Peace was never quiet.
Not in this world.
Not after the Restitch.
The skies had calmed, but they didn't hold the same hue. The sun cast light that felt slightly off—as if the engine rendering the sky was struggling to remember the original palette. Time moved again, but only in patches. Some parts of Konoha were racing toward tomorrow, while others were stuck repeating yesterday.
Naruto stood at the edge of what used to be the Hokage Monument.
Now it was blank stone.
Four faces missing.
Because in this version of the world… no one had become Hokage.
He tightened his fist. "Something's wrong."
"Still?" Sasuke asked, stepping beside him, eyes tracking a flock of birds that flew in loops, unable to escape the village's bounds.
"The narrative's too fractured," Kai muttered from behind them, her left eye still glowing from script-vision. "The Red Author's defeat rewound some of the imposed corruption, but whatever he did at the core of the Story Engine… it's not healing naturally."
Kakashi appeared in a static ripple. "We've got a bigger problem."
He tossed something at Naruto's feet. A kunai. Bent. Warped.
And fading.
"Chrono-matter?" Kai hissed.
"Yeah," Kakashi said. "Time is bleeding. And not from here."
Naruto's eyes narrowed. "So where's it bleeding to?"
Kakashi didn't answer.
Because the world did.
The air cracked—not like a jutsu, but like a screen splitting open.
From the wound stepped a figure.
Not masked.
Not cloaked.
Dressed in robes like an ancient Sage, but laced with thin circuitry glowing between threads, the color of voided memory.
His face was clear, and yet… forgettable. The kind of face that couldn't be remembered, even as you looked at it.
He carried no weapon.
Just a scroll. Sealed with a gear-shaped emblem.
Kai took a step back. "That's…"
"The One Who Erased Time," Kakashi said. "The Editor."
Naruto didn't move. "I thought he was just a myth."
"No myth," the figure said calmly. "Only redacted history."
The birds froze mid-air. The wind halted.
Then everything stopped.
Time froze.
Except for the Editor.
And them.
"You're anomalies," he said. "Narratives that resisted deletion. The Red Author may have fractured canon, but he lacked discipline. He introduced chaos. I restore order."
Sasuke's hand moved toward his sword. "By deleting worlds?"
"By pruning branches." The Editor gestured to the scroll. "Every time a story diverges too far, every AU that breathes too long, becomes its own cancer. Unchecked timelines breed multiversal instability."
Kai's voice trembled. "You're here to reset us."
"To finalize the edit," the Editor confirmed. "A single, stable version. No reboots. No fusions. No fanon bleed. Just… one."
Naruto stepped forward. "That's not your call."
The Editor tilted his head. "It's always been."
He unsealed the scroll.
Lines of script swirled out of it—runes of deletion, glyphs of finality. Each one spiraled around the Editor like digital chains, forming a dome of absolute overwrite.
Kai screamed as her hands flickered. "He's invoking the Original Schema! If he locks it in, everything reverts to base premise!"
"No backstory?" Naruto whispered. "No bonds?"
"No YOU," she said.
Naruto charged.
So did Sasuke.
So did Sakura.
The Editor simply raised one hand.
Time shattered.
Suddenly Naruto was a child again, holding ramen.
Then a teen, bleeding on the rooftop.
Then nothing.
Then everything.
Reality convulsed around him as he fought to stay rooted. He remembered himself—his father's smile, his mother's voice, his first fight with Sasuke, his promise to never go back on his word.
"I'm more than your version," he growled.
And burst through the time storm.
Sasuke came at the Editor from above—sharingan spinning, Rinnegan roaring, a sword coated in lightning and grief. But the Editor parried with a thought.
"You're just a foil," he said.
Sasuke grinned. "Then call me sharp."
He slashed—
And blood spilled.
The Editor bled.
Kai's eyes widened. "He's not just code—he's memory-based. If we can overwhelm his schema with contradiction—!"
"I am contradiction!" Naruto yelled.
And punched the Editor full in the chest.
The world flashed.
They landed back in the warped Konoha.
The Editor stood, robes torn.
"You're too unstable to preserve," he muttered.
But he was slower now.
The scroll sealed itself. The script shrank.
"Then you better erase all of me," Naruto said. "Because I don't fit your canon."
"You were never canon," the Editor replied.
"Neither were you," Kai snarled.
And then she activated a backup stream.
Reality twisted again—
Only this time, Naruto was the pen.
He wrote his name in the sky with a Rasengan.
Not as a ninja.
As a survivor of all drafts.
As the boy who outlived the page.
And when it hit—
The Editor cracked like a broken timestamp.
He reached for the scroll, but Sasuke's blade cut through it.
With it—his control vanished.
The world trembled, but did not collapse.
Instead, the future began to write itself.
Naruto fell to his knees.
Kakashi placed a hand on his shoulder. "You stopped the final editor."
Naruto breathed heavily.
"But what now?"
Kai looked toward the horizon.
And said quietly, "Now… we restore what's left. But we don't rebuild the old story."
She turned to him.
"We write a new one."