The iron doors of the Great Hall did not burst open. There was no explosive tag, no crash of splintering wood, no surge of aggressive chakra.
Instead, the massive, bolted valves simply... ceased to be closed. At the exact millisecond a guard turned to cough, and at the exact moment the heavy iron latches experienced a microscopic harmonic vibration from the roaring fire in the center of the room, the doors swung inward on silent hinges.
Arahata walked in.
The air in the room was thick with the scent of old parchment, heated steel, and the oppressive, clashing auras of five of the most dangerous people alive.
"Identify yourself!" Onoki, the Third Tsuchikage, didn't wait for an answer. He hovered in the air, a glowing cube of Dust Release already forming between his palms.
Ay, the Fourth Raikage, was a blur of blue lightning before Arahata had taken a third step. His fist, traveling at a speed that defied the human nervous system, aimed directly for Arahata's temple.
Arahata didn't flinch. He didn't raise a hand.
The Raikage's fist whistled through the air, missing Arahata's ear by a hair's breadth. Ay's momentum carried him past, his feet skidding on the stone floor. He spun around, eyes wide with fury and confusion. "What? I don't miss!"
"You didn't miss, Raikage-sama," Arahata said, his voice echoing with a haunting, double-toned resonance. "You hit exactly where I would have been, had I chosen to remain in your version of the present. But I found your intent… loud. It was easy to move toward a future where your fist was simply air."
Arahata stood in the center of the hall. To his left stood Mei, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder—his tether to a world that was beginning to dissolve into math. To his right, Ren stood with his Byakugan active, his veins bulging, though he looked more like a frightened boy than a guard.
"The Tenjō scion," Mifune, the General of the Samurai, whispered. He stood at the head of the table, his hand on the hilt of his kurosawa. "The one who saw his own clan into the grave."
"They walked there themselves," Arahata replied. "I just provided the map."
"Enough games!" Gaara, the Kazekage, raised a hand. A wave of sand rose from the floor, hovering like a poised cobra. "Why have you come here? To claim a seat among us? Or to die?"
"I have come to offer you a way out of the circle," Arahata said. He looked at each of them. With the Jūgan, he didn't see five leaders. He saw five interlocking tragedies. He saw Onoki's stubborn pride as a brittle crystal structure; he saw Gaara's isolation as a field of jagged glass; he saw the Mizukage's longing as a toxic vapor.
And then, his eyes fell on the blonde boy standing behind the Kakashi Hatake.
Arahata paused.
Naruto Uzumaki was staring at him. He wasn't in a battle stance. He looked confused, even pained. In Arahata's vision, Naruto wasn't a structure of branching choices. He was a singularity. He was a burning, golden flame that didn't flicker based on the wind; he was the thing that made the wind.
"You," Arahata whispered, the gold rings in his eyes spinning with a violent, rhythmic hum. "Uzumaki Naruto. I see three thousand ways for this meeting to end. In two thousand of them, you try to convince me to go for ramen. In nine hundred, we destroy this mountain. In one… just one… you say nothing at all."
Naruto blinked. "Uh, I was actually thinking about the ramen thing, but you look kinda sick, buddy. That black stuff on your face looks like it hurts."
Arahata let out a dry, rattling laugh. It turned into a cough that speckled the white floor with dark, chakra-tainted blood.
"The world is a disaster of miscalculated intentions," Arahata said, turning his gaze back to the Kage. "You squabble over borders that shift with the seasons. You trade lives for 'deterrence' and call it peace. I can see the war you're trying to prevent—The Fourth Great Shinobi War. It's coming. I see it glowing in the probability space like a dying sun."
The room went cold. Even the Raikage went still.
"I can manage it," Arahata said. He spread his arms. The black stain had now reached his forehead, pulsing with a deep indigo light. "I offer myself as the Sixth Kage. The Kage of the Inevitable. If you give me the authority to dictate movement—to align the probability of your nations toward a singular, bloodless outcome—I can ensure that none of your soldiers ever die in a war again."
"You're talking about becoming a god," Mei Terumī, the Mizukage, said, her eyes narrowing. "Or a tyrant."
"Is there a difference," Arahata asked, "when the tyrant can guarantee your son's survival? When the god can make it so the kunai never strikes the heart?"
"A life without the chance to fail isn't a life at all," Naruto blurted out. He stepped forward, pushing past the guards. "I don't know all that math stuff, and I can't see the future. But if you already know what's gonna happen, then why bother waking up?"
Arahata's Jūgan fixed on Naruto. "Because if I don't wake up, Uzumaki-kun, the world falls apart. Entropy is the only law. My eyes keep the probability from collapsing into chaos. I am the only thing holding the sky up."
"Then let it fall," Naruto said, his face hardening into that terrifying, simple sincerity. "We'll just build a new one. Together. Without some guy telling us which way the rain has to blow."
The friction between them was palpable. Arahata's Domain began to bleed into the room. The shadows on the wall started to flicker, showing multiple versions of reality at once: the Raikage attacking, the building collapsing, the snow outside turning to fire.
"Certainty," Arahata hissed, his hand gripping his chest. "I need certainty! Without it, I am just a dying man with too much information!"
Sixty-one hours, four minutes.
The Jūgan pulsed. The golden rings turned blood-red.
"If you won't accept my management," Arahata growled, his voice losing its calm, "then I will show you the chaos you're so fond of. I will show you every death you've ever avoided. I will manifest the 'Could-Have-Been' until this hall is filled with the ghosts of your mistakes."
"Arahata, stop!" Mei (Kurogane) shouted, her sightless eyes weeping.
But Arahata couldn't hear her. He was staring at Naruto—searching, digging into the boy's probability cloud, looking for a single seed of doubt he could exploit to maintain his own reality.
But as he looked, he realized the horror: Naruto didn't have doubt. Not because he knew he would win, but because he didn't care if he lost, so long as he chose the path.
To Arahata, the man of infinite branches, the boy who chose only one was the most terrifying thing in existence.