The Kamui space was quiet—too quiet. The kind of silence where even your heartbeat sounds like a taunt.
Raizen sat half-buried in the dark void, his torso wrapped in bloody bandages. Every move sent pain screaming through his ribs.
"Damn it… if the Nine Tails hadn't run, I'd have had to Kamui myself straight out of existence."
He gave a dry laugh that turned into a cough. It wasn't funny, but dying almost had been.
The fight had pushed him further than he'd ever gone before. His chakra was burnt out, his vision flickering at the edges. But he was alive. Barely. And that counted.
"Can't stay here forever," he muttered, forcing himself upright. "If I vanish too long, the clan'll start digging graves with my name on them."
He sealed the last of his bandages, exhaled, and phased out of the Kamui dimension.
When he reappeared in the Konoha Alliance camp, the place was tense enough to snap. Shinobi flinched at the sudden swirl of space-time chakra, hands flying to their weapons—then froze.
"Wait—! That's—Patriarch Amamiya!"
The shout spread like wildfire. A dozen heads turned, then a hundred. The camp erupted into motion as someone sprinted toward the command tents.
Aburame Shō burst out first, kikaichū buzzing around him like smoke. His face, usually unreadable, split with something close to relief.
"Raizen-sama! You're alive!"
Raizen blinked. "What, did I miss a funeral rehearsal?"
Shō exhaled hard through his mask. "You disappeared after the Nine Tails fell back. The entire Alliance thought you were dead. I sent every unit I could spare searching the battlefield."
Raizen rubbed the back of his neck, half-embarrassed. "Guess I overdid the dramatic exit."
He followed Shō back to the main tent, where the strategist laid out the half-day of chaos in clipped sentences: the panic, the search parties, the sleepless troops.
Raizen listened, nodding slowly. "So while I was playing dead, everyone lost their minds."
Then Shō's tone shifted—almost gleeful. "But that's not all. While you were gone, the Sarutobi Alliance surrendered."
Raizen stopped mid-breath. "They what?"
"Their patriarch, Sarutobi Keigo, yielded. Every remaining clan followed suit."
For a moment, Raizen just stared, trying to process it. The year-long war—the siege, the alliances, the blood—it was over.
"…Finally."
The word left his mouth like smoke. He looked down at his scarred hands. So much fighting, for this single breath of quiet. But as the numbness faded, another feeling hit—a thrill that tasted like lightning.
Tens of thousands of enemy shinobi captured. Dozens of clans—some large, some small—now had a choice: dissolve, or bend the knee. And in the Warring States era, surrender wasn't mercy—it was absorption.
"They'll join us," Raizen murmured. "They have to."
With those families annexed, the Konoha Alliance wouldn't just be a coalition—it'd be a proto-village. A seed that could one day stand equal to the Senju or the Uchiha.
His lips curved in a tired, almost defiant smile. "This is it. The real beginning."
By morning, the search squads returned. The Alliance packed up, their victory echoing in every movement. The prisoners—over four thousand Sarutobi shinobi—were bound and escorted on the march home.
Three days later, they reached the Konoha Alliance stronghold.
The gates were already crowded; tens of thousands of civilians and shinobi families waited, faces anxious and bright. When the returning army appeared on the horizon, a single cry broke the tension.
"They're back!"
The shout spread through the crowd like wildfire.
Children climbed onto walls, women waved banners stitched with clan crests, and old men wept openly.
"They did it! Konoha won!"
"Even the Sarutobi kneeled!"
"Long live the Amamiya Clan!"
The soldiers entered to a roar that shook the sky.
Raizen walked at the head of the formation, armor cracked and bloodstained, expression caught between disbelief and fatigue. A few kids broke through the crowd and ran up to him—muddy feet, bright eyes, unafraid.
One of them tugged at his sleeve. "You beat the monster, didn't you, Raizen-sama?"
Raizen looked down, then laughed softly. "Something like that."
He picked one up in each arm, letting their cheers drown the exhaustion. Around him, the people of Konoha reached out—calling his name, clapping, crying.
For the first time since his reincarnation, he felt it—not just survival. Legacy.
"This," he thought, watching the crowd swell like a living tide, "is Konoha."
Not a village yet. But close.
And for now, that was enough.