Konoha, Year 56, July.
As evening fell, the setting sun painted the horizon with orange hues before gradually disappearing, enveloping Konoha in darkness.
A child with refined features, black hair and eyes, and fair skin walked slowly through the bustling streets, a schoolbag slung over his shoulder.
Dressed in a black high-collared long-sleeved shirt and black shorts, his back bore the emblem of a mysterious fan.
He stopped before the Uchiha Clan Compound.
Tonight, the compound lacked its usual hustle and bustle.
The lights, once bright and twinkling, were now extinguished, leaving only oppressive darkness and a deathly silence, with a faint metallic scent of blood lingering in the air.
Dark, desolate, and sinister!
The pitch-black Uchiha Clan Compound loomed like a colossal, life-devouring abyss.
Under the dim streetlights, the child's shadow writhed in distorted anguish.
A complex emotion flickered in his eyes as he patted the pouch at his waist, as if reassuring himself of something inside.
Then, without a word, he stepped slowly into the Uchiha Clan Compound, resigned to his fate.
This night would be bloody! Cruel! Dark!
In the shadows of the night.
Uchiha Itachi walked through a forest outside Konoha, his expression serene, yet his eyes flickered with inner turmoil.
"I have some bad news for you—though you probably don't care much about it anymore."
A slender figure wearing a spiral mask materialized beside him without a sound.
Hearing this, Itachi merely tilted his head slightly, glancing at the masked man with detached composure, without uttering a word.
The masked man chuckled, unperturbed. "Your parents' eyes are gone. I bet Danzo was behind it!"
Itachi's face remained impassive, as if hearing about something entirely unrelated to him. Beneath his sleeve, his fist clenched tightly.
"Speaking of which, you really went too far with your brother. Tsukuyomi? Aren't you afraid his mind will shatter?"
The masked man peered curiously at Itachi, trying to provoke a flicker of sadness or concern in the young man's expression.
'Sasuke...?'
Hearing his brother's name, Itachi recalled Sasuke's demeanor earlier that day.
No screams. No questions. Not even anger.
Faced with Itachi's relentless verbal provocations, Sasuke remained utterly calm.
Only when Itachi attacked or used Tsukuyomi did Sasuke let out muffled groans of pain.
Today, Uchiha Itachi found his younger brother utterly foreign, even vaguely unsettling.
It was as if the person standing before him wasn't his brother at all, but someone else entirely.
'Perhaps Sasuke has suffered too great a shock to process,' Itachi thought, rationalizing his brother's transformation. "Let's go," he said. "Take me to your organization."
Seeing Itachi unmoved, the mysterious figure chuckled dryly, shrugged, and, though clearly disappointed, said nothing more.
The pair vanished into the night.
---
Root Organization Headquarters, Konoha
In the darkness, a Root Organization member knelt before a bandaged elder, reporting:
"Lord Danzo, Uchiha Fugaku and Uchiha Mikoto's Sharingan eyes have disappeared!"
"Hmm?" Danzo frowned.
'Could that traitor Uchiha Itachi have taken them?'
'After all, they were his parents. It's understandable he wouldn't want their eyes desecrated.'
"Understood. You may leave."
I've already acquired plenty of Sharingan today. Losing a couple of pairs won't matter.
"Yes, sir!"
---
One night passed.
One of the two great clans since Konoha's founding, the Uchiha Clan, had been brutally exterminated.
Only one eight-year-old child miraculously survived:
Uchiha Sasuke, son of the clan leader!
Apart from him, no one escaped the massacre—from infants still nursing at their mothers' breasts to frail, white-haired elders.
The next day, Konoha declared Uchiha Itachi the perpetrator of the massacre and issued an S-Rank traitor warrant for his arrest.
The news sent shockwaves through the shinobi world!
Two days later, at Konoha Hospital:
In a hospital bed, the comatose child slowly opened his eyes, a flicker of confusion appearing before quickly fading away.
"You're awake?"
The nurse, noticing his awakening, rushed over to check on him. After confirming his lucidity, she gave him a few instructions before hurrying out to report to her superiors.
*You're not worth killing, foolish little brother. If you want to kill me, then hate me! Despise me! And live on uglily! Run! Run! And cling to your miserable life!*
'That brother of his... That's what he had told him.'
'Heh...'
'Too bad the soul inhabiting this body is no longer your little brother, Uchiha Itachi!'
A hint of mockery curled Sasuke's lips. After the nurse left the room, he began to examine his surroundings and his own condition.
His tailored black high-collared long-sleeved shirt and black shorts had been replaced with loose, comfortable striped hospital pajamas.
A steady drip of a glucose-rich solution flowed continuously into the vein in his left arm, replenishing his fluids and providing nutrients.
After a cursory glance at himself, Sasuke's gaze shifted to the table beside the bed—more specifically, to the items arranged neatly on its surface.
There lay his clothes and pants from before his collapse, neatly arranged alongside his waist pouch and backpack.
Seeing this, Sasuke seemed to exhale an inward sigh of relief. He subtly averted his gaze, assuming a somber expression tinged with a touch of bewilderment.
A keen observer might have noticed that Sasuke's gaze lingered on the waist pouch for a noticeably longer time.
The door to the hospital room creaked open, and a white-haired elder entered, clad in a white Hokage robe with a red shinobi undergarment and a Hokage Hat perched atop his head.
"Sasuke, how's your body feeling? Any discomfort?" the white-haired elder asked with gentle concern.
Sasuke remained silent, not even glancing at him, his expression still dark and vacant.
He knew any response would be futile.
His survival depended entirely on his nominally rogue brother. As long as that brother lived, whether he screamed and raged or remained silent, he would survive.
Otherwise, even if he knelt and begged for mercy from the person before him, it would be for naught.
Moreover, this behavior perfectly aligned with his current state and recent trauma.
Seeing this, the white-haired elder sighed, dismissing it as the child's inability to cope with the sudden tragedy.
"Sasuke, rest well. The village will take care of your needs."
Turning to the nurse beside him, the elder added softly, "Take good care of him!"
"Yes, Third Hokage!" the nurse replied promptly.
The Third Hokage cast a deep, lingering glance at Sasuke, still silent in the bed, a flicker of guilt in his eyes.
His already hunched, aged frame seemed to stoop even further. With a sigh, he slowly turned and left the room.
Throughout it all, the boy lying in the hospital bed never once glanced at him.
A day later, Sasuke changed into his own clothes, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and walked down the street, utterly indifferent to the surprised and even pitying looks from passersby.
He moved slowly, step by step, toward the Uchiha Clan Compound on the village's outskirts. Only after Sasuke had disappeared from sight did the crowd begin to murmur.
"Did you hear? I never imagined such a horrific tragedy could befall the Uchiha Clan."
The speaker was a middle-aged man with a sharp-featured, monkey-like face, dressed like a street vendor. His tone carried a hint of malicious glee.
The middle-aged woman beside him didn't detect the man's malicious glee. She nodded and sighed.
"For the mighty Uchiha Clan to be wiped out like that... It's truly cruel. Poor little Sasuke... And the one who committed such an atrocity..."
Her voice trailed off, as if hesitant to voice the name. The words caught in her throat, ultimately dissolving into a long sigh.
Entering the Uchiha Clan Compound and passing through the empty, desolate buildings, Sasuke finally reached his own home.
After preparing a simple meal, he sat silently on the tatami mat in the living room, not uttering a word.
Though the area had been cleared previously, a faint, lingering scent of blood still hung in the air—the very place where his parents had died.
Sasuke sat there for half a day, from afternoon until the early hours of dawn, before finally rising and heading to his room.
Entering his room, Sasuke walked to the bedside table and opened the waist pouch resting on top.
Inside the pouch, he found a heart-shaped iron bento box.
After a moment of silence, Sasuke removed the box and set it aside, revealing an assortment of scrolls of varying sizes beneath it.
He selected one of the scrolls, unrolled it, and immediately noticed an almost imperceptibly thin, nearly invisible strand of fine black hair slowly drifting to the floor.
Seeing the hair, Sasuke's eyes flickered slightly, but his heart settled completely. He continued unrolling the scroll.
The parchment was covered in rows of mysterious runes.
He skipped past the first few symbols—labeled "Medicine," "Tools," "Silk," and "Kunai"—and placed his hand on the third-to-last symbol, which read "Sword," channeling Chakra into it.
With a bang and a puff of smoke, an Uchiha-style single-edged katana materialized in Sasuke's hand. He stroked the blade as if caressing a lover, then focused his gaze on the katana's pommel.
With a twist of his left hand, he unscrewed the pommel cap.
The once-solid hilt had inexplicably become hollow, now containing a glass vial the size of a test tube.
The vial was filled with an enigmatic, transparent liquid, within which floated two pairs of crimson eyes.
One pair was shaped like three black tomoe, while the other pair featured curved, triangular patterns adorned with three black dots.
Their appearance was breathtakingly beautiful, yet utterly mysterious.
The Three-Tomoe Sharingan and the Mangekyō Sharingan!
A cold smirk curled at the corners of Sasuke's lips, widening until his teeth gleamed menacingly.
He involuntarily pressed a hand to his forehead, letting out a series of low, maniacal chuckles that grew into full-throated laughter.
"Heh heh heh ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
Through the gaps between his fingers, one could clearly see his once obsidian-black eyes abruptly transform into a chilling, ferocious crimson, the three black tomoe blazing within.