Chapter 3.2: The Echo in the Soul
The storm outside the shallow cave was a symphony of chaos, but inside, there was only a suffocating silence. Naruto sat hunched over a small, sputtering fire he'd willed into existence, the flames casting dancing shadows on the damp stone walls. He was still in his normal state. But the change was not a reversal. It was a mask, and he could feel the monster coiled just beneath the surface, waiting.
He stared at his hands.
They were his hands. Calloused from training, a little dirty from the climb. But just moments ago, they had been stained crimson, their nails long and sharp, instruments of butchery. He could still feel the phantom sensation of bone crunching under his fist, of flesh parting with the ease of wet paper. He remembered the look in Kagari's eyes—the raw, primal terror of a creature facing its god—just before his head had ceased to exist.
He hadn't felt rage. He hadn't felt hatred. He had felt… a detached, exhilarating sense of purpose. A cold, clean clarity. The world had simplified into two categories: threats to be neutralized, and everything else. It was efficient. It was absolute. And that terrified him more than any wound ever could.
His breath hitched, and a wave of nausea washed over him. The faces of the dead flashed behind his eyes. The Mist kunoichi whose legs he'd shredded. The Iwa genjutsu user he'd split in two. The Rain barrier specialist he had incinerated into a pillar of screaming ash. They were shinobi. They were enemies in this exam. But the sheer, gleeful brutality of it all… that wasn't a shinobi's duty. That was a monster's pleasure.
A memory, unbidden, surfaced. He was 7 years old, huddled in his small, cold apartment. The silence was a physical weight. He'd done a prank earlier—painted the Hokage monument again—and had been chased through the village. The insults echoed in his ears. Demon. Monster. Filth. He remembered pressing his face against the cold window, watching other families walk home, their laughter a sound from another world. He remembered the profound, aching loneliness that felt like it would swallow him whole.
They deserve it, a cold voice whispered in the back of his mind. For every glare, for every whisper, for every night you spent alone.
Naruto squeezed his eyes shut, wrapping his arms around himself. "No," he whispered to the empty cave. "They were just… people. They didn't deserve to die like that."
But the voice was insistent, a venomous serpent coiling around his heart. They were shinobi who would have killed you. They looked at you with contempt, just like the others. You simply showed them their proper place. Beneath you.
He thought of Team Guy. Neji's shocked disbelief. Lee's trembling horror. They hadn't looked at him with contempt. They had looked at him with fear. The same fear he used to see in the eyes of the villagers. He had become the very thing he'd sworn he would never be.
The conflict was a razor blade in his soul. The power felt… right. It was an answer to a lifetime of weakness, a roar that shattered a lifetime of being ignored. But the cost was a part of himself he feared he could never get back.
He needed answers. Not from himself, but from the source.
Closing his eyes, Naruto let his consciousness fall away from the storm, away from the cave, and plunged inward. The world dissolved and reformed into the surreal, crimson-lit shrine. Ribs of bone arched overhead, and at the center, seated upon his throne of skulls, was Ryomen Sukuna. He looked down at Naruto, his four crimson eyes glinting with amusement, as if he'd been waiting.
"Finally decided to talk, brat?" Sukuna's voice boomed, dripping with condescension.
Naruto didn't flinch. He walked forward, his steps steady, his blue eyes holding Sukuna's gaze. "I saw it," he said, his voice quiet but firm. "When we merged. I saw your memories. All of them. Including the end."
Sukuna's smile didn't falter this time; it deepened, becoming something more complex, more knowing. "Did you now? You saw the final thoughts of a king after a thousand-year reign. A rare privilege."
"I saw you in that… passageway. With Mahito," Naruto continued, his voice gaining an edge. "And with Uraume. You admitted it. You admitted your life was a quest for revenge that left you alone. You said… you said if you had the chance to be reborn, you would change how you lived. You accepted your loss."
He took another step, his fists clenching at his sides. His voice rose, filled with a raw, aching confusion. "So why? If you regretted it, if you knew that path only led to ruin and a lonely death… why are you pushing me down the exact same one? Why are you making me a monster? Why are you making me you?"
For a long moment, Sukuna was silent. He leaned forward on his throne, his four arms resting on his knees, studying Naruto with an unnerving intensity. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, devoid of its usual mockery, and terrifyingly sincere.
"My desire to change was genuine," Sukuna began, his voice a low rumble. "But what do you think 'change' means for a being like me? Do you think it means I wish to plant flowers and sing songs with the weak? No. My first life ended in failure not because I was destructive, but because I was alone. I could not comprehend the bonds that gave inexplicable strength to insects like Gojo and that other brat. I dismissed it all as pathetic, and in my ignorance, I lost."
He rose from his throne, his presence making the very air of the domain heavy and thick. "And then I find myself reborn. Not in some random body, but within you. A boy drowning in the same solitude I once knew, screaming for the same recognition, scorned by the same world. You are not a vessel, brat. You are a perfect echo of my own beginning. You are a second chance to prove my philosophy correct."
He began to pace, his steps echoing in the vast chamber. "You ask why I push you down a destructive path? You misunderstand," he said, his voice a guttural growl. "I am not pushing you. I am unleashing you. This path was already paved, brick by agonizing brick, every single day of your pathetic life."
"You think this desire for destruction is mine alone? Foolish child. Every time a villager spat your name like a curse, every time a shopkeeper slammed a door in your face, that was a vote for Dismantle. Every night you cried into your pillow in that empty, silent apartment, begging for someone, anyone, to see you, that was a prayer for Cleave. Every forced smile you plastered on your face while your heart was breaking, that was the binding vow that gave me purchase in your soul."
Sukuna stopped and turned, his crimson eyes boring into Naruto's. "I am not repeating my mistake. My mistake was in not understanding the nature of the human heart. But now, I have spent thirteen years swimming in the very depths of yours. I understand you perfectly."
He pointed a sharp, purple nail directly at Naruto's chest.
"Your entire life has been a scream against solitude! You want to be Hokage. Why? Not to lead, not to protect. You want to stand at the top so that, finally, no one can ignore you. You want them to acknowledge your existence. You want to be seen."
A chilling, predatory grin spread across his face. "This time, I will not simply dominate. I will teach. I am not remaking you in my image, Naruto Uzumaki. I am simply giving you the tools to complete the sculpture you have been carving your entire life with tears and blood. I am giving you the one thing you have always craved: the power to force the world to look at you. They will not look away again. They will not whisper behind their hands. They will kneel, or they will burn. But they will see you."
He leaned in close, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "The path of destruction you fear so much? It is simply the shortest path to the recognition you desire. So, tell me again that this is my influence. Tell me this isn't the glorious, terrible answer to the question your lonely little heart has been screaming since the day you were born."
Naruto stood frozen, his breath caught in his throat. Every word was a poisoned dart that struck true, bypassing his defenses and sinking deep into the core of his being. Sukuna hadn't just answered his question; he had dissected Naruto's entire existence and laid it bare. He had taken Naruto's deepest, most cherished dream and twisted it into the monstrous justification for everything he had just done.
He looked at his hands again, but this time, he didn't just see the blood of his enemies. He saw the reflection of a lonely little boy, crying in the dark.
He returned to the cave, the roar of the storm outside a whisper compared to the tempest in his soul. A single tear traced a clean path through the grime on his cheek. Sukuna was wrong. He had to be. But dear gods, what if he wasn't?
For the first time, in his brilliant blue eyes, a flicker of crimson stirred, not as a sign of possession, but of a terrible, dawning understanding.