"Are you really so surprised that I awakened these eyes too? If someone with such limited vision as you could obtain them, why wouldn't I be able to?" Uchiha Dohan said calmly.
"Dohan… your ideology is too dangerous. For the sake of the village... I'm sorry!"
The moment Uchiha Shisui saw the Mangekyō Sharingan in Dohan's eyes, he didn't hesitate. He activated the Kotoamatsukami in his left eye—a genjutsu originally prepared for Uchiha Fugaku, capable of permanently altering a person's will.
But in the very next instant, searing pain exploded in his eyes.
Uchiha Shisui was plunged into eternal darkness.
"If I already knew what your eye could do, did you really think I wouldn't prepare for it?" Dohan's voice echoed beside Shisui, who was now blind.
"H-How… did you do this?" Shisui clutched his hollowed eyes with one trembling hand.
"My Mangekyo Ability—Yasohachi no Magatsuhikami," Dohan explained as he disarmed Shisui, sealing his chakra in the process. "It allows me to perceive countless outcomes within an instant and select the optimal one. The moment you used your eye technique on me, I evaded and countered you—that was one of the possibilities I chose."
"You knew what my eye could do... how?" Shisui, stripped of strength, still tried to extract vital intel.
"I told you—my eyes see futures that yours never could," Dohan said, casually toying with the pair of Mangekyō Sharingan in his hand.
"A precognitive dōjutsu?" Shisui gave a bitter smile. "So everything I've done… was within your grasp from the start."
Dohan didn't answer that. Instead, he mused aloud, "The clan calls the Mangekyō 'the mirror of the soul,' but I prefer to think of it as the eye of answers. Every Uchiha who awakens these eyes has faced a brutal question from within. And the ability that emerges from them… is their answer."
"If you truly believe your vision surpasses others, then answer me this," Dohan asked quietly. "Why was your answer to the conflict between the clan and the village to manipulate others' will? Do you really believe there's no way to reconcile the two without resorting to control?"
Shisui fell silent.
Dohan's words pierced deep—because they were true. His Kotoamatsukami was born from despair, from an inability to envision any future where the village and clan could coexist. It was his resignation… and a shadow of the violence inherent in all shinobi.
"So arrogant," Dohan murmured. "Your bloodline gave you power, and yet you chose to wield it against your own kin."
"What are you planning to do with my eye?" Shisui gritted out. "Use it to control the Third Hokage? It won't work. Even if you did, the rest of the village would never let the Uchiha get away with a coup. You'd be dragging the entire clan into the abyss."
"Still clinging to that pride, Shisui?" Dohan chuckled softly and released the restraints around him. "Even now, you can't admit that my vision surpasses yours? Controlling Hiruzen Sarutobi? Please. That would be the most basic use of these eyes."
With that, Dohan pulled out a small vial from his cloak and tossed it toward Shisui.
Though he could no longer see, Shisui's instincts as a shinobi let him catch the object with ease.
"What is this?" he asked.
"A pair of three-tomoe Sharingan I retrieved from the clan shrine," Dohan replied. "Take them. Go."
"You're… letting me go?" Shisui asked, stunned.
"Kill you?" Dohan let out a short laugh. "Why would I kill you?"
He patted Shisui's shoulder gently.
"Go. Tell Hiruzen Sarutobi all about your eye's ability. And then, use those eyes—eyes passed down from our ancestors—to watch the new future I'm about to forge."
With those words, Uchiha Dohan turned and walked away, never once looking back as he vanished into the depths of the Forest of Death.
Back at the edge of the Uchiha compound, Dohan summoned his ninja falcon. Carefully, he implanted Shisui's Mangekyō Sharingan into the hawk's eyes, then released the summoning.
"With Kotoamatsukami secured… now my true plan can begin."
He walked to the window, gazing out at the brilliant lights of the Hidden Leaf Village in the distance. They stood in stark contrast to the silence and darkness blanketing the Uchiha district.
Fourteen years ago, he'd been dumped into this world by a runaway delivery truck. And ever since, Uchiha Dohan had always felt like an alien in this broken reality.
Even capitalism, with all its sins, now seemed more civilized by comparison.
In his past life, he had been just an ordinary office drone, dabbling in philosophy in his spare time. Never did he imagine he'd be reborn into this world, named with such bitter irony by dead parents—Dohan, meaning "loyal and steadfast."
In this cruel world, he was forced to learn how to kill from childhood. At only nine years old, he'd already been coaxed onto the battlefield in the name of the Will of Fire. Thankfully, his inherited bloodline granted him the talent to survive. In the face of death, he awakened the ultimate power of the Uchiha—Mangekyō Sharingan—and made it through to the end of the war.
But Dohan knew surviving the battlefield wasn't the end. The Uchiha massacre looming years later was the true threat he had to face.
Yet the clan council, now nothing more than a tradition, was perpetually caught in endless, meaningless arguments. Dohan understood—if he wanted to change the future, he'd have to rely on himself alone.
And obtaining Shisui's Kotoamatsukami was only step one of that plan.
Though he had ulterior motives, Dohan's critique of Shisui today was genuine: arrogant, naïve, and foolish. Possessing such a godlike technique, yet dying so pathetically in the original timeline… all because he never considered the smarter path.
He could have wielded his power like a Damocles' Sword over both the Uchiha and Konoha's ruling council. But instead, he chose the most foolish route imaginable.
'Fortunately, now it's mine.'
Dohan smiled calmly at the window, his gaze drifting toward the Hokage Rock. The four faces carved into the mountain lay shrouded in darkness, barely visible in the moonlight.
His eyes locked onto the third face—Hiruzen Sarutobi.
'So, "strongest Hokage in history"... What will you do now?'