Asahi opened his eyes slowly, blinking away the haze that had settled over his mind. Those new memories still crowded his thoughts—strange images, stories, and faces from a world that felt distant and unreal. He saw flashes of scenes not belonging to his life: distant battles, bright colors, voices speaking languages he did not know—all swirling within the depths of his mind. Novels, strange drawings called "anime," vivid pictures, even news of faraway happenings and whispered tales he could barely make sense of. It was like a floodgate had opened inside his head, and he was left drowning in strange, half-remembered dreams.
Outside his door, a voice broke the silence. It was old and weary, but calm and full of care.
"Is my grandson awake? How does he fare this morning?"
A second voice answered—soft and steady, the keeper of the household.
"Asahi-sama remains asleep. It was the burden on his mind that caused him to faint. But he rests peacefully now and has not yet stirred."
"Asahi," the boy called softly, "I am awake. Grandfather, you may come in."
The door creaked open slowly, and a man stepped inside—a man whose face was marked by sleepless nights and worry. His hair was streaked with grey, his eyes heavy but watchful. He shut the door gently behind him.
"How do you feel? Is there any pain, any discomfort anywhere?" the old man asked, his voice rough but kind.
"No," Asahi replied, blinking a little more firmly and sitting up straighter, though his body still felt weak and slow.
They sat together in a quiet stretch of time, neither rushing to speak.
After a moment, his grandfather's voice softened with a touch of caution. "Tell me, Asahi... have you noticed any change in your body, especially your eyes?"
Asahi lifted his gaze and stared squarely back. "Yes," he said. Slowly, he watched as the deep red spread through his irises, and a new pattern began to glow—a shape like a lotus when seen from above, delicate and strange, shining in the light.
A rare smile touched his grandfather's lips, though sadness lingered behind it. It was the smile of a man who had borne great losses and carried heavy hopes all the same.
"You know, this is called Mangekyo sharingan, the ultimate power of our clan. Many people in our clan want it and can do anything for it." grandmother said.
"Though such people can never gain this power, they are unworthy. Our clan is filled with sick people and I think second hokage saying our clan is evil does hold a touch of truth to it." [He is referring to the civil war that happened inside Uchiha.]
He sighed deeply, his hand resting on Asahi's shoulder. "You must trust no one easily from this day forward—not even within our family. The world is harsh, and so too is the path we walk. Grow strong, my boy. Strength is the only shield that will keep you safe."
"I do not want to lose you. Not like I lost your mother and father." The words hung in the air, heavy and full of sorrow.
Asahi looked down, feeling that burden settle over him once again. The world was wide and full of dangers, but here, with his grandfather's steady presence, a faint spark of resolve began to burn. He would rise. He had no choice but to rise.
Asahi gathered his thoughts, still shaken by the memories that did not belong to him. He remembered stories, battles, and legends not of his own world—a flood of knowledge from someplace far away, filled with faces and names, heroes and monsters, visions of war and peace, downfall and resurrection.
He looked athus grandfather and said,
"Grandfather,", voice steady but strained, "I know a way to bring back my parents."
A silence answered him, heavy and slow.
"Let me show you something. Please, don't resist."
He shaped the chakra within him, letting his Mangekyō Sharingan turn the room into a world of visions—a story told in images and feelings. He brought forth the truth hidden in those borrowed memories: the tales of the ninja world, the origins of the Uchiha, the rise of powerful eyes, the battles that would shape and shatter the future. He showed the wars, the betrayals, the desperate hopes. Layer upon layer, a history began to unfold before his grandfather's eyes—a history not written in any scroll of Konoha.
When the vision faded, the second elder of the clan, Uchiha Akira, sat at the edge of the futon, hands trembling. He looked older than ever, shoulders sagging, eyes wild with new fears and questions.
He struggled to find words, breath coming quick and shallow.
"How do you know these things?"
Asahi kept his answer simple. "One of my eyes lets me see the history of the ninja world, and a glimpse of what is to come. But it can be used only once. Whatever we do from now on will change the future. I only saw it once—and only some of it clearly. The rest is smoke and fog." A perfect excuse, since even he didn't know how he got these memories and this new power.
Akira leaned back, silent. He rubbed at his brow, as if he hoped the gesture would ease the confusion gnawing at him.
After a long pause, Akira spoke through a tight jaw. "What do we do, then? It's one thing to talk of resurrection—another to spit in the face of fate itself." His breath came rough, chest rising and falling. "Even if we bring them back, even if we stop the massacre…I saw what waits on the other side. Madara, Kaguya, monsters from the dark, powers beyond reason. That cursed child Boruto. It is too much, far too much."
He pressed a fist against his chest, fear and anger knotting in his eyes.
"We may have escaped one blade, Asahi, but there are a thousand knives yet to fall. I see our future as very grim." Akira said, though he wasn't really talking to his grandson but saying it to himself. He was the adult, so he had to carry this burden. But he still was too shaken to get his thoughts straight.
Asahi leaned back, the weight of all those names and legends pressing down on his shoulders. For a long while, the two Uchihas sat in silence, grandfather and grandson, both staring into some far distance that neither could quite see.
"And I'm not even sure what to do," Akira muttered at last, voice thin as worn cloth. "Not when a god—Otsutsuki Shiba, that cursed thing—is keeping his eyes on the fate of this whole world. If we tinker too much with the future, we might just wake him from wherever he's watching." He ran a hand through his hair, fingers trembling, and let out a shaky sigh. "If he notices us, if even the idea of us crawling toward hope is enough to turn his head, all our plans come to dust."
"We'll take our gamble," Asahi said, voice steady. "We can't sit here doing nothing, waiting for doom to come knocking at the door. If we fail, so be it. But if we do nothing, we're already lost."
He took a breath, then added, "And besides—all of this, the ninja world, might not be the end. With my eye, I can reach beyond. Carry a spark of our clan into other worlds. We don't need to vanish completely, not if I can help it."
Asahi's eyes sparkled, as he asked, "How many can we trust for a scheme like this?" he asked, voice hard. "How many ninja can we call to our cause, without the rest of the clan sniffing out our plans?"
Akira took a moment to remember the politics of his own blood. Nothing was simple in the Uchiha clan. "I command about two hundred. That's a good start. And now that your Mangekyō's been awakened for all to see, the numbers will grow. Half the clan is already weighing you against Fugaku. If you showed them even a part of what the future holds—what their proud leader is destined to do—they might all march behind you instead."
Asahi folded his hands, eyes searching the shadows in the corners of the room. "That's talk for another day. For now, tell me plainly—how many of your people are truly loyal? I'm talking about diehards, the sort who keep their mouths shut even if someone put a blade to their throat. Would they take a curse mark, if we asked? Do we even have such a thing?"
Akira grunted. "Six jonin, fourteen chunin. Twenty in all. Each one picked by hand, each one owing me more than their lives." He allowed himself a small, bitter smile. "And yes, we have sealing arts—a clan as old as ours needs them. Memory seals. Life and death seals. The basics. But we've never used them much. Our pride tells us every man should rise or fall on his strength alone—unlike the Hyūga, with their cage for birds and dreams both. That seal always was a stain on the ninja world. Maybe there's sense to it, if your eyes can grow into something even more dreadful. If the memory about what happened to Hugya clan on moon is true, then it makes perfect sense to do it. But for us… we always thought we could fight off anyone who tried to take our gifts. If they stole our eyes, we'd hunt them to the ends of the earth."
He paused, the musings of old wounds and older grudges flickering across his face.
"But if what you tell me is true—if our enemies are monsters and gods, not just men—maybe it's time for the old ways to change too."
Outside, the night pressed close to the house, and neither Uchiha spoke for a long while. Two shadows waiting in a world busy with gods, devils, and the hearts of men.
Next morning, on the banks of the Naka River.
Asahi sat there with a rock in his hand.
What was weird was that the rock was changing shape, or more like getting erased and then regenerating. Asahi was practicing his powers, Decomposition and Regrowth. He was using decomposition to give the rock different shapes like carving it, and using regrowth to turn it back to its original state.
Due to Regrowth, he did not have to worry about going blind, and he could feel it. The energy inside him was strengthening his eyes.
They would turn into Mangekyō on their own.
He continued to focus on the sound of the Naka River's flow while playing with the rock as he contemplated his future actions.
After talking with his grandfather last night and knowing the temperament of his clan, he came to the conclusion that the situation wasn't as easy to understand as it was in some fanfics, nor as complex as some other fanfics made it out to be.
He came to the conclusion that the decision to carry out the Uchiha massacre by the higher-ups wasn't wrong. His clan was made up of crazy people, people who could discard even their loved ones for their ambition.
The Uchiha civil war killed many, brothers turning on brothers just for power. And once they did get power, they went to such extremes, becoming a twisted existence.
Uchiha Madara was like this, so was Obito, and same for Itachi. No one in the village higher-ups knew when an extreme existence would open Mangekyō and lay waste to the whole of Konoha or control them with illusion.
Not to mention, Uchiha were idiots. Other clans did many scandalous things like embezzling war supplies; the Uchiha, instead of joining them, would call out against it due to their pride. Basically, no clan with brains wanted to do anything with the Uchiha.
Plus, even if they were a big clan, it wasn't like in some fanfics where they were super rich, having many hotels and gambling places in the Land of Fire. They were ninja, who would do work like finding a cat or cleaning toilets if they had such money.
Though they did have some of these businesses. The real assets they held were mines and a lot of blacksmith shops inside the clan territory. Yup, just a while away from the Naka River, the place where they were forced to relocate from the center of the village after the Nine-Tails rebellion—their ancestral home.
Though they weren't poor either. Since the location where the village is located has always been Uchiha's. I mean, whoever thought otherwise should think: The Naka Shrine was inside Konoha, it was their ancestral land. And they did not share it with Senju since how can hostile clans live so close to each other? Because of that, when the village was established, the other clans trying to settle in Konoha had to buy the land from the Uchiha's hand.
They had cold cash, even if the elders had been squandering it and even using these funds as the working capital for the police force since the payment has always been delayed by the village. Akira couldn't even see why they held on to the police force when it granted no benefit and only trouble.
Many might say police force means power, but what hell is power when the higher-ups are the ones who control public opinion?
As Asahi continued thinking, he felt like he heard someone struggling, as if their mouth was gagged, as well as unusual rustling of leaves and branches even though there was no wind. He might have even missed this if he wasn't focusing on hearing and his physical as well as other senses had not been strengthened yesterday.
He decided to investigate the situation as he ran towards the place where the rustling of leaves was heard.
As he reached near, he saw some ninja running toward the outer periphery of the village and they carried a red-haired girl behind their back.
He recognized her. Uzumaki Kushina, his classmate. A cute girl, though he never interacted with her because he was forbidden from doing so on the grounds that Uchiha don't associate with lowly people, though now he could see it must have been the Hokage's order to his clan to keep the jinchūriki away from them.
Because he was only ordered to not talk much with her but also to not antagonize her.
Just to ignore her as if she didn't exist.
Seeing them running away, many thoughts came into his mind—thinking about how he could take advantage of this situation, the pros and cons of intervening, and whether he even should intervene.
The answer was yes, he should interfere. It didn't matter if she came through with Minato or not, didn't matter if this was the higher-ups' plan. He needed the sealing techniques of the Uzumaki clan for a lot of his future plans. Saving her might make it a lot easier to get them, even if he had to trade it with her for something.
A good impression is always welcome.
As he finished thinking, both his hands released a white thread-like structure made of energy. They had the decomposition property fused into them, so if the defense wasn't super high, like a very thick chakra coating of a tailed beast, they would be cut into pieces if they got touched by it.
The new energy beside chakra inside of him was easier to control, shape, and emit from his body, though it couldn't change its characteristics like chakra turns into fire or lightning and others. It could only carry the effect of Decomposition or Regrowth.
Silently following them in the shadows of trees, he materialized the energy threads and leapt at them from the side. Two of them saw him and shouted,
"Watch out!!"
"We have been foun--!!" gruggle cough cough bam
Before they could finish their words, the two people who saw him as well as the person holding Kushina were cut into pieces as his threads avoided Kushina with precision.
The other jonin, without even sparing any time, attacked him with their kunai wrapped in lightning chakra and some with even wind chakra.
He caught Kushina in his arms and hastily wrapped them both inside Susanoo's basic ribcage form and observed them.
'Ding, Ding Ding Ding Ding.' The kunai snapped as they connected with Susanoo as the attackers stood dumbfounded, thinking what to do in their defensive posture.
He didn't mind showing Susanoo as the news of his Mangekyō awakening had already spread inside his clan due to his chakra outburst during the funeral.
What troubled him was the ninja opposite him didn't look like Cloud shinobi. It was just a feeling, but they seemed like emotionless beings, not like those with suppressed emotions. Ones who had already given up on life.
As he looked at the girl in his arms, still shaken and curled up, he decided to finish this.
"Wind style: Gale burst!" × 5
As the ninjutsu cast by opponent ninja crashed into Susanoo's shell without even leaving a scratch, he materialized one of Susanoo's arms. The arm was colored purple, made of chakra but its palm was wrapped in white energy that worked exactly like Dust Release of Iwagakaru.
As he swung the arm, it also released white tendrils and all five ninjas opposite were turned into minced meat.