The night had gone unnaturally silent after the apostles retreated, but Raizen didn't trust the quiet. The crystal fragment in his palm pulsed faintly, its sigils shifting as though alive. Each pulse tugged his senses toward a direction—the west, beyond the fractured Ash Plains—toward what once had been the Hidden Cloud's borderlands.
> The Recorder of Truths…
If another survived my erasure, they're the thread Shibai's apostles will follow.
Raizen pulled his cloak tighter, suppressing his chakra to a bare flicker. Even with his power, the wrong flare of energy could draw pursuit. The ruined world held too many eyes, mortal and otherwise.
---
The Forgotten Monastery
The journey west carried him through skeletal forests and valleys where rivers had long dried. In some places, faint carvings—erased names, symbols of villages that should not exist—jutted from broken stones. Raizen's chest tightened at every reminder of what he had done.
By dawn, he reached a crumbling monastery tucked between cliffs. Moss draped its broken gates like funeral cloth. The air carried a faint, lingering chakra signature—old, but undeniably human.
Inside, scrolls lay scattered, their ink faded to whispers. A cracked mural on the main hall's ceiling depicted a celestial figure descending—Shibai Ōtsutsuki—surrounded by countless eyes. But there was another figure opposite him, partially destroyed by time: a warrior whose Sharingan pattern Raizen recognized as his own.
Raizen's breath caught. "Even here… they remember."
A faint shuffle behind him broke the stillness. Raizen whirled, blade of lightning forming in an instant. But the intruder was no apostle—only a ragged wanderer wrapped in tattered Cloud Village colors.
The man froze under Raizen's gaze, then slowly raised his hands. "I… I thought you were a ghost."
Raizen didn't lower his blade. "You shouldn't be here."
The wanderer's eyes flicked to the mural. "The stories say this monastery holds the last writings of the Recorder. I didn't believe it until now."
Raizen stepped closer, his Sharingan flaring. "What do you know of the Recorder?"
The wanderer swallowed hard. "Enough to know he wrote of a shinobi who fought Shibai himself. A shinobi who erased five nations from existence. The elders whispered the name—Raizen Uchiha."
The sound of his own name—a name that should not exist—cut deeper than any blade.
---
The Recorder's Secret
The wanderer led him to a concealed chamber beneath the monastery. Dust and roots filled the air. At the center rested a single stone tablet, its surface glowing faintly with an untouched chakra seal.
Raizen brushed his fingers across the tablet, and a voice—soft, weary—spoke inside his mind:
> "Raizen… if you are hearing this, then erasure has failed. Memory cannot be undone—only delayed."
Images flooded his mind: himself, younger and bloodied, locked in battle against Shibai's apostle beneath a sky split by thunder. The Five Nations, their Kage united, watching him with fear instead of gratitude. The decree: Kill Raizen. Destroy the Uchiha. His own desperate choice—to erase not just their hatred, but their very history.
The voice continued,
> "Shibai's essence was never destroyed. The apostles only wait. And should the nations remember, their rage will tear the world apart again."
Raizen staggered back, gripping the tablet for balance. His erased sins were no longer safely buried—they were clawing their way back to the surface.
The wanderer watched him carefully. "Is it true? Did you really erase everything?"
Raizen's Sharingan dimmed. "I did what I had to do… or I thought I did."
---
A Sudden Attack
Before he could say more, the ground trembled. A new presence ripped through the air—dense, crushing. One of the apostles materialized at the chamber's entrance, mask fractured from their previous battle.
"Still digging up ghosts, Raizen?" the apostle hissed.
Raizen shoved the wanderer behind him and summoned lightning to his hands. The chamber was too tight for wide techniques; this would be brutal and close.
They clashed, sparks illuminating the ancient walls. The apostle's sigil-blades scraped stone and carved glowing wounds in the floor. Raizen's blade of lightning met them again and again, the echoes of their strikes shattering fallen scrolls into dust.
The apostle feinted low, forcing Raizen to pivot—then hurled a sigil that expanded into a void. The tablet—the Recorder's last message—began to disintegrate.
"No!" Raizen snarled, surging forward. He drove his blade through the sigil and into the apostle's side. The masked being hissed, staggering backward before vanishing into smoke.
The tablet was half-gone, its final words scattering like ash:
> "…Seek the Sky Reaches… before—"
Silence. Only the whisper of dust remained.
---
Aftermath and Resolve
The wanderer stared at him, wide-eyed. "That thing will come back. And others will follow."
Raizen closed his fist around the fragment of crystal and what remained of the tablet. His Sharingan dimmed to black.
"They already are."
He looked up at the ruined mural of himself and Shibai. Once, he'd thought erasure was salvation. Now, he knew it had only delayed the inevitable.
Outside, the wind carried faint echoes—a distant thunder, like drums of war. Somewhere, memories were stirring. Somewhere, old enemies might be remembering their hatred.
Raizen turned toward the horizon.
> "If the nations wake to what I did, they'll come for me again. But Shibai's apostles will strike first. Either way… I won't let this world burn without a fight."
With a final glance at the ruined monastery, Raizen vanished into the gathering storm.
---