The air was still.
Kakashi stood at the edge of a deep ravine, cloaked in silence before dawn. Mist clung to the rocks and trees like ghostly fingers, hiding the steep walls that plunged into darkness below. His breath was steady, but every muscle in his body was tense. This place, far beyond the borders of the Hidden Leaf, hadn't felt the footsteps of shinobi in centuries.
It was known only in myth as The Mouth of the Void.
Legends claimed it was once a battlefield in the war between the Sage of Six Paths and the chaotic origins of chakra itself. Now it was sealed off by natural barriers and forgotten time. Yet the ancient symbol Kakashi had seen in the forest glowed at the edge of the ravine, pulsing with the same disturbing rhythm that had affected his Sharingan.
He activated it now, the Mangekyō flaring to life in his left eye.
And the seal responded.
A pulse, a hum, a tremor through space itself.
The ravine shimmered. Air bent unnaturally, folding inward like rippling glass. Kakashi took a breath and stepped forward. Not with his feet, but with his chakra. Kamui surged to the surface as he aligned his space-time energy with the seal's rhythm. The world distorted.
Then he vanished.
.....
He appeared in a space without form. A void, infinite and echoing. No wind, no gravity, no ground just floating particles of light and bits of memory drifting like leaves.
Kakashi stood on nothing, surrounded by everything.
He saw flashes of battlefields. The moment Minato fell. Rin's eyes as she died. Obito's final words. Naruto's defiance. Sasuke's hatred. They spun like echoes from his past, not illusions, but realities that his soul had buried.
This isn't just another dimension, is it? Kakashi whispered.
This is a mirror of the soul.
From the swirling light, a figure stepped forward a perfect replica of himself. But its eye glowed with twin Mangekyō. Its chakra was immense. Its face wore no mask.
You're the shinobi you could have been, Kakashi said quietly.
The doppelganger nodded.
The one who never lost Rin? Who kept both eyes? Who never knew failure?
They stared at each other in silence.
To ascend, you must defeat the self that clings to the past, the other Kakashi said.
Not to erase pain, but to master it.
The battle exploded without warning.
Kamui clashed with Kamui, space folding and breaking in waves. Kakashi wove through fire, lightning, and shadow clones, his body pushed to its limits. Each blow exchanged was not just chakra, but memory, guilt, regret, and hope.
The void cracked.
He was thrown backward, blood seeping from his arm, his chakra flaring wildly. But his eye never lost focus. The real Kakashi didn't fight to win. He fought to protect.
And in the final moment, he stopped.
He lowered his kunai.
I accept who I was, he said.
But I choose who I become.
The doppelganger smiled, fading like mist.
In its place, a brilliant light burst forward not an attack, but a gift. A mark appeared on Kakashi's hand, echoing the seal he'd discovered in the forest. It pulsed in time with his heart.
Kamui reacted.
He didn't just control space now.
He could feel it.
Shape it.
Merge his chakra with it.
He reached a new level of mastery not from new powers, but from perfect harmony with the power he already possessed. A shinobi's enlightenment.
But the trial wasn't over.
As he floated within the Void, a second pulse rumbled through the emptiness colder, sharper, laced with malice. A presence had sensed his awakening. Kakashi turned slowly, and out of the black came a voice like shattering glass.
You crossed the threshold too soon.
From the shadows emerged a cloaked figure whose body radiated fractured chakra, corrupted and ancient. Its eyes glowed not with Sharingan, not with Byakugan, or Rinnegan, but with something forgotten by time.
Who are you? Kakashi asked, preparing his stance.
I am what remains of the Shinju's first guardian, it hissed.
Before chakra was a gift, it was a curse. I was its jailer. And now\... its avenger.
Kakashi felt the space around him constrict as gravity twisted and splintered. He launched Kamui, warping toward the entity, but it shattered into a mist of black flame. The Void roared.
You are not ready to bear this burden, it said, reappearing above him.
A spear of distorted space shot toward him, and Kakashi bent reality sideways, teleporting inches from destruction.
The clash lit the Void with streaks of chakra fire, time-dilated lightning, and crushing waves of gravity. Then silence. The figure withdrew, not defeated, but curious.
You carry the seed, it said.
But you have yet to bloom.
The realm began to collapse, folding into itself. Kakashi fell, but the fall was upward, sideways impossible.
Then reality returned. He was back at the ravine.
He gasped, stumbling forward, knees hitting stone. Sweat drenched him. His body ached from strain not physical but dimensional. The mark on his hand still pulsed, but his Sharingan was dormant.
The wind whispered.
Kakashi looked toward the rising sun.
Something ancient had awakened.
And something else had seen him.
Tested him.
Marked him.
He was not just walking the path of the Sage.
He was now part of a conflict older than nations.
He rose to his feet.
He would not falter.
Because the world needed more than a Hokage now.
It needed a guardian of balance.
A god who remembers pain.
And chooses to rise above it.
.....