The moon was gone. Shattered like porcelain under the weight of something that shouldn't exist. The battlefield was eerily silent—too silent. No wind, no birds, not even the quiet hum of chakra. Just dust, floating in the absence of purpose.
Naruto stood at the center, breathing hard. Not because of exhaustion, but because the world itself was holding its breath, unsure if it should continue spinning. His clothes were scorched. His skin scraped and cut. But his eyes… his eyes weren't the same.
They were clear.
Untouched by the distortion that had plagued him since the Recode began.
Behind him, Sakura stirred first, coughing as she sat up. "Naruto?" Her voice cracked. "Is it over?"
Sasuke was already on one knee, scanning the horizon with his Rinnegan. "No," he muttered. "It's quiet, but the Recode isn't dead. Just… overwritten."
Kakashi flickered back into existence, half his body outlined in static. "You didn't destroy the Recode. You changed its format."
Kai limped toward them, her face pale. "He used a raw blank-page override. He forced the narrative to recompile."
Naruto looked at his hands, still faintly glowing. "I didn't want to erase the world. I just wanted to give it a chance to be rewritten right."
The ground beneath them pulsed, and suddenly, it was no longer the battlefield they remembered. The landscape had changed. Not warped—updated.
Mountains now hovered in the air like shattered fragments of thought. Trees stretched upward into multicolored skies. Rivers of code flowed like natural water, filled with floating glyphs and residual chakra data. This wasn't Earth anymore.
This was the Restitch.
A new realm.
A failed draft world turned real.
Sasuke stood slowly. "It adapted your rewrite… but not completely. This isn't stable. We're still inside the narrative—but the rules are broken."
He gestured at his Sharingan. "My doujutsu keeps showing me outcomes that don't exist. I can't even predict five seconds ahead."
Naruto turned to Kakashi. "What about the others? The ones the Recode restored?"
Kakashi shook his head. "Gone. They were never meant to be here permanently. You gave them a chance to fight again—but even authorless rewrites can't sustain deleted data. They faded the moment your override completed."
Naruto clenched his fists. "We lost them again."
"Maybe," Kai said softly. "Or maybe they'll show up somewhere else. This world… it connects to others now. I think we're standing on a hub."
A ripple spread through the air.
Then a whisper.
"…we see you…"
Sakura stiffened. "Did you hear that?"
Another voice. Clearer. Childlike.
"…why did you delete us…?"
From the trees—or what passed for trees—figures emerged. Dozens. No, hundreds. All of them… children. Teenagers. Adults. Men, women. All of them with pale skin, hollow eyes, and flickering outlines.
Kai recoiled. "No…"
Naruto stared.
Each one had fragments of headbands. Hidden Leaf. Mist. Cloud. Some bore marks of the Akatsuki. Others had recognizable jutsu scars, clan symbols… even kekkei genkai.
They weren't ghosts.
They were failed characters.
Sasuke activated his Rinnegan. "They're data remnants. From abandoned arcs. Side characters that were meant to exist—but were cut during development. Backlogged, hidden in dev folders."
Kakashi stepped forward. "And now they're aware."
One of them—a boy with Inuzuka markings—stepped up. "We watched. We waited. You kept rewriting each other, chasing closure. But none of you came for us."
Naruto's voice was heavy. "I didn't know."
"Lies," a woman said. Her eyes glowed with something like resentment. "You had the Legacy Core. You could've restored us. You chose canon."
The crowd advanced.
Kai hissed. "They're not stable. Their code's fragmented. If they touch you—"
It was too late.
One of the remnants reached Sakura, fingers brushing her arm—and she screamed.
Images surged into her head. Lives that never happened. Friendships she never formed. Deaths she never witnessed. She collapsed, twitching violently.
Naruto grabbed her, forcing his chakra into her spine to stabilize the feedback. "They're projecting corrupted plotlines!"
The boy with the Inuzuka markings growled. "We just want to be remembered."
Naruto stepped forward. "Then let me do it right."
He raised his hand—and instead of power, he formed a seal.
Memory.
Not just his own. Everyone's.
Images poured out—Team 7's first mission. Jiraiya's laugh. Iruka's tears. Tsunade's punches. Even Obito's sacrifice. And beyond them—echoes of characters long discarded: the girl with a single jutsu that was never named. The squad that died in an off-screen mission. The rivals who trained, but never got their arc.
Their eyes widened.
"…you see us now…"
Sasuke held out his own hand. "So do I."
He forced his Sharingan to capture their essence—not to steal it, but to record it. To give them a place in memory.
The light from his eye spread—and the remnants stilled.
Then bowed.
And vanished.
Kai sat down, breathing hard. "That…was not supposed to happen. This world is more dangerous than I thought."
Kakashi looked up at the sky. "And it's about to get worse."
The clouds turned red.
The same red as the robes of the man now descending from the heavens on threads of script and flame.
He didn't fall. He compiled.
And his presence made the air flicker with lag.
It was the Red Author.
But he'd changed.
No longer just a projection. He now had a body. A form. Human, almost. Yet his eyes were strings of code, and every step he took left behind edits.
"You should have let it end," he said, voice like a deadline.
Naruto stared him down. "You broke the story to keep control. I gave it back to the characters."
"Which makes you the greatest threat of all," the Red Author said. "A protagonist who rewrites his own arc? That's heresy."
He snapped his fingers.
And the world paused.
Literally.
Birds froze mid-air. Leaves suspended. Even chakra stopped moving.
Only Naruto and his team remained active—frozen not by time, but by narrative override.
"This is my world now," the Red Author said. "The Programmer is gone. Madara was a tool. You're just a delay."
He held up a book.
It had no title.
Just a blank cover.
"This is the final volume. And you're not in it."
Naruto stepped forward. His body struggled, each motion grinding like a corrupted frame. But his eyes didn't waver.
"Then I'll rewrite it."
The world shook.
The Restitch resisted.
And from the shadows, something stirred.
Another figure. Cloaked in shattered timelines. Carrying a pen.
Not a kunai.
A pen.
Kai blinked. "Who the hell is that?"
The figure smiled.
"I'm the Original Draft."