The chamber was dead quiet. Scrolls floated above like creepy ghosts — all still… except one.
That bastard trembled.
Naruto felt it before he even saw it. A sick pull, deep in his gut, like the whole fucking floor just woke up and wanted blood. The scroll drifted down in front of him, glowing blood-red like it was daring him to touch it.
It gave him a damn headache just looking at it.
"The hell now…?" he muttered, jaw clenched.
He reached out — and the second his fingers brushed it, flames exploded around him.
No fire. No heat. Just blinding-ass light — thick, choking, like being shoved into a fucking lightning storm with your eyes open and your guts screaming.
Next thing he knew — he wasn't in the chamber anymore.
He was standing in some blown-to-shit valley.
Ash everywhere. Smoke hung in the air like a fucking funeral that never ended. The sky was colorless. No birds. No wind. Just silence and corpses.
Dead shinobi scattered across the ground. Weird-ass clan symbols on their armor. Some looked ancient. Others? Shouldn't even fucking exist.
Right in the middle — a boy.
Same age as Naruto. Silver-haired. Eyes like burning gasoline.
Scroll in one hand. Blood dripping from the other.
"I tried," the boy said. Quiet. Hollow. Like he'd already died inside. "But the scroll lied."
The vision twisted.
Now a man in black screamed his lungs out — his arm melting like butter while the scroll sucked him dry.
A woman in white tried to seal it — and just vanished. Gone. Like she never existed.
Then came a little boy.
Barely five. Crying his damn lungs out. Flames marked across his chest. Begging to forget whatever hell he'd seen.
Scene after scene. All of them touched by this one cursed scroll.
All of them broken.
All of them fucked.
A voice slithered through the smoke, low and cold.
"Flame-Bearers… chosen. Cursed."
Naruto's body snapped back.
He stumbled, gasping like he just drowned in poison. The scroll dropped from his hand with a soft little thud. Smoke curled from his fingers like a sick joke.
His chest heaved. Breath wouldn't settle. Sweat poured down his spine.
"The fuck… was that?"
He looked at his hand.
No burns. But it still shook like a bastard.
That scroll?
That wasn't no jutsu.
That was a fucking curse in paper form.
And now… it knew his damn name.