December thirty-first. The year-end festival.
Winter had arrived early. Snow fell thick and steady, the cold sharp enough to bite through layers of clothing. Even so, the streets of Konoha were alive. Lanterns glowed. Voices overlapped. People moved in clusters, preparing for the coming year.
As night settled, the last trace of sunset faded from the horizon. Stars emerged, scattered across the sky, the moon hanging pale and distant above the village.
Light spread through Konoha.
Only one place remained dark.
At the edge of the village, the Uchiha district lay silent. Empty streets. Unlit houses. A hollow contrast to the warmth beyond its gates.
Sasuke stopped at the entrance and looked back toward the village lights.
"…It really is bleak," he said quietly.
The comparison was unavoidable. Anyone who returned here night after night, staring into that emptiness while the village thrived just beyond reach, would break eventually.
He turned east.
In his hands were ritual offerings remembered rather than learned. The clan's rites were not complicated. He would not ignore them.
The Naka Shrine stood waiting.
Inside the main hall, dust lay undisturbed. Webs clung to the beams. Sasuke set the offerings aside and surveyed the space. He had passed through here before, but never lingered.
At the center stood the object of veneration.
A magatama.
Black. Thick. Carved smooth, shaped like a crescent. Not a deity. Not an ancestor.
Something else.
Sasuke stepped closer.
The magatama's surface wasn't stone. Not quite crystal either. And at its rounded end, where a cord should have passed through, a red gem was set in place instead.
Faceted. Clear. Warm.
The moment he touched it, his chakra stirred.
"…So that's it."
He removed the gem carefully.
The crystal rested easily in his palm, dense and refined, carrying a muted heat within it.
A chakra crystal.
Recognition came without effort.
Hashirama's necklace had been the same in principle. Chakra condensed into physical form. That one held Wood Release.
This one carried fire.
Sasuke exhaled slowly.
So this was the Uchiha relic mentioned only in passing in the clan records. The text had never named its origin, but the answer was obvious. Someone in the clan's past had pushed Fire Release beyond technique, beyond form.
He sealed the crystal away and turned his attention back to the black magatama.
His fingers brushed its surface.
It absorbed warmth. Light. Even the heat from the candles dimmed slightly near it.
"…Not obsidian," he murmured.
Memory surfaced. A passage from an old mineral compendium.
Fire obsidian.
A chakra metal born under impossible conditions. Volcanic heat. Chakra-rich ore. Time measured in decades, sometimes centuries.
The best material for fire-aligned weapons.
Sasuke's mouth curved faintly.
"So I'll need a blade worthy of this."
He sealed the magatama into a scroll.
Then he straightened and looked back at the altar.
Empty.
He paused.
"…Right."
For a moment, even he felt the weight of it.
He gathered himself, turned back toward the hall, and continued the ritual as best he could.
Some debts, he decided, could be paid later.