Kris was aware before he understood that he was dead.
There was no body. That was the first thing that felt wrong. No weight, no breath, no pain lingering from the impact. He tried to move his hands and realized there were none. The instinct to inhale came and went without resistance. Nothing responded because there was nothing to respond with.
He was not floating. He was not falling.
He simply was.
The space around him had no color. It was not darkness, because darkness implied something you could see. This was absence without hostility. Thought still worked. Memory still worked. That alone was unsettling.
So this is it, Kris thought. No hell. No heaven. Just… this.
Time did not pass in any way he could measure. He replayed moments from his life without meaning to. His room at night. Naruto's voice through cheap speakers. His brother yelling from behind him. Watch out. The word echoed without sound.
A presence entered his awareness.
It did not arrive. It did not approach. One moment it was not there, and the next it was impossible to ignore. It did not have a shape, but it had intention. Kris understood that much immediately.
You are awake, the presence said.
The words did not come from a direction. They simply existed, complete and calm.
Kris tried to respond out of reflex. He expected panic, anger, disbelief. None of it came out properly. Thought alone felt slow, like trying to speak through water.
Am I dead?
Yes.
The answer was immediate. No hesitation. No softening.
Figures, Kris thought.
He waited for more. Judgment. Explanation. Some kind of moral accounting. Nothing followed.
"Why am I still… here?" he asked, or thought, unsure which.
Because you are not finished.
That got his attention.
Kris focused, or tried to. "With what?"
With watching, the presence replied. With caring.
That annoyed him more than it should have. "I didn't do anything special. I just watched a show."
You watched a world, the presence corrected. A world that exists.
Kris felt a flicker of disbelief. "Naruto isn't real."
It is, the presence said. Because it was lived into existence. Its creator poured himself into it. His grief. His values. His questions. You recognized that, even if you could not name it.
Images surfaced in Kris's mind without warning. Naruto standing alone after Jiraiya's death. Sasuke walking away without looking back. Itachi's tired eyes. The Uchiha compound at night, silent and full of ghosts.
"You're saying it's real because Kishimoto cared enough?" Kris asked.
Because he suffered enough, the presence answered.
That sat heavier.
"So why me?" Kris asked. "Why not someone better?"
There was a pause. Not hesitation. Consideration.
You judged that world, the presence said. You criticized it. You believed you understood its mistakes. You believed you would choose differently.
Kris flinched. He remembered scoffing at Madara. Calling the Uchiha stupid. Thinking he knew better because he was not inside it.
"That doesn't mean I deserve anything," he said.
This is not a reward.
The words landed cleanly.
Kris went quiet.
"You're sending me there," he said finally.
Yes, not as yourself.
A tightness formed in his thoughts. "Do I get a choice?"
No.
At least it was honest.
"What about my family?" Kris asked. The question surprised him with how sharp it felt. His parents. His brother. The house he ran from without looking back.
They will grieve, the presence said. And they will continue.
That hurt more than the bullies ever did.
Kris swallowed, even though there was nothing to swallow with. "Am I supposed to fix things there? Change the story?"
No.
The answer came faster this time.
"You're not sending me as some kind of hero?"
No.
"Do I keep my memories?"
Yes.
That was worse.
Kris laughed, a soundless, bitter thing. "That's cruel."
Perhaps, the presence replied. Or perhaps it is honest.
Silence stretched again. Kris felt something gathering, like pressure building without direction.
"You hated the Uchiha," the presence said.
"I still do," Kris replied. "They chose pride over each other. Over and over."
Then you will understand them more intimately than you ever wanted to.
Before Kris could ask what that meant, awareness began to compress. Not forcefully. Inevitably. Thought narrowed. Memory tightened, folding inward as if being packed away without care for comfort.
"Wait," Kris said. "At least tell me one thing."
What?
"Do I survive?"
There was another pause.
You live.
The distinction mattered, though Kris did not yet know why.
The space around him brightened, not with light but with sensation. Heat. Pressure. Noise forming at the edges of awareness. Thought became harder to hold onto, like trying to remember something while waking up too fast.
"This isn't fair," Kris said, the words slipping even as he formed them.
Life rarely is.
The presence faded, not gone but irrelevant, drowned out by sensation.
Something squeezed his chest.
Something forced air into lungs that had never drawn breath.
And Kris Underwood ceased to exist as anything but memory, carried forward into a world that did not care what he thought it should have been.