, searing pain that had torn through his body like a storm cleaving a forest. His hand, blackened with Amaterasu's embers, had plunged into the heart of the infinite Tsukuyomi. He remembered Naruto's face, bloodied and smiling, fading away in a haze of light.
Then… silence.
Not death.
Not rest.
Just darkness.
A wind stirred.
It wasn't the sterile chill of Konoha's mountains or the dry breeze of the Uchiha compound. This wind smelled of moss, pine, and old blood.
Sasuke opened his eyes.
He lay on the damp ground of a forest, beneath a night sky pierced by stars unfamiliar and cold. The moon above was full—too full. Its silver glow had a clarity he couldn't recall even in the most peaceful of nights.
His hand twitched.
It wasn't burnt. It wasn't scarred.
His Sharingan… gone.
He tried to channel chakra. Nothing answered.
"Where… am I?" he murmured. His voice was hoarse, but steady.
Sasuke sat up, taking in the forest around him. Towering cedars reached toward the moon, their limbs creaking like old bones. Mist coiled around the roots. In the distance, he heard a scream—high, sharp, and unmistakably human.
Instinct drove him forward.
He ran, barefoot but light. His muscles, despite unfamiliarity, remembered motion. Years of training echoed in each step.
The scream came again.
He crested a ridge—and saw hell.
A small hut, shattered. Blood stained the grass in wild sprays. A man—a father perhaps—was pinned to a tree by a spear-like arm, his eyes wide in death. A girl, no older than ten, cowered beside her fallen mother.
And towering above them… was a demon.
Its limbs were too long. Its face was a twisted mask of hunger, eyes glowing like hot coals. Its body pulsed with veins like stretched ink beneath translucent skin.
It turned toward Sasuke.
"Oh? Another snack?"
It vanished in a blur.
Fast, Sasuke thought. But not faster than me.
Sasuke moved.
He ducked the incoming claw slash by a breath and swept low, grabbing a broken branch. He rolled beneath the demon's second attack and thrust the splintered wood into its knee.
The creature howled.
"You'll pay for that, human!"
Its hand lashed out, cutting across Sasuke's shoulder. Blood sprayed, warm and real. Pain hit him hard, unfamiliar without chakra-enhanced durability.
But Sasuke didn't flinch.
He rose, eyes calm, blood trailing down his sleeve. "You're loud," he muttered. "And weak."
The demon charged.
Sasuke sidestepped, pivoted, and drove the broken branch through the demon's eye. It shrieked—staggering back in shock. Sasuke grabbed the fallen father's dropped blade—a crude farming sickle—and, with a motion too precise for someone without formal sword training, beheaded the demon in one stroke.
The head hit the ground with a wet thud.
The body twitched. Turned to ash.
The girl stared in mute terror. Sasuke turned, crouched down, and looked her in the eye.
"You're safe now."
She nodded slowly, tears falling silently.
The next morning, Sasuke sat beneath a tree, wrapping his wound with a cloth strip he tore from his shirt. He stared at the rising sun—its warmth strange, too close to firelight rather than chakra. He felt heavier, limited, human.
But his reflexes remained. His instincts hadn't dulled.
And in the battle last night, something had stirred inside him—not chakra, but a rhythm. A breath he had never known before. It reminded him of the Uchiha Flame Control—but colder, sharper.
No Sharingan, no chakra… but I'm not helpless.
A shadow moved in the trees.
He looked up to see a figure in a black cloak, patterned with clouds and a metal mask.
"You're not from around here," the man said flatly.
Sasuke didn't move.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"I'm from the Demon Slayer Corps," the man said. "You killed a demon without a Nichirin blade. That's not something we overlook."
Sasuke stood.
"Then what now?"
The man paused, considering him.
"You come with me. We'll see what you really are.