A/N — Fan-Fic Fiesta Entry
Crimson Archivist is my entry for WebNovel's Fan-Fic Fiesta. If you like a smart, non-OP MC with a diagnostic-only system, add this to your Library and drop a Power Stone—it really helps during the event.
Evan Rays lived quiet. No family nearby, no girlfriend, no parties—just a laptop that hummed like a second heartbeat and a row of anime Blu-rays lined up in perfect order. When life felt loud, he folded paper cranes. Crease by crease, the world made sense.
College gave him a doorway. He got into a top game-dev program and found out he wasn't in love with graphics or fancy effects. He was in love with flow—what goes in, what comes out, where it breaks. While his classmates tuned explosions, Evan wrote tools that kept games from crashing. He jailbroke his phone between classes, tweaked his laptop to boot faster, and won hackathons with projects that didn't look flashy but never failed.
He didn't think of himself as a genius. He thought of himself as a debugger in a noisy world: find the pattern, flag the error, move on.
After a year of small wins, "apps" felt too small. He wanted a lens—something that could look through a device and tell him what was wrong. Not how to fix it. Just the truth.
He called it Project SpiralLens and typed a single rule at the top of his README:
ADVICE_MODE = FALSE // report errors only
USB first. Tether, listen, learn.
He clipped a cable to a cheap drone and watched numbers scroll across his screen. SpiralLens drew thin, pale lines over the live data like a quiet heads-up display.
No "tighten this." No "replace that." Just deltas.
He pointed the lens at his own laptop while it compiled code.
An origami crane sat beside the trackpad, a paper mascot. He flicked its wing and smiled.
Two weeks later he added Wi-Fi sniffing—no app to install, no special access. Just passive listening.
The old router on his shelf told its secrets:
His phone admitted a few quirks, too. He wrote a short commit message—USB → Wi-Fi; diagnostics only—and kept the project private. No cloud, no open repo. Just him, the lens, and the rule.
⸻
A week after that, an email found him: "Consultation: Turbine Trip Diagnostics — URGENT."
Evan showed up at Rexon Utilities—East Station in steel-toe boots and a visitor vest that hung off him like borrowed authority. The plant was a maze of pipes, cabinets, and warning signs. Everything hummed.
"Control is this way," said Dana, the shift engineer. Tight bun, steady voice, eyes that missed nothing. "We've had three sudden shutdowns this month. Our tools say it's fine. It's not fine."
Evan touched the paper crane in his hoodie pocket—habit, not superstition—set his backpack down, and opened SpiralLens. The line at the top of the screen looked like a promise.
ADVICE_MODE = FALSE
"Wi-Fi will do," he told her. "I only read. I don't control."
He aimed the lens at an old access point and let the numbers roll.
They walked into the generator hall. The air changed—warm metal, a hint of detergent. A hydrogen-cooled generator rumbled like a sleeping animal. Dana pulled up sensor feeds; SpiralLens turned them into simple lines he could read at a glance.
Evan's mouth went dry. "What's your purge procedure?"
"Our hydrogen sensors say we're green," Dana said, tapping a neat, safe readout.
SpiralLens disagreed. A soft pulse crossed the screen.
No prescriptions. Just truth. Evan sent her the deltas as-is. She keyed her radio, gave short, sharp orders, and made the plant move.
Down one level, the battery room breathed heat. Dana's phone buzzed; she frowned. "Another nuisance alarm on B-Bank. Every time the turbine hiccups, the backup power acts weird. I hate this room."
They stopped at the door. The air smelled wrong.
SpiralLens lit the frame with fast, nervous lines.
"Don't open if there's gas," Dana said, catching his wrist. "We need two minutes to transfer the load."
A pop—small, like a knuckle cracking. The hair on Evan's arms rose.
He scanned again. The lens stayed calm; its words did not.
A junior tech appeared at the end of the hall, eyes wide. "Clear it!" Dana called, pointing him back.
"Thirty seconds," she told the radio. "Hold steady."
Evan could do the math. A dead fan. A hot cell. Gas where it had no business being. A door that kept danger in. SpiralLens could only show what was wrong. People had to choose what to do.
He slid the crane deeper into his pocket and moved.
A yellow lever waited on a wall-mounted panel: MANUAL DAMPER BYPASS. AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED. He had none. The corridor tasted like metal.
SpiralLens traced his hands like chalk on glass.
No advice. Just deltas.
He pulled.
The lever fought, then gave. Air hissed. Somewhere inside, another fan caught the draft and spun on momentum. Numbers shifted.
"Transfer—now!" Dana shouted.
A bright snap came from the switchgear room, like a camera flash. Light met gas that had been waiting for a single mistake.
The world hit Evan in the chest. Sound split into white. Paper labels tore loose and spun like confetti. He hit the floor. His laptop slid under a rolling table and turned into a square of fire.
SpiralLens kept going, stubborn to the end.
He tasted metal and thought of the crane, and of code that only told the truth. He wished—for one clean second—that he'd had time to write a fix.
Then everything spiraled, soft and black.
Stinger: Signal noise 38%. Pattern incomplete.
Light. Too bright, blinking like a slow heartbeat.
Evan forced his eyes open. After a few blinks the glare softened into a flat white that went on forever—no walls, no ceiling, no floor he could name. Just an endless, weightless plain.
He checked himself. Hands. Arms. Chest. Everything where it should be. No burns. No blood. His lungs felt clear, almost good, like he could run laps.
"Where… the hell am I?" His voice didn't echo. It just disappeared into the white.
A memory snapped back—the plant, Dana, the damper, that flash of light like a camera turned into a sun. "Did the power plant explode?" He shook his head. "No. If it did, I shouldn't be—" He swallowed. "I shouldn't be here."
The emptiness pressed in. Thoughts scattered, then crashed back together.
"This isn't right," he whispered. "If I died—no. No, I had plans. I was just getting started. Not like this. Not—"
His fists clenched. Tears surprised him, hot and fast. He bowed his head, breath hitching, a spear of grief sliding clean through his chest.
And then—all at once—the weight lifted. The panic fell away like a coat shrugged off in summer. Calm moved through him, quiet and total, not his own.
A figure stood a few paces away. Not shining, not crowned. Just a man in plain robes the color of bone, hair bound back, eyes steady as still water. The air around him felt… orderly.
Evan wiped his face. "W–who are you?"
"I'm not here to bargain," the man said gently. "Only to tell you the truth."
Evan's throat worked. "Am I dead?"
The man's eyes softened. "You were part of a terrible accident. Hydrogen. A spark. You opened a bypass and bought people time." He tipped his head, almost like a bow. "They lived because of you."
Evan wanted to argue, to say I'm not a hero, I just pulled a lever, but the words stuck. He'd been ready to shout wrong, to rage—but the calm wouldn't let him drown.
"I know how it feels," the man said. "You were special. Not because you were loud, but because you could see what was wrong and tell the truth. A gift like that changes places, even if people don't see it right away."
Evan swallowed. "Can you tell me exactly what happened?"
"The unit you visited had a chain of small faults. Your SpiralLens read them correctly. Humans had to choose, and you chose." The man's gaze flicked past Evan's shoulder, as if watching a timeline only he could see. "And now another chain begins."
The white brightened. Subtle lines drifted through it—thin, faint spirals like pencil on glass. For a second Evan thought he could read them the way he read logs: signal, flow, pattern.
"What is this place?" he asked, quieter.
"A corridor," the man said. "Between what ended and what hasn't started yet."
"Started where?"
The man's eyes warmed, almost amused. "In a world that also runs on patterns and flow. Somewhere, a small ritual meant to preserve family memory has opened. It is record-only. It will not tell you how to fix anything. It will only show you the truth of what is wrong."
Evan's mouth twitched. "Figures."
"You won't be alone," the man added. "There is a child who needs you. He is… compatible. Your ways of seeing will fit their seal. Together you may become something new. Not a voice that commands. A lens that remembers."
Evan looked down at his hands. They were steady. A stupid question knocked anyway. "Can I go back?"
The man didn't lie. "No."
Evan closed his eyes. The grief was still there, but it didn't crush him. He pictured the paper crane, the lever painted yellow, Dana's voice steady by force. "If I can't fix it," he said, almost to himself, "I can at least show the error."
"That is enough," the man said.
The spirals sharpened. The white folded, gently, like paper creasing into a shape. Evan felt a tug—not a shove, not a fall, just alignment, as if the world had found a port that matched his connector.
Across the blank, faint text traced itself in the air, cool and neutral.
[Signal] Acquired.
[Flow] Redirected.
[Pattern] Incomplete → Bound.
The man stepped back as if from a threshold. "Good luck, Evan Rays."
The light leaned. The world turned.
Something rustled—paper?—and a breath that wasn't his drew in for the first time.
Evan opened his eyes to a wooden ceiling. Not hospital tiles—planks, dark and smooth, with a faint smell of paper and ink. He lay on a thin mattress. Tatami rustled under his palms when he pushed up.
He looked around. Low table. Sliding paper doors. Hand-carved shelves. Everything looked… old. Not ancient—just from another time.
He swung his legs off the bed and nearly missed the floor. The ground was a lot closer than he remembered.
The man said I'd "align" with someone. What did that—
He caught a mirror on the wall, stepped closer, and froze.
A small boy stared back. Round cheeks. Shorter legs. Deep-crimson hair that caught the light. Amber eyes with a faint spiral ring when he focused on them.
"What the—" He yelped. "WHAT THE HELL!"
Footsteps pounded. The door slid open and a broad-shouldered man burst in, posture like a drawn blade. His gaze swept the room, landed on Evan, softened.
"Renga," the man said. "What's wrong? Why are you shouting?"
Renga? Who's Renga? Evan's mind spun. The man was looking right at him.
"I—uh—" Evan swallowed. "Thought I saw a spider. Sorry. Scared me."
The man held his stare a beat, then exhaled. "Next time, don't spook so easily. Shinobi aren't frightened by spiders. And watch your mouth—you're five. No more 'hell' in this house."
He slid the door shut and was gone.
Evan stood there, heart ticking hard. Shinobi? Five? He turned back to the mirror, palms flat on the frame.
"Red hair… shinobi…" His voice was small in the quiet room. "No way."
He looked into those amber eyes and finally said it out loud.
"Was I… reincarnated into Naruto?"
A fizz of excitement ran through him—through Renga's small body. Evan had lived on anime. When life got heavy, he watched his favorites grind through impossible odds and it lit a fire under him. For a while, that fire carried him.
But this wasn't a screen.
This is Naruto, he realized. One of the most dangerous worlds he knew. Here, life wasn't guaranteed unless you clawed your way up the mountain and stayed there. For a heartbeat he tried to bargain with the thought: If I just trust the main story… if I keep my head down… Naruto always pulls it out in the end, right?
Then another thought cut in, cold and simple: You're not a side character in a recap. You're a kid in the blast radius.
He almost laughed anyway. "Man, that guy really didn't think too far ahead. With everything I know about Naruto, living a second, successful life is practically—"
He glanced back at the mirror.
"—guaranteed," he finished weakly.
He stared at the red hair. "So my name is Renga… and I look Uzumaki. Ama—" His brain tripped. "Uzu…maki."
He went rigid. "Wait. No, no, no—Uzumaki? That can't be."
Panic rose like a tide. "If I'm Uzumaki, that only means one thing—my death is practically scheduled." Names flashed: Kushina, Naruto, Karin, Nagato. The only confirmed survivors he remembered. He wasn't any of them. So am I an extra in Uzushio before it falls?
He slid the door open and bolted down the hall. The entryway led to a small porch and a garden washed in morning light—beds of flowers, neat stone paths, paper wind chimes clicking softly. A pair of hawks perched on the roof ridge like sentries.
He looked past the garden and every other thought fell away.
Hokage Rock. Three faces. Not four.
Renga swallowed. "No… God, why would you do this to me?" Tears pricked, threatening to spill.
Three faces means the Fourth hasn't been carved yet. So Hiruzen is Hokage now—or about to be again. That puts him somewhere between late Second Great Ninja War and the stretch before or during the Third. Minato's rise. Kakashi's cohort. ROOT busy. Danzo breathing down alleys.
He rubbed his face with both hands. "Great. Drop a baby Uzumaki into one of the most dangerous timelines in shinobi history. Perfect."
He took a breath, then another, counting the beats like he used to with code deploys. Panic shifted into a thin, useful edge.
"Okay," he told the garden, the hawks, the three stone faces. "I'm Uzumaki, I'm five, I'm in Konoha, and the Fourth isn't on the mountain. That narrows it down."
No coasting, he told himself. No banking on the main character. Survive smart. Build quietly. Record everything.
His heart was still racing, but the path was no longer a void. It had lines he could read.
The shōji slammed. Heavy footsteps pounded the hall. Renga turned just as a red-haired woman stormed onto the porch, hair lifting with a faint chakra flare, wooden spatula gripped like a kunai.
"RENGA UZUMAKI!" she snapped. "You turn five and suddenly you own the house? Since when do we slam doors we didn't pay for?"
He gulped. A memory surged—names aligning like code: Akane Uzumaki. Mom.
"I—sorry, Mom. I just… wanted to catch the sunrise before breakfast."
Akane's hair slowly settled. The spatula lowered a notch. In the next breath she scooped him into a crushing hug.
"Aaah, you're cute when you remember you have a mother, Ren." She pinched his cheek, then wagged the spatula. "Because you're cute, I'll save your whooping for tonight. Slam another door and we renegotiate."
From inside, a calm voice drifted over tatami. "Akane, go easy on him."
"Renjiro, your son tried to elope with the morning!" she called back, then steered Renga toward the entry. "Inside. Eat. After breakfast—hand seals and handwriting. Sunrise will still be there tomorrow."
A/N: This is my entry for WebNovel's Fan-Fic Fiesta. If it hooked you, please Add to Library and drop a Power Stone—it helps me climb the ranks and push out more chapters!