Deep inside a cave in the Land of Rain, Ren sat in the dark. He remained silent, his eyes fixed on his parents. Five days had passed since the massacre.
Satoshi suddenly took a sharp, jagged breath. He bolted upright, his hand moving to grab a sword that wasn't there.
"Ren...?" Satoshi's voice was raspy and dry.
"Don't move too fast, Dad," Ren said. "I removed the chakra seals, but your network is still unstable."
Satoshi did not listen. He turned his head and saw Kaori. She was lying nearby, breathing steadily, but her eyes were open and staring at the ceiling without blinking. Satoshi crawled to her side, his movements frantic. He took her hand—it was warm, but there was no squeeze back. No recognition.
"Kaori? Kaori, look at me!" He channeled a pulse of chakra into her body to wake her up. There was no reaction. Her hand remained limp.
"Her soul was damaged, Dad," Ren stood up, his Mangekyo spinning in the dim light. "Kato Dan tried to possess her. She fought him off, but the strain caused her spirit to snap. She is in a vegetative state. She might never wake up."
The words hit Satoshi with immense force. A guttural scream tore from his throat. As his grief peaked, the three tomoe in his eyes began to spin rapidly. They merged into a new pattern: a black, three-pointed star.
The air in the cave began to distort. The space around Satoshi's body rippled like heat rising off a road, bending the light around him.
The Hokage's Office
Five days later, the Hokage's office was crowded. Hiruzen Sarutobi sat at his desk. Sakumo Hatake, the village elders, Jiraiya, Orochimaru, and Tsunade were present. The mood was tense.
Orochimaru stepped forward to present his report.
"We extracted memories from the ninjas whose heads were intact," Orochimaru stated. "Only their heads remained in one piece. Some were guarding the perimeter while others slept. According to the memories, Kato Dan shouted about an enemy attack, but was immediately launched like a cannonball. He crashed at the outskirts of the camp."
Orochimaru pointed to a map. "The memories show a silhouette. It became a black blur, and the ninjas died before they could react. In other memories, ninjas attacked with ninjutsu, but the silhouette let out an ear-piercing noise from its mouth. Every ninja nearby lost consciousness instantly."
He continued his analysis. "Most of them died without knowing what happened. We found a large oval crater on the outskirts where Kato Dan landed. I believe Ren used a high-level, S-rank destructive ninjutsu to erase Dan completely. Not even ash remained."
Everyone in the room was silent. Then Sakumo spoke. "What do we do now, Hokage-sama? And what about Danzo, who attacked his own comrades? Shouldn't he be executed for committing treason? And is the village going to issue a bounty against Ren Uchiha and Satoshi Uchiha?"
Danzo did not flinch. He looked at the group and used the Uchiha threat theory as a defense. "Ren was an Uchiha secret weapon. Do you really believe a mediocre ninja could become this powerful in two months? He killed two hundred ninjas without letting them fight back. The Uchiha clan planned this."
Koharu and Mitokado supported Danzo's statement.
Jiraiya spoke up. "Sensei, what Danzo did was wrong. He must be punished."
Tsunade pressed further. "Ren was a war hero. Danzo tried to capture his parents to control him. How are you going to explain this to the village ninjas and the Uchiha clan?"
Koharu interjected. "Now, Danzo is not the main issue. If this information leaves this room, the ninjas will never trust the village. There will be a civil war between the Uchiha and the village. Other villages will not sit by and watch; they will attack Konoha altogether, which will lead to more bloodshed."
The room fell silent. Koharu continued. "We have to find a reasonable solution. We have to appease the Uchiha clan. Putting a bounty on Ren and Satoshi will be the best option. Going against a Mangekyo user is better than going against four Great Ninja Villages. There will be civil unrest in the Uchiha clan, but we can negotiate terms with them."
Hiruzen finally spoke. "Danzo will be removed from his post. Root will be disbanded. About Ren, we will not put any bounty for now. It will just anger him. We will send an ANBU squad to track Ren, and I will personally negotiate with the Uchiha. For now, treat this information as the highest level of confidentiality."
Hiruzen added, "Stay alert at all times. Ren might attack the village.
Secrets in the shinobi world are often compared to shadows.
While Hiruzen Sarutobi had locked the village down under a suffocating veil of silence, he was fighting an adversary that did not breathe. Black Zetsu, moving through the subterranean veins of the world, did not merely leak the information. He whispered into the ears of greedy information brokers, ensuring that every detail was stripped of context and sharpened into a blade. Zetsu's objective was total isolation: to transform Uchiha Ren into a ghost that can never reconcile with Konoha, forcing the boy to eventually seek refuge in the only darkness left—the one Madara had prepared.
The shockwaves hit the Great Nations with the force of a physical disaster.
In the Land of Lightning, the Third Raikage's office desk was reduced to splinters under a lightning-enhanced fist. To him, a fifteen-year-old with the Mangekyō Sharingan was both an intolerable threat and a prize beyond measure; he immediately dispatched the forces to the borders with a singular mandate—bring back the Uchiha Ren or his corpse.
In the Land of Earth, Onoki sat in a silence so cold it felt brittle. The name "Uchiha" still carried the weight of a nightmare for the Tsuchikage, and he viewed Ren not as a person, but as a tectonic shift that needed to be suppressed. But Onoki decides to sit and watch.
Meanwhile, Sunagakure's leadership took a predatory delight in the news, using the Leaf's internal instability to halt peace talks and demand heavier reparations.
Within the walls of Konoha,
Hiruzen's carefully crafted cover story—that the camp had been lost to a massive Suna ambush—collapsed under the weight of the detailed rumors. Descriptions of the massive oval crater and the "Black Blur" circulated among the rank-and-file, turning the initial grief into a poisoned well of suspicion. Danzo Shimura, though officially stripped of his rank, moved his remaining pawns from the shadows to fan the flames of paranoia. He spread a lethal narrative that the Uchiha were inherently unstable, possessed by a genetic madness that could cause them to snap and kill anyone at any time. This psychological warfare was devastatingly effective.
Hiruzen stood at his window, watching the village.
He thought, " for the stability of the village we can only wrong The Uchiha clan."
He ordered the ANBU, "Make all the information about Ren's massacre public, and declare him S-Rank missing nin along with Satoshi and Kaori.''