The ruins stretched endlessly before him — collapsed stone, blackened soil, and silence heavier than death itself. Raizen walked through the wasteland, his steps echoing across what had once been a proud shinobi nation.
Yet he knew the truth. He wasn't simply standing in the aftermath of war. He was standing in the aftermath of his own erasure.
---
The War Against Shibai's Apostle
Centuries ago, before the shinobi nations had turned their hatred upon him, Raizen had faced an enemy unlike any he had ever known.
A being who bore no clan's crest, no allegiance to man.
A figure who called himself the Apostle of Shibai.
The Apostle's power had been overwhelming, a fragment of the god who transcended even the Ōtsutsuki. His body glowed with remnants of divine chakra, his eyes burning with a light that pierced the Abyss itself.
For weeks, Raizen fought him — tearing nations apart in the process. It was only by embracing the full depths of the Abyss that he finally struck the Apostle down.
When the Apostle's body crumbled, he whispered words Raizen would never forget:
> "You are no victor. You are the gate. And through you… he will return."
Raizen had silenced him with a final blow. He thought it was over. He thought peace had finally been won.
But peace was a fleeting illusion.
---
The Betrayal of the Five Nations
The scars of the battle had shaken the world. Villages were leveled, clans scattered. And instead of gratitude, the great nations saw only danger.
Whispers spread: Raizen is too powerful. Raizen is unnatural. He is the true threat.
Leaders of the Five Great Nations met in secret, their decree sharp and merciless:
Raizen must be destroyed.
The Uchiha, his closest allies, must be exterminated.
And so the shinobi who had once fought beside him sharpened their blades for his blood.
---
The Erasure
Raizen remembered the night well. Torches, banners, and the combined armies of all five nations closing in. Even the Uchiha were betrayed, branded as cursed.
It was not rage that guided him that night, but clarity. If the world would never accept him — if even those he had saved would turn on him — then he would do the unthinkable.
He unleashed the Abyss.
The nations burned. Their armies dissolved into dust. Their history shattered like glass.
But Raizen didn't stop there. With a ritual born from the deepest reaches of the Abyss, he carved not only their bodies from existence… but their memories as well.
The world awoke the next day with no trace of the war, no trace of him, no trace of what had been erased.
Even the survivors of the Uchiha, even Raizen himself… forgot.
---
The Cracks in Memory
Now, standing once more among the ruins, Raizen felt the air tremble. Whispers surged at the edges of his mind — voices clawing back from the void.
Fragments of memory. Shards of a truth he had buried.
The Apostle's dying words.
The Five Nations' betrayal.
His own hand, not only in destruction, but in forgetting.
And beneath it all… a shadow deeper than the Abyss itself.
---
The Seal of Shibai
In the heart of the ruins, Raizen uncovered it — a cracked seal, faintly pulsing. Not his creation. Not shinobi.
It bore the same markings the Apostle had carried.
The same power Raizen had felt only once before.
Shibai's essence.
For the first time, Raizen realized his choice that night may not have been entirely his own. Had his wrath been guided? His ritual whispered into his mind by a shadow far older than him?
Was his erasure truly vengeance… or had it been the Apostle's victory all along?
---
Closing Scene
A storm rose over the ruins, lightning carving across the blackened sky. Raizen's cloak snapped in the wind as his eyes narrowed.
"Even erased… you still reach for me."
The Abyss swirled violently, and in its depths, he heard the whisper again:
> "Through you… he will return."
Raizen clenched his fists. His voice cut through the storm like steel:
"No. This world belongs to me. Not Shibai."
But even as he spoke, the ruins trembled, and the name Shibai echoed faintly across the wasteland.
---