The journey from the Land of Iron to the Land of Waterfalls was not measured in miles, but in the encroaching shadows of Arahata's mind.
They traveled by a closed carriage, the rhythmic swaying providing a mock-pulse to a man whose own heart was beginning to forget its purpose. Naruto had walked with them as far as the Iron border.
"I have to go back to the Hidden Leaf soon," Naruto had said, standing in the churning snow. "There's... a lot coming. Things I don't fully understand yet."
Arahata, bundled in furs, his face now a mask of ink save for his eyes, looked at the boy. For a fleeting second, his Jūgan flared—not because he willed it, but because the biological instinct to perceive was making one final stand. He saw Naruto standing on a battlefield of white sand; he saw Naruto facing a moon that was also an eye.
"Don't tell me," Naruto said, sensing the golden rings before they even manifested.
Arahata smiled, the stain cracking at his cheek. "I wasn't going to. In all those futures, Naruto-kun... you still haven't brushed your hair properly. I think some things are simply universal constants."
Naruto laughed, a warm sound that seemed to chase the frost away. He bumped his fist against Arahata's shoulder—carefully, as if Arahata were made of blown glass. "See you around. Somewhere."
"Nowhere," Arahata corrected gently. "And that is exactly where I want to be."
The Land of Waterfalls greeted them with the smell of wet earth and ancient moss. As they neared the Hidden Village, the sound of the Great Waterfall began as a low-frequency hum in their chests, gradually rising to a majestic, earth-shaking roar.
Twelve hours, fifteen minutes.
Arahata was carried by Ren. The young Hyūga moved with a silent, fluid strength, his Byakugan scanning the terrain—not for threats, but for the softest paths, the ones that wouldn't jar the dying man's brittle frame.
Mei walked beside them, her hand grazing the ferns as they passed. To her, the humidity was a weight, but to Arahata, it was a veil. The high-definition sharpness of the Iron Land's air had been replaced by the soft, diffused blur of the mist.
"There," Arahata whispered.
They stood at the edge of the Hidden Village's outer ring—a hidden cavern where a massive column of water plummeted into a deep, dark pool. This was the place where Arahata had been found as a seven-year-old boy, soaking wet and silent, after his clan had devoured itself with the truth.
Ren set him down against a moss-covered boulder.
Arahata leaned his head back. He was blind in his left eye now—the black stain had completely overtaken the iris. His right eye, however, remained a pale, fading gold.
"Leave me for a moment," Arahata said. "I want to hear it without your heartbeats."
Ren looked to Mei. She nodded slowly. They retreated to the mouth of the cavern, standing as guardians between the dying scion and a world that was already moving on toward a Great War.
Arahata closed his eyes.
Immediately, his mind tried to build the Grid. It tried to calculate the splash-radius of the waterfall, the probability of the moss eroding, the structural integrity of the cavern.
"No," he hissed at himself. "Just the sound."
He reached out and grabbed the damp earth with his trembling hands. He focused on the texture of the soil, the grit of the sand beneath his fingernails.
The roar of the waterfall was overwhelming. To most, it was a singular, booming noise. But as Arahata listened, he began to deconstruct it—not through math, but through surrender. He heard the individual hiss of the spray; he heard the heavy thrum of the deep water striking the pool; he heard the musical tinkling of the runoff.
Two hours, six minutes.
His breath hitched. The black stain was pressing against the seat of his consciousness now. The Jūgan, in its final desperation, began to show him its own death. It was a hall of mirrors, reflecting the void.
Probability: Total.
Future: Zero.
"Beautiful," he whispered.
He had spent twenty-four years trying to map the branches so he wouldn't be caught by surprise. But the greatest surprise of all was how peaceful it was to simply not know. To not know what the next breath would taste like. To not know if Mei would come back into the room. To not know what the first second of nothing felt like.
Arahata's hand slipped from the boulder, falling into the shallow pool at its base.
A single drop of spray fell from a hanging fern. It didn't belong to the Great Waterfall. It was a rogue, a small piece of gravity. Arahata watched it—with his one remaining, dimming eye.
The drop descended.
He didn't calculate its velocity. He didn't see where it would land.
He just watched it happen.
The drop struck the surface of the pool. Plink.
Arahata's eyes didn't close immediately. He watched the ripples spread—imperfect, messy, uncalculated circles that collided with one another, creating a chaotic, wonderful geometry that he had no hand in designing.
Ten seconds.
Nine.
"Mei," he tried to say, but the ink had reached his tongue.
The golden ring in his right eye shivered once, twice, and then simply evaporated into a pale, human grey.
Arahata, the Desolate Supremacial Severance, the man who saw too much to feel anything, finally ran out of futures.
He died in the middle of a thought about the color blue.
Ren and Mei found him ten minutes later.
He looked small. Without the aura of the Jūgan, without the vibration of ten thousand probabilities, he was just a twenty-four-year-old man in a water-stained haori.
Mei sat beside him and took his hand. It was cold, but for the first time, it didn't feel tense.
"He's not vibrating anymore," Ren whispered, his Byakugan revealing the total stillness of Arahata's chakra pathways. The "Heavy Eyes" were closed. The "Black Stain" was no longer a curse; it was just a pattern on skin that no longer felt pain.
"He found it," Mei said, her blind eyes turned toward the roar of the waterfall. "The place where the silence is as loud as the water."
She stood up, leaning on her cane. "Go to the village, Ren. Tell them the scion of the Tenjō has returned home. Tell them we need a place for a man who doesn't want to see the future."
As Ren left, Mei remained by the water. She reached out and felt the spray on her face.
Somewhere, far to the east, the gears of the world were turning. Nations were marching toward a destiny they couldn't see. But here, in the Land of Waterfalls, there was a gap in the probability of the world. A small, quiet hole where one man had successfully refused to hold anything—and finally found himself full.
The water fell. The sun set. And for the first time in centuries, the sky was just a sky.