There was no up, no down—only a quiet so complete it felt like a blanket. Naruto drifted in it, weightless, a single point of breath floating on an endless black sea. He tried to move and found there was nothing to push against. He tried to speak and heard only the soft echo of himself.
Then—warmth.
A hand ruffled his hair the way a good memory does.
"Yo," said a voice that was sunshine on a winter day. "Took you long enough."
Naruto turned, and the void bloomed with soft light. A tall man stepped out of it—blond hair like a banner, blue eyes bright, cloak stirring in a wind that didn't exist. Beside him, a woman with long crimson hair and a grin that could cut through storms folded him into a hug so fierce the emptiness itself seemed to flinch.
"Mom…? Dad…?" Naruto's throat tightened. The words came out small, like he was six again and afraid the answer would vanish.
Minato and Kushina nodded at the same time.
Kushina cupped his face, thumbs brushing his cheeks as if she could wipe away all the lonely years. "We're here, Naruto."
He fell into them—no hesitation, no bravado. For a long moment there was only breathing and the quiet tremble of a boy being allowed to be a son.
When he pulled back, Minato's smile softened. "There's a lot to explain."
Kushina hooked an arm through Naruto's and tugged him to face the endless dark. Light spread under their feet, forming a simple circle, a little island in the void. "First: I'm Kushina Uzumaki—your mom. Last of a proud, stubborn clan that laughed too loud and lived too long. We were seal masters, chakra monsters, and really, really hard to kill."
Minato's eyes crinkled. "And I'm Minato of the Yamakaze line."
Naruto blinked. "Yama…kaze?"
Kushina nodded, expression turning bittersweet. "An old branch, older than Konoha's houses, tied to wind and motion. Before the Senju dreamed of villages, the Yamakaze ran the ridges with them. We fought with our feet and our breath, seals painted on the air."
Minato added, "We weren't a clan with a compound. We were a current. We moved, we watched, we cut only when necessary. That blood's in you, along with Uzumaki resilience."
Naruto rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "So that's why I never get tired… and why I can't sit still in class…"
Kushina laughed, watery and joyous. "That, and because you're you."
Something prickled across Naruto's scalp. He reached for his hair—and froze. The strands flowed through his fingers, brightening, deepening, shifting hue like the sky at dusk. The messy blond he'd known since forever bled into a molten gold at the tips and then into a clean, arresting crimson from root to crown.
Kushina's hands flew to her mouth. Her eyes filled, red rimmed and shining. "A pure Uzumaki sign," she whispered. "My boy…"
A flutter of pride stirred in Minato's gaze. "And the gold—Yamakaze wind. You're both of us, completely."
Naruto swayed, overwhelmed. "I… look cool, don't I?"
Kushina snorted. "The coolest. Dattebane." She wiped her cheeks with the heel of her hand but didn't stop smiling.
A soft padding sound rippled across the circle. Naruto turned—and his breath caught.
A fox stepped into the light.
Not the titanic mountain of malice he had seen in nightmares, but a sleek, oversized kit: tall as Naruto's waist, fur the color of ember and dusk, nine tails unfurled like silk banners. Its eyes were ancient—and gentle for the first time in a century.
"Yo," the fox said, voice low thunder wrapped in velvet. "Kit."
Naruto's mouth fell open. "Kurama…? You're… small."
Kurama's ears twitched. "This form reflects what was torn from me." He lifted a paw, studying it with a frown that wasn't really a frown. "The hatred is gone. Strange. I remember every scream, every chain. I remember Madara's eye—his control—like a hook in my mind." He glanced at Naruto. "But I don't want to bite the world anymore."
Kushina crouched, hand out. "Come here, you big baby."
Kurama hesitated, then padded forward, lowering his head so Kushina could scratch between his ears. He closed his eyes, and for a heartbeat the void felt like a home it had never been.
"Madara used me," Kurama went on, tail tips flicking. "Humans used me. Your father used me, too—though for a reason I can forgive." He inclined his head to Minato. "It doesn't matter now. The Black Heart pulled the poison out. I feel… new."
Naruto swallowed. "Kurama, I'm—"
"Don't apologize for surviving." Kurama's gaze warmed. "Just live well enough to make the rest of them jealous."
A ripple passed through the emptiness, like a pebble dropped into a lake. The temperature didn't change, but the meaning of the space did. Naruto felt the hairs on his arms lift. Minato's expression sharpened; Kushina's shoulders straightened. Kurama's tails rose, alert.
A figure appeared at the edge of the light, tall and calm, staff in hand, eyes like pale moons. Horns crowned his brow. His presence tasted like ancient stone and prayer.
"Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki," Minato murmured, respectful.
The Sage of Six Paths inclined his head. "Minato. Kushina. Naruto." His gaze lingered on the boy, softened. "You have carried a mountain, child."
Naruto bowed without quite knowing how. "You're the one who… put Kurama together. The Sage."
Hagoromo's faint smile was sunlight on old snow. "Once, I tried to instruct a world that preferred to learn by breaking itself. Perhaps I was stubborn. Perhaps I was naive. Today, I have come to end a cycle of my own making."
Kurama huffed. "About time."
A second ripple followed the first, colder and deeper, like a shadow leaning against its own outline. No wind moved, yet the circle's edge darkened. Naruto squinted into that weight.
Nothing there—and yet someone hovered above them. Watching. Waiting. The dark pressed in with the gentle certainty of an ocean.
Minato's eyes flicked upward. Kushina's hand closed around Naruto's. Kurama's ears flattened, not in fear but in respect.
Hagoromo glanced toward the unseen presence and gave the smallest nod, as if acknowledging a fellow sovereign. "Ashborn."
The name fell into the void and rang like steel.
Naruto felt it without seeing him: a king built from silence, a gravity that bent the space around his name. The Black Heart in Naruto's chest answered with a slow, obedient pulse.
"Two systems, one boy," Hagoromo said softly. "Chakra and shadow. Life and the echo that follows it." He turned back to Naruto. "You stand at a crossroads, child. A prophecy spoken in different tongues has chosen the same subject."
Naruto's throat tightened. "I didn't ask—"
"No one worthy ever does," the Sage said gently. "That is why you were chosen."
Kushina squeezed Naruto's hand. "There's more we have to tell you," she said, voice trembling with a new kind of joy and a very old sorrow. "About where you come from."
Naruto blinked. "You already told me—Uzumaki and Yamakaze—"
Minato exhaled. "And something we didn't know until now." He glanced at Hagoromo, who nodded once. Threads of light spilled from the Sage's staff, weaving images in the air: a younger Tsunade, fierce and radiant; Jiraiya, laughing, then thoughtful; a dark hallway; a bundle taken in the night; a path erased.
Kushina's eyes shone. "Tsunade… is your grandmother."
Naruto forgot how to breathe.
Minato's voice was steady because one of them had to be. "And Jiraiya is your grandfather. Neither of them knew. Their son was stolen, hidden, and… lost to them. We did not know either—not until the Shinigami pulled every thread connected to you and showed us the tapestry."
Naruto's knees went weak. Tsunade's gruff teasing, her heavy hand, the way she looked at him sometimes like he was a bruise she couldn't explain—Jiraiya's pride, his impossible faith—all of it re-lit in his mind, rearranging itself into a constellation that spelled family.
"I… I have—" His voice cracked. "I have grandparents?"
Kushina pulled him into another hug. "A troublesome, gambling, terrifying grandma and a pervy, brilliant grandpa," she said, half-laughing, half-crying. "You get both."
Minato's smile wobbled. "You also get their legacies. Senju vitality through Tsunade's line. Jiraiya's will and lore. You are Uzumaki and Yamakaze—and by blood and heart, tied to the Senju."
Kurama padded closer and bumped Naruto's hip with his head. "That explains the ridiculous stamina," he muttered.
Naruto laughed, shaky and bright. The sound echoed out into the vastness and didn't come back alone; it returned with courage stitched to it.
The invisible presence above stirred—approval, like a nod felt rather than seen.
Hagoromo lifted his staff, and the circle of light widened, revealing faint shapes at the edge of perception—nine silhouettes like constellations given fur and claws. Eight were distant, misty, as if painted with starlight. One—Kurama's—was near and small and very real.
"Time is thin," the Sage said. "There is a cycle I must break."
He glanced once more toward where Ashborn waited in the unseen heights, and something like a pact passed between them—Sage and Monarch, fate and shadow.
"Rest a moment more, Naruto," Hagoromo said softly. "When I return, I will bring you a power born from my sons, united at last. And your other teacher," his eyes flicked upward, "will show you how to make silence obey."
The light folded, and the Sage stepped out of it—gone in an instant as if he had simply remembered he was needed somewhere else.
Naruto stood breathing like a runner after the finish line. Kushina wiped his cheeks even though they were already dry. Minato squeezed his shoulder. Kurama sat at his feet, tails curled around his ankles, a sentinel with a kitten's face.
Above them, unseen but undeniable, Ashborn watched.
The Black Heart beat once—slow, sovereign, patient.
The circle of light dimmed when Hagoromo vanished, as if the void were holding its breath.
Naruto glanced up into the invisible heaviness where the name Ashborn had rung. He couldn't see anyone—only a sense, like standing at the edge of a cliff at night and knowing the sky was looking back.
Kushina squeezed his fingers. "Hey. Breathe with me."They did, in and out, and the tremble in his chest settled.
Kurama yawned, nine young tails curling around Naruto's ankles like warm scarves. "Old men and their dramatic exits," he muttered.
Minato hid a smile. "He'll be quick."
He was.
A seam opened in the dark and the Sage of Six Paths stepped back into the circle—calm, unchanged, but carrying a gravity that hadn't been there a heartbeat ago. Tiny motes of light drifted around him like dust in sunbeams, some silver, some warm gold, and one a deep, electric violet that made the air hum.
Hagoromo planted his staff and spoke without prelude. "I have ended a mistake."
Images unfurled around him—Sasuke sleeping in a lonely clearing; a pale hand hovering over his brow; a second presence peeling free like a shadow lifting from its owner. A pair of eyes older than storms—Indra's—glared and then softened as the Sage's will pressed not with anger but with release. Another scene: a laughing, broad-shouldered youth—Asura—waiting in a field of wheat that wasn't real, smiling at his father with the same uncomplicated kindness he'd given the world.
"I took Indra's accumulated hatred and knowledge from Sasuke without touching Sasuke's soul," Hagoromo said, voice even. "Regret, guilt—those I sealed aside to be resolved by the living boy who earned them. The cycle of rivalry is over."
Kushina exhaled as if she'd been bracing for years. Minato's shoulders dropped. Kurama's ears twitched, interested despite himself.
"And Asura?" Naruto asked, tentative.
Hagoromo's mouth softened. "He has always understood love better than either of us. He gave freely." The motes circling the staff braided together—silver and gold, will and wisdom, compassion and clarity. "I have refined their legacies into a single current. Not a chain to bind you, but a river to drink from."
He lifted his palm. The braid of light became a sigil—rings upon rings, tomoe like midnight droplets—and slid toward Naruto. It hovered at his brow, seeking permission.
Naruto looked at Minato and Kushina. They nodded.
"Okay," he whispered. "I'll carry them. But I'll choose how."
The sigil pressed into him.
Heat without pain. Sight without eyes. For a blink, Naruto saw the void's skin: threads of chakra stitched through a universe of shadow, the way a web holds morning dew. He saw his parents as constellations, Kurama as a small sun, Hagoromo as the horizon itself. He felt knowledge fall into his bones—angles, feints, footwork; how to breathe through fear; how to make a technique instead of just use one. Not memorized—understood.
When it passed, he was kneeling, palms on the light, hair falling forward in a red-gold curtain. Kushina steadied him. Minato's hand rested between his shoulder blades.
Hagoromo studied Naruto's eyes. For a heartbeat they reflected a pattern no human iris should hold: concentric rings crossed by scattered tomoe, ancient and new at once. Then the glow faded, leaving their usual blue, deeper now, as if the sky had learned patience.
"The Rinne-Sharingan's seed," the Sage said. "Dormant until you choose. Do not awaken it out of anger."
Naruto swallowed. "I won't."
A small, content sound came from Kurama. "Hnh. About time the brat got an upgrade that isn't just 'hit harder.'"
A cool shift brushed the circle—approval from above. Naruto didn't hear words, but he knew the unseen Monarch had noted the vow.
Hagoromo's gaze drifted outward, past the circle's edge. The void brightened into constellations—eight new shapes sketched in astral light: a tanuki with a curling tail of sand; a cat wreathed in blue flame; a turtle vast as a hill; a gorilla with a crown of fire; a horse-dragon coiled in mist; a slug-ox bristling with coral; a beetle with wings of vapor; an ox with octopus arms, laughing even in silhouette.
Naruto stood, awe widening his eyes. "The other… bijū."
"Echoes of them," Hagoromo said quietly. "Your Black Heart is linked to the root of their existence. It is drinking not only Kurama's chakra, but theirs across distance—slowly enough their hosts will not notice until too late." He closed his eyes, and for once the old calm cracked. "If this continues, their bodies will wither. Their souls will unravel into the world's primal soup and take centuries to sing themselves into form again."
Kushina's fingers tightened around Naruto's. "There has to be a way."
"There is," said a voice that was not a voice.
It arrived like the idea of midnight—no footsteps, no glow. The circle darkened at its perimeter, and a figure stepped forward from a height that had not been there a blink ago. Shadow clung to him like a mantle; violet edges smoldered where darkness met nothing. His eyes were cold stars that remembered being warm.
Ashborn did not displace air; he redefined it.
Kushina's breath caught. Minato bowed instinctively. Kurama stood without meaning to, tails rising in an arc.
Naruto's chest thudded in time with the Black Heart. He didn't feel fear. He felt… recognition, like hearing a second heartbeat for the first time and understanding it had always been his.
Hagoromo inclined his head—not as a supplicant, not as a rival, but as one sovereign greeting another. "Monarch."
"World-Sage," Ashborn returned. His voice carried the weight of empty halls and the promise of armies that don't breathe. He looked at Naruto, and the void itself seemed to steady. "You've been very noisy, little king."
"Sorry," Naruto said automatically, because that's what you say when your houseplant turns out to be an ancient dragon.
A flicker of amusement crossed the Monarch's face—gone as quickly as a thought. "You have asked the right question," he said, addressing Hagoromo's worry. "Can the beasts be preserved? Yes. Your system calls them bijū. Mine would call them names given to great shadows of nature. Names can be kept."
Hagoromo's eyes sharpened. "How?"
"By binding essence to shadow instead of letting it dissolve into raw chakra." Ashborn raised a hand. Darkness flowed off his fingers like silk and formed a small, stylized silhouette of the tanuki's head. "A shade is not a prison. It is a pattern. I can weave a tether for each of them—anchor their astral selves to the boy's domain." His gaze slid to Naruto. "If he accepts king's work."
Naruto didn't hesitate. "Do it."
Kushina looked between Monarch and Sage. "Will that… hurt them?"
Ashborn's eyes cooled. "Pain belongs to flesh. This is memory and will. They will sleep in shadow until called—not drained, not erased." He paused, and the pause felt like a lesson. "But a king must feed his court. Power in, power out. The more you shelter, the more your throne will demand of you."
Naruto squared his shoulders. "I can carry it."
Kurama snorted softly. "You always did."
Hagoromo tapped his staff, threads of chakra rising like steam. "Then I will shape the seals; you will knit the shadows. Between us, the beasts will endure within him." He considered Naruto. "But they cannot be the same as before. Not parasites, not prisoners—companions bound by consent."
The astral silhouettes flickered at the edge of the circle, as if listening.
Ashborn's gaze deepened. "You will extract their shadows when their vessels are near death or their chakra is spent. Not before. This world is balanced on agreements; break them and you will drown in debt." He raised one finger. "Lesson one."
Naruto nodded, absorbing every syllable.
"Lesson two," Ashborn went on, and the void dimmed to hear him. "Your world is chakra-rich, mana-poor. That is good. The Eternals and the other Monarchs require mana to travel and to feed. Here, they would starve. They will not come unless a gate is opened from within and mana is invited." He tipped his head toward Naruto's chest. "Your Black Heart does not draw mana. It has learned to translate chakra. That makes this world yours to rule in shadow—without outside kings to contest you."
Minato exhaled; some knot in his posture loosened. Kushina's shoulders dropped a fraction. Kurama's tails swayed, pleased.
Naruto chewed his lip, then grinned—small, fierce. "So… I don't have to worry about some giant mana-monster crashing through my front door."
"Not unless you build the door," Ashborn said dryly.
Hagoromo's staff clicked once against the light. "Then the path is clear. We save the bijū, end the cycles, and teach the boy to stand." He looked to Minato and Kushina. "Will you help me carve the foundation?"
Kushina straightened, eyes blazing. "Try and stop me."
Minato nodded. "We'll train him. Stance, sealwork, restraint."
Kurama flicked an ear. "And I'll teach him how not to flinch when the world roars."
Ashborn regarded Naruto for a beat that felt like a vow. "And I will teach you to make silence do as it's told. Shadow extraction. Shadow storage. Shadow command. Stealth. Dominion." He stepped closer; the dark around his feet curled like loyal hounds. "You will learn to turn an enemy into an asset—and an ally into an army."
The Monarch lifted his hand. A small blade of darkness formed above his palm—flat, simple, perfectly balanced. "Take it."
Naruto reached. The moment his fingers closed, the weapon dissolved into his palm and reappeared as black script along his wrist—an elegant mark shaped like a falling crescent.
"A key," Ashborn said. "To doors only you can see."
The constellation-beasts at the perimeter brightened, their outlines steadier now—listening, tethering, remaining.
Hagoromo's voice softened. "One more thing." He touched Naruto's brow with two fingers. A brand of pale light bloomed and faded—nothing ornamental, something lived-in. "A matrix to hold what we build. Not a cage. A house."
Naruto stood between parents and fox, Sage and Monarch, feeling not heavy but held. The loneliness that had been a constant hum in his bones was gone. In its place: purpose that didn't bruise.
He breathed in. The void breathed out with him.
"Okay," he said, voice steady. "Let's begin."
Ashborn's mouth tilted—half approval, half promise. "Lesson three," he said, and the light bent to his will. "A king's first order is to himself."
The circle widened, becoming a training floor of gentle dark and humming sigils. Minato spread his feet in a stance Naruto suddenly understood. Kushina's hands traced a seal, laughter bright and deadly. Kurama crouched, ready to pounce. Hagoromo lifted his staff and the cosmos answered.
Above them, far and near, the eight astral bijū held their shapes a little longer