Night fell quietly over Konoha.
The village lanterns flickered dimly, their orange glow spilling onto narrow streets still damp from the funeral procession. In the distance, the faint hum of life continued—soft voices from homes, the creak of a cart wheel, the bark of a lone stray dog. Yet around the Senju compound, a heavier silence hung, as if the soil itself mourned the absence of its greatest guardian.
In a room lined with scrolls and old maps, Tobirama Senju sat alone.
His desk was neat, almost painfully so—ink and brush arranged with precise angles, scrolls stacked in perfect symmetry. But his mind was anything but orderly.
Hashirama was gone.
The village still stood, but the man who made it—who held it together with sheer will and a smile that disarmed even his fiercest rivals—was gone. And now the weight of the Hokage mantle pressed down like a mountain.
He thought of the Uchiha. Restless. Watching. Waiting. He thought of the daimyo and their endless games, already circling like vultures. And beyond them, the other villages—Kumo, Iwa, Kiri—all seeing opportunity in Hashirama's absence.
He would not let Konoha fall. He couldn't.
But even Tobirama, with all his logic, all his planning, knew the truth: Hashirama's dream was already fracturing.
And then there was him.
---
The door slid open without a sound.
Tobirama didn't need to look up. He had felt the faint ripple—a presence that was somehow too still.
"You came," Tobirama said flatly, eyes still on the map before him.
Soromon Kenja stepped into the room with the quiet grace of someone who had all the time in the world. His robes were simple, dark, unadorned. His expression, calm. There was no arrogance in his gaze, no smugness—only the unsettling neutrality of someone who saw too much and judged too little.
"You wanted to speak," Soromon said, his tone even, almost gentle.
Tobirama set his brush down with slow precision, finally meeting his eyes. "I want to know what you're doing here."
Soromon tilted his head slightly. "Attending a funeral."
"Don't play games with me." Tobirama's voice sharpened. "You appear from nowhere, claiming distant Senju blood. You watch my brother's burial without kneeling. And then you speak to me of change as if you already know this village's fate. So I'll ask again—what are you doing here?"
For a moment, there was only the faint crackle of the oil lamp between them.
Soromon studied him in silence, then finally spoke.
"Your brother built this village with his heart," Soromon said softly. "But hearts are fragile. They stop beating. Dreams built on a single man always fall when he does. You know this."
Tobirama's jaw tightened. "And what of it?"
"This place can survive," Soromon continued, his tone calm, almost conversational. "It can endure beyond him. But not as it is. Not bound by the same old chains. Not tied to daimyo who treat shinobi as tools. Not trapped in the same endless cycles of blood that existed long before the word Hokage meant anything."
He stepped closer, his presence strangely weightless yet heavy all at once.
"You want Konoha to live. To grow. But you are pragmatic—you will only build within the rules you understand. I… am not bound by those rules."
Tobirama stared at him, eyes narrow. "And what are you offering? Protection? Power?"
Soromon's faint smile was neither warm nor cold. "Not protection. Not power. Change. A seed. Nothing more."
"A seed?"
"Yes. Something small. Something subtle. Something that will grow quietly beneath the surface. It won't make you invincible. It won't save you from every enemy. But over time, it will take root… and this world will not be the same."
---
Tobirama was silent.
He had faced gods of war, monsters with eyes that could burn mountains, enemies who moved like shadows. He had seen jutsu that twisted the laws of life and death. But none of them unnerved him like this man's calmness.
Soromon wasn't threatening him. He wasn't even asking for anything. He simply stated what would happen, as if it were already decided.
"And what would this 'seed' cost me?" Tobirama asked at last.
"Nothing," Soromon said. "It does not bind you. It does not demand obedience. It only exists."
"Nothing comes without cost."
"Not everything is a transaction," Soromon replied quietly. "I am not here to take. I am here to see."
"To see what?"
"Whether this world can grow beyond itself."
---
Tobirama leaned back slightly, his sharp mind already running through possibilities. Was this man insane? A manipulator? Some lost relic of Uzumaki sealing arts? Or was he truly what he appeared—something outside their entire frame of reference?
He thought of the funeral. Of the silent soil around the Senju compound. Of the strange stillness that had lingered after Soromon's presence.
"You're not a normal man," Tobirama said finally.
"No," Soromon agreed. "But I'm not your enemy either. Think of me as… an observer."
Tobirama exhaled slowly. Logic told him to push this man out of the village. Instinct told him it was already too late.
"And if I allow this 'seed'?"
"Then you will see change. Not today. Not tomorrow. But over years, decades. Quietly. Inevitably."
"And if I refuse?"
Soromon's smile was faint, unreadable. "Then nothing changes. And we both know what that leads to."
---
The room was silent for a long time.
Finally, Tobirama spoke. "…Do it."
Soromon inclined his head slightly, as if this was the answer he had expected all along.
"Then watch carefully," Soromon said softly. "For once planted, a seed cannot be unplanted."
---
Later that night, in the deepest part of the Senju gardens, Soromon knelt again, pressing his hand into the soil.
The earth stirred faintly beneath his touch. Invisible threads of paradoxal energy seeped into the ground, intertwining with the natural chakra veins.
The land shifted—not visibly, not in a way anyone would notice tomorrow. But it remembered now. It remembered how it could be. It remembered how to grow beyond the scars of war.
A quiet hum spread beneath the compound. A new rhythm. A hidden logic.
The first seed was planted.
And with it, the fate of the Naruto world began to turn ever so slightly… off-script.