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Deep beneath the moon's surface. Hamura's Great Hall.
Only a handful of dim lanterns still burned, their feeble glow swaying across the vast, empty chamber, painting everything in shades of amber and shadow.
A massive bed of cold jade dominated the center of the room. Hamura Ōtsutsuki lay upon it, barely alive.
Time had taken everything from him. His skin had shriveled against his bones like bark on a dead tree. Those eyes, once sharp enough to see through dimensions, had gone cloudy and unfocused. Every breath cost him something he couldn't afford to spend.
The palace was silent. No attendants. No family gathered at the bedside. Just one old man, alone, waiting for the end.
"Sigh..."
The sound barely carried. A whisper of breath released into cold, still air.
Hamura could feel his life draining out of him, second by second, like water from a cracked jar. He knew exactly how little was left. His clouded eyes held one last flicker of regret.
"I wish I could've seen my brother one more time..."
He was thinking of Hagoromo. His other half. The one person in the universe who'd shared his burden from the very beginning.
Then a voice spoke from the darkness.
"Hamura. Nearly a thousand years since we last met, and look at you."
The words cut through the silence like a blade through silk. Familiar. Impossible.
Hamura's eyes flew open as wide as his failing body could manage. Something erupted behind those clouded irises that hadn't been there in decades.
That person. How could he POSSIBLY still be alive?
Two points of violet light pierced the gloom. The Rinnegan, its concentric rings turning with slow, hypnotic precision, glowing in the darkness like twin moons.
A figure stepped out of the shadows.
Manji.
"You've gotten old, Hamura." Hands clasped behind his back. Posture as straight as the day they'd first met. Voice carrying no more emotion than a man commenting on the weather.
Hamura's mouth opened and closed. His throat was too dry to produce anything coherent. He managed fragments.
"Sage... you're still... your eyes..." He recognized them immediately. The Rinnegan. His brother's eyes.
"Hagoromo passed away some years ago. He left his eyes in my care."
Manji raised a hand, fingertips brushing the edge of his own eye socket. After decades of being steeped in his personal Sage energy, the Rinnegan had been completely scrubbed of Hagoromo's residual signature. They were Manji's now. Fully. Irrevocably.
Hamura absorbed this. Nodded slowly, each movement costing visible effort.
"I see... I always wondered whether you or my brother would come visit. I never expected it would actually happen."
Nearly a thousand years of life. Hamura had long since made peace with death. But letting go of the people you'd known, the faces from the beginning, that was harder. Seeing Manji standing here now, he felt nothing but the quiet ache of time's passage. No shock at the man's impossible longevity. He was past being surprised by anything.
"I came to check on you. Have you settled your affairs?"
Manji sat down on the chair beside the bed. The question was gentle in its directness.
Hamura managed a thin, peaceful smile. "Everything's been in order for a long time. I've been living out my twilight years on this rock. Life and death stopped worrying me a while ago."
Manji nodded. "Good."
A pause. Then Hamura looked up at him, and something shifted in those fading eyes. A last request, carried forward on the final dregs of his strength.
"Master... would you take my body? Keep it safe?"
Manji blinked. Then nodded.
"I will."
That was enough. Hamura let out a long, slow breath. The kind of exhale that carries everything a person has left. His eyes drifted shut. His chest rose once more, settled, and didn't rise again.
Silence...
Manji sat beside the bed for a quiet moment. Then he raised one hand, passed it over the still form, and Hamura's body dissolved into a scroll with a soft pulse of light.
"The moon branch's main family and cadet factions can manage themselves for now. When they eventually develop the Tenseigan, I'll step in. That kind of power can't be trusted to people who don't understand what they're holding. It stays under my control."
The thoughts were practical. Clinical. He'd already mapped out the contingencies.
..............
A few years after Hamura's death on the moon, things came to a head back on Earth.
Inside Ninshū's sleeping quarters, Asura lay on his deathbed, life force all but evaporated.
"Cough cough cough... Sarutobi... I'm almost done. Ninshū is yours now."
Asura's hand rose, trembling like a leaf in a storm, and found Sarutobi's palm. The old warrior's hair had gone completely white, but his grip was still firm as he closed his fingers around Asura's.
"Cough cough..."
Every word scraped Asura's throat raw, burning through the last embers of his existence.
Sarutobi looked down at the fading figure before him, and something complicated moved through his chest.
He'd never imagined this. A son of the Sage of Six Paths, a divine descendant carrying the blood of gods, dying before a regular human. Sarutobi was older than Asura and still standing. The irony was almost cruel.
"Rest easy, Lord Asura." Sarutobi steadied his voice and made his promise.
Asura's mouth twisted into a smile that was more grimace than anything. "Ninshū's grown too big. Too many factions. Too many people pulling in different directions. Maybe my brother was right all along. I was never cut out for management."
Years of gentle, consensus-based leadership had produced exactly the results you'd expect. Internal cliques had crystallized around blood ties and personal loyalty. Petty disputes multiplied. Discipline eroded. The whole edifice held together through Asura's personal authority and nothing else. With him gone, the cracks would become chasms overnight.
Sarutobi kept his eyes closed. He knew Asura was right. Every word. But you didn't critique a dying man's life choices to his face.
"Sarutobi, I'm sorry. I'm leaving you one hell of a mess." Asura's voice was barely there now. Thin with guilt.
"I'll hold the line, Lord Asura. Whatever it takes."
Asura's gaze drifted past Sarutobi to the senior members standing behind him.
Akimichi. Nara. Yamanaka.
"Well... as long as my conscience is clear."
He let go. Whatever happened to Ninshū after today was beyond his reach.
"Take care. Do what you can."
A small nod. The last light behind his eyes flickered, dimmed, and went out.
..............
Several days later.
Asura's casket rested in the ceremonial hall. The mourners had come and gone. The incense had burned low.
In the deep quiet of an empty room, Sarutobi stood alone beside the coffin. The rigid composure he'd maintained through the funeral finally loosened. His shoulders dropped. A long, measured exhale escaped through his nose.
He leaned close to the casket and spoke in a murmur that wouldn't have reached the ears of anyone standing three feet away.
"I've been waiting for this day for a very long time."
"The God's son is finally gone. Now it's time for the mortal's son to take the throne."
..............
One month later, Ninshū held its succession ceremony.
Sarutobi ascended the Highest altar in full ceremonial white, surrounded by thousands of kneeling disciples, their faces upturned with the reverence of people witnessing the dawn of a new era.
He stood before the portrait of the Founding Patriarch. Manji's painted eyes gazed back at him from across the centuries, calm and knowing.
"Founding Patriarch... I've made it." Sarutobi knelt and bowed his head to the floor. "I've finally arrived."
"FROM THIS DAY FORWARD, I AM THE THIRD LEADER OF NINSHŪ."
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