Chapter 2: The Progenitor Stirs
The void between worlds was silent.
Not the quiet of a peaceful night, but the crushing, suffocating stillness of a place where time itself refused to move.
Here, at the heart of the deepest abyss, stood a throne.
Its surface was made from the bleached bones of creatures long forgotten by any world — their shapes warped and alien, their skulls twisted into unrecognizable visages.
Upon that throne sat a figure, motionless as a statue.
He had not moved in millennia.
He did not breathe.
He did not dream.
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Then… a sound.
Crack.
The chains that bound him — woven from pure dimensional chakra — trembled.
A second crack, louder this time, echoed across the abyss.
Slowly, the figure's fingers curled, and with that simple gesture, the bindings shattered into dust.
His head lifted.
Eyes like twin eclipses, ringed in the ripple-pattern of the Rinne-Sharingan, opened for the first time in countless ages.
Each eye was a galaxy unto itself, spinning with power so dense it warped the air.
His long hair, silver as the moon's edge, spilled over robes that seemed woven from shadows.
Two horns curved back from his skull, not jagged like the warriors of his clan, but smooth and regal — the mark of an originator.
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This was Shukuyomi Ōtsutsuki — the progenitor, the first of his kind, the root from which the clan had grown.
A being so ancient that even Kaguya's name was but a whisper in his memory.
He raised a hand, and the void answered.
Fragments of reality drifted toward him — shards of space, scraps of sound from a thousand worlds, whispers of dying stars.
He tasted them as one might taste the air.
And then… his face darkened.
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"…Nothing."
The voice was low, cold, yet each syllable struck like a hammer against the air.
He stretched his senses farther — into the dimensions that had once teemed with his clan.
There was no pulse of familiar chakra.
No spark of celestial presence.
The tapestry of his bloodline… was gone.
"…All… dead."
He rose from the throne, each step sending ripples through the dimension's skin.
It was not sadness that gripped him.
Not grief.
It was fury.
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"Who?"
His voice was not a question for the sake of answer — it was a demand for the universe to obey.
The void itself shuddered and bent.
Images swirled before him — echoes of the Otsutsuki downfall. Battles across dimensions. White palaces in ruins.
And there… a world of blue oceans and green lands.
He saw the invaders of his clan's blood.
Humans.
Small, fragile, short-lived creatures… yet they carried chakra like fire in their veins.
And worse… they had killed his kin.
His eyes narrowed, the rings in them spinning faster.
The whispers of the void gave him the names of those responsible.
"…Uzumaki… Uchiha…"
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His lips curved into the faintest shadow of a smile — the kind of smile that meant death.
"Mortals who kill gods… very well. Let us see if you can kill the one who made them."
He stepped forward — and reality tore apart like paper.
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The fabric of the void peeled away, revealing a path of shimmering white stone that led into the Sea of Dimensions.
The waters here were not liquid, but flowing time itself, folding and unfolding in infinite directions.
Shukuyomi walked upon it as if it were solid ground, his robes never stirring despite the temporal storm raging around him.
His gaze fixed on a pale blue light far away — a light that pulsed like a heartbeat.
Earth.
---
As he moved, fragments of old battles whispered to him.
He saw Kaguya's downfall.
He saw Momoshiki's death.
He saw the destruction of Isshiki, Kinshiki, and Urashiki.
Every name, every death, etched itself into his mind.
"All fallen… by the hands of this small world."
He stopped.
"…Unacceptable."
The Rinne-Sharingan in his forehead opened — a third, blazing eye. Its gaze reached across universes, piercing the layers of reality until it rested upon the shinobi world.
He could see them now.
Cities.
Villages.
People laughing, training, living without fear.
It was an insult.
---
Shukuyomi extended one hand, palm open.
The Sea of Dimensions answered, sending out waves that smashed entire micro-realities into dust.
With a flick of his fingers, those waves reshaped themselves into an army — shadows of long-dead Otsutsuki warriors, pulled from the echoes of their final battles.
They were not truly alive, but they would serve his purpose — to herald his coming.
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"I will strip your peace from you. I will burn your sky. I will drown your lands in shadow."
He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing in the taste of this promise.
"And when you stand before me, Uzumaki… Uchiha… you will understand what it means to defy the progenitor."
The army behind him bowed in silence.
Shukuyomi opened his eyes again — all three of them — and took a final step forward.
Space shattered.
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Far away, in the Hokage's office, Boruto Uzumaki dropped the pen he was holding. His eyes widened, the hairs on his neck standing on end.
"…No way."
Sarada, seated across from him with mission reports, frowned. "What's wrong?"
Boruto's voice was a whisper — but the fear in it made her blood run cold.
"Something's coming. Something… old. And it's looking right at us."
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