The night wind howled across the Sky Reaches, carrying the weight of centuries. Raizen stood at the mountain's edge, staring down at a world that didn't match his memories.
The last time he'd walked these lands, the Hidden Leaf was under the stern watch of Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Third Hokage. He could still hear the old man's voice echoing across a war council, his pipe trailing smoke as he warned of the Shibai Apostle's growing threat. Raizen had fought, bled, and erased the Five Nations to keep their betrayal secret. Then—nothing.
But now… the world's scars were wrong.
---
The Missing Years
Raizen descended into a valley where a familiar landmark should have been: a memorial stone dedicated to shinobi fallen in the Second Great Ninja War. But the stone was different—its surface covered with names he had never known.
His Sharingan activated instinctively. Time itself seemed to blur around him, and fragments of history he had never lived through bled into his mind.
—The Fourth Hokage's yellow flash cutting through armies.
—The destruction of the Leaf by a nine-tailed beast.
—A blond child, grown into a man with the gaze of a Hokage, standing where Hiruzen once stood.
Raizen fell to his knees, gripping his head. Decades were gone. The world had jumped from Hiruzen's time straight to this stranger—Naruto Uzumaki—as if Raizen had been ripped from the timeline.
---
Konoha's Stirring Memories
In Konoha, the whispers grew. A chunin walking the streets froze when he saw the Hokage Monument. For a heartbeat, Hiruzen's face was cracked and burning, and beside it was a fifth face that shouldn't exist—Raizen's own. Then it was gone.
Inside the Hokage's office, Naruto slammed a hand on the desk. "Temari says Gaara's seeing visions of a war that never happened—and names I've never heard before."
Shikamaru frowned, his sharp mind already connecting threads. "Sand. Mist. Lightning. They're all reporting the same thing. They're remembering battles that aren't in our history. And one name keeps surfacing: Raizen Uchiha."
A masked ANBU stepped forward. "Lord Hokage, the markings on the recovered fragment mention the Third Hokage by name… but the battle described couldn't have been during his era."
Naruto's eyes narrowed. "So the memories skip from Hiruzen's time straight to ours. Like decades just… vanished."
---
Raizen's Realization
Raizen stood at the cracked seal atop the Sky Reaches. The Recorder's fragment pulsed in his hand, replaying phantom voices:
> "Kill Raizen."
"Destroy the Uchiha."
"He wields power that could unmake the world."
But then—another voice he hadn't heard before: a whisper in a tone like grinding stone.
> "You thought time would bury your sin, Raizen. But even gods cannot erase a history written in blood."
The world he knew had been overwritten. The Five Nations he had erased now thrived again, rebuilt without the memory of their destruction. But now the cracks were spreading. The erased war—the one waged against Shibai's apostle—was bleeding back into existence.
---
The Leaf's Unease
Konoha's streets were alive with anxious whispers. A pair of genin sat beneath the Hokage Monument, trading dreams of places they'd never been—dreams of an Uchiha warrior standing against the gods themselves.
Naruto felt the shift in the village's energy as he walked among his people. He knew the fragility of peace better than anyone. If the nations began to remember, old rivalries and old fears would resurface.
He looked toward the Sky Reaches, hidden beyond the horizon. "Whoever you are… whatever you did… why now?"
---
The Apostles Stir
Far away, in a shattered temple, a group of cloaked apostles gathered. One knelt before a cracked statue of Shibai, its features obscured by shadows.
"The seal weakens," the leader rasped. "The world begins to remember the war it was forced to forget. Raizen walks the earth once more."
Another apostle tilted her head. "Then the gods demand retribution. Let the nations see him as the traitor he once was."
The leader's eyes glowed faintly. "No… let them remember just enough to turn on him themselves. Let him taste the betrayal twice."
---
Raizen's Oath
Raizen stared into the horizon where Konoha's lights flickered faintly in the distance. So many lifetimes had passed, and yet the stars were the same. He remembered Hiruzen's weary gaze, the Kage's decree of death, and the blood-soaked sky when he'd erased their world.
Now Naruto stood in Hiruzen's place, unaware of the truth. The Five Nations would awaken to half-memories, and in their fear, they would come for him again.
He tightened his grip on the Recorder's fragment.
"They betrayed me once," he whispered to the wind. "I will not let history repeat itself."
Above him, lightning forked across the sky, briefly illuminating the cracked seal. For just a moment, it wasn't lightning at all—it was Shibai's apostle's blade, plunging through the heavens.
The world was remembering. And Raizen was done hiding.
---
As dawn broke over the Hidden Leaf, Naruto gazed at the Hokage Monument. For a single, impossible heartbeat, a sixth face appeared alongside his own—a man with dark hair, Sharingan eyes, and a cloak of black flame.
The image vanished with the sunrise, leaving only a name burning in his mind:
> Raizen Uchiha.