The cold rain, like the indifferent tears of deities, relentlessly washed over the ruins of Konoha. Within the cracks of shattered walls and broken beams, the thick, cloying smell of char and the sharp stench of blood mingled, diluted by the rain into a nauseating, rusty-sweet tang that weighed heavily in the air, pressing into the nostrils of every survivor, sinking deep into their lungs. The atmosphere hung thick, almost congealed; each breath felt like swallowing cold lumps of lead. The sky was a despairing sheet of leaden grey, hanging so low it seemed poised to crush the scarred earth beneath. In the distance, the imposing Hokage Rock had crumbled, the faces of the First and Second Hokages severed at the waist, rubble tumbling down to land with dull thuds amidst the debris of what were once bustling streets—a final, mournful groan from the earth itself.
Uzumaki Naruto knelt in the mud, the water pooled beneath him already warmed by his own body heat. Cradled in his arms was Hyūga Hinata.
Her eyes, once filled with the gentle light of the full moon, pure white orbs, now stared emptily at the leaden sky, reflecting no light. Her slender neck was twisted at an angle impossible for the living, like a delicate lily snapped by a storm. The pristine white fabric of her kimono was marred by large, dark brown stains of blood, like inkblots of despair, spreading wider and wider under the rain's relentless assault. Naruto pressed his hand futilely against the wound that had long since stopped bleeding. His fingers touched only cold, sticky wetness and the terrifying, jagged feel of broken bone beneath her skin. Rainwater streamed from his dirty, mud-streaked golden bangs, dripping onto her pale, lifeless cheek, tracing paths like silent accusations.
"Hi…nata…" The name scraped out, dry as sandpaper, a broken whisper caught in his throat. His bones groaned with every slight movement, protesting the strain against the myriad of tearing wounds covering his body, pain like clinging maggots. But he felt none of it. Where his heart should have been, there was only a vast, cold, ever-collapsing void of nothingness, devouring all sensation. The tearing agony left by Kurama's violent extraction still seared his soul—the immense, familiar warmth, sometimes irascible, sometimes awkward, that had been his companion for half his life, ripped away at the root, leaving only soul-freezing cold and desolate silence.
Fragmented images flickered violently at the edges of his vision, like shards thrown into boiling water—
Uchiha Sasuke's eyes, those Sharingan that had burned with unquenchable defiance and obsession, widened in sudden terror, then froze. An instant later, an arc of light, cold beyond measure, flashed. Too fast. Time itself seemed to freeze. The proud head left its neck, spinning, a crimson line tracing a vicious arc through the grey rain. The look of shock, forever etched.
"SASUKE—!!!"
That soul-rending, despairing howl, distorted beyond recognition, seemed to still echo within Naruto's own eardrums, thick with the scent of hot blood.
Then… Boruto.
The blonde, blue-eyed boy, always a bit reckless yet brimming with life, flew backward like a sapling snapped by a gale, crashing into a burning section of wall. The sickeningly crisp sound of shattering bone. His small body bounced once on the rubble before sliding limply down, utterly still. The orange training jacket darkened rapidly as deep red spread beneath him.
The final image locked onto the architect of it all—Ōtsutsuki Kaguya's face, inhumanly perfect. Her snow-white hair whipped in the chaotic storm of energy, the Rinne-Sharingan in her forehead slowly revolving, cold, indifferent, like a god gazing down upon ants and dust. She didn't even glance at Hinata's body. The pure chakra claw that had torn Hinata apart flicked casually, as if brushing off insignificant dirt. Behind her, Ōtsutsuki Momoshiki hovered, golden Rinnegan sweeping over the ruins with contempt, Kinshiki a silent mountain exuding destructive pressure. Visitors from beyond the stars, crushing Konoha's pride, the shinobi world's struggle, with absolute, overwhelming power.
"No… No… NO—!!!" A feral, dying roar tore from Naruto's throat. His teeth sank deep into his lower lip, the coppery taste of blood flooding his mouth. He strained with every ounce of his failing strength to pull Hinata's icy body closer, futilely seeking even a trace of warmth long vanished from the shell. Scalding tears mixed with the cold rain streamed down his face, washing through the grime and dried blood. Hatred, like hellfire ignited, instantly consumed his last shreds of reason. This fire wasn't hot; it was a soul-freezing cold, searing every nerve, burning through his heart, incinerating everything he had once believed in—friendship, bonds, protection, peace. The pillars that had supported him through countless darknesses crumbled under Kaguya's indifferent gaze, ground to dust.
The world spun, shattered, dimmed around him. The cold mud seemed ready to swallow him whole. His strength was draining away, his consciousness flickering like a candle in the wind. Death extended its icy, tempting hands.
Just as his awareness teetered on the brink of plunging into an endless dark abyss, a faint, achingly familiar flicker of orange-yellow light sparked stubbornly deep within his consciousness.
Kurama! Not the full chakra, but the last remnant of a soul imprint! Faint as a firefly, yet it pierced Naruto's drowning darkness like a red-hot needle.
"Na…ruto…" A blurred, exhausted thought-impression reached him, as if from across vast distances, fragmented, yet carrying a strange, heavy power that somehow brought a sliver of comfort, like the final rumble of a dying beast. "…Live… For… them… Live…"
Live?
For whom?
For this icy corpse in his arms? For the shattered fragments scattered across the ruins, impossible to reassemble? For this ravaged world, doomed to utter destruction by the star-farers?
An agony vast enough to rend his soul seized him. Kurama's lingering echo felt like a blunt knife now, sawing repeatedly over his already lacerated heart. It reminded him, cruelly, of the preciousness of all he had lost, the unfathomable depth of his despair. Yet, at the apex of this excruciating pain and destructive emptiness, a cold, ancient consciousness, thick with the dust of ages, descended without warning.
It didn't come from outside. It stirred from within the deepest, most forgotten recesses of his soul. A vast, indistinct outline took shape in his crumbling awareness—a tortoise-shell form, etched with incomprehensible patterns, radiating an aura of aeons.
The Time Artifact, "Turtleshell"!
It had slumbered too long, like primordial bedrock. But under the soul-shaking impact of Naruto's despair born of utter loss and destructive hopelessness, the dull patterns on its shell ignited! Like dormant stars violently awakened, the light was blinding, carrying a savage power that seemed capable of tearing space-time itself. A cold, non-human consciousness branded itself directly onto Naruto's soul:
*Root-level despair detected… Temporal anchor unstable… Target locked: Genesis point of causal reversal… Executing…*
Huummm—!
An irresistible force seized Naruto's remaining consciousness. His vision was engulfed by endless, swirling streams of light. Not warm, but cold, sharp, like countless high-speed blades slicing his senses. Agony as his body disintegrated, the void of his soul being forcibly torn apart, the chaotic impact of countless temporal fragments hitting him like a blizzard—all consumed him instantly. He felt hurled into a kaleidoscope of madness, fragments of past, present, future flashing chaotically: the final battle at the Valley of the End, the ruins during Pain's assault, the first meeting with Zabuza on the Wave Country bridge, the graduation hand-seal with Sasuke at the Academy, even earlier—his parents' bloodstained smiles at their final moments… Everything spun, twisted, shattered at high speed!
"Guh… AHH—!"
Pain like a tsunami wracked his reassembling body. Every cell screamed against the tearing agony of reconstitution. His lungs felt scraped raw, each inhale pulling at sharp stabs deep within his chest. Uzumaki Naruto's eyes snapped open. Blinding light made his pupils contract violently, reflexive tears springing forth.
Vision blurred. The world spun.
He gasped instinctively, only to choke violently on the thick smells of blood and dust flooding his senses. Bodily sensations flooded back like a tide, bringing pervasive aches and a crushing heaviness. He found himself prone on cold, rough stone, fingers digging unconsciously into the dirt-filled cracks.
After a brief, terrifying blankness, his consciousness roared back to life like an ancient engine violently cranked, filled with screeching noise and violent tremors.
The final memory shards burned his soul like branding irons—the cold rain, the bloody ruins, Hinata's empty, cooling eyes, Sasuke's flying head, Kurama's torn-asunder roar, Boruto's small body hitting the wall… and Kaguya's godlike, indifferent face!
"Hinata! Sasuke! Boruto! Kurama—!" The names tore from his parched, bleeding throat like barbed thorns, raw with the despair of a dying beast and bone-deep hatred.
He thrashed, trying to push himself up, only to collapse back onto the stone as violent dizziness and weakness overwhelmed him. His cheek pressed against the cold, rough rock as he gasped raggedly. His body was in terrible shape—chakra exhausted, muscles screaming, numerous cuts burning—the aftermath of the battle with the Six Paths of Pain!
At that moment, a voice, weak to the extreme, like a candle guttering in the wind, drifted into his ears. Each word seemed to cost the speaker the last dregs of their life force:
"Naruto… This is… my… final… gift… Hope… you… can… find… the answer…"
Nagato!
The name struck Naruto's chaotic mind like a bolt of icy lightning, bringing a clarity that felt almost absurd. He lifted his head with agonizing slowness, neck bones protesting with brittle cracks. His vision finally focused.
Before him was that familiar, gaunt face, like weathered driftwood. Messy, orange-red hair clung to hollow cheeks. The eyes that had once symbolized the Rinnegan's power, swirling purple vortices, were now only deep, empty sockets rimmed with dark, dried blood. Nagato hunched on the cold stone throne, chest rising and falling with faint, labored breaths that sounded like a broken bellows. The spark of life was visibly draining from him. The Rinne Rebirth jutsu had just been completed. Konoha's dead were returning. The caster was spent.
Behind him, Konan knelt, her usually cool amethyst eyes brimming with tears like shattered crystal. She clung tightly to Nagato's failing form, as if her embrace alone could halt the inevitable dissolution. Her lips trembled soundlessly, tears falling thick and fast onto his tattered Akatsuki cloak. Nearby, on another rock, lay Yahiko's cold, silent corpse, the root of it all.
Time! Place! Person!
The soul-deep shock nearly knocked Naruto unconscious again. Not a hallucination! Not torment in hell! It was "Turtleshell"! The time artifact! It had answered his destructive despair, hurling him back to this pivotal moment—Nagato's dying breaths!
Fragmented memories from his previous life flooded in: Nagato's remorse, Yahiko's death, the legend of the Rinnegan… and the invasion from beyond the stars that ultimately destroyed the shinobi world! The root of it all, the overwhelming, despair-inducing gap in power… Kaguya, Momoshiki, Kinshiki… Nightmare names and figures!
The Rinnegan!
Those eyes possessing the power of creation and destruction! The very symbol of power wielded so casually by Kaguya and Momoshiki in that future! The only possible key to fighting the star-farers!
In his past life, he had rejected them, chosen to believe in words and understanding. And the result? Mountains of corpses, rivers of blood, utter annihilation! Watching everyone he cherished torn to pieces! That so-called understanding shattered like a soap bubble under the pressure of absolute power!
"Guh…" A sound, suppressed to the extreme, like a wounded animal's whimper squeezed from deep in the throat, echoed sharply in the silent cavern. It wasn't grief. It was the sound of something deep within the soul finally snapping, being ground to dust. The Uzumaki Naruto who believed in "saying what you mean, and meaning what you say," the boy with the Hokage dream, along with all his naive ideals and gentle convictions—buried the moment he saw Konoha reduced to ash and his loved ones slaughtered, washed away without a trace by that rain of the end.
Konan's head jerked up, tear-filled eyes finding the source of the sound. She saw Uzumaki Naruto pushing himself up with movements that were painfully slow, agonizingly stiff. There was none of a teenager's vitality, only a leaden heaviness, as if crushed by an invisible burden. He kept his head down, wet golden bangs obscuring his eyes, hiding his expression. But an indescribable chill radiated with each heavy breath he took, seeming to drop the temperature of the entire cavern several degrees.
Nagato seemed to sense something too. His empty sockets turned with immense effort towards Naruto, his cracked lips moving slightly, perhaps trying to speak, but only releasing faint, breathy rasps. The "gift" and "hope" he had spent his last life force to bestow seemed to be fermenting within this boy into something cold and terrifying, something he could not comprehend.
Naruto finally stood upright. He lifted his head.
When Konan's gaze met those eyes, her blood seemed to freeze solid.
What eyes they were!
The once bright azure, like the clearest sky, had become the icy, dead depths of a sea ravaged by a storm. All trace of the sixteen-year-old's brightness, impulsiveness, even anger—gone. Utterly. Replaced by a near-void calm, fathomless, like ice frozen for millennia. Yet beneath that ice, Konan saw it clearly—magma! World-incinerating magma, forcibly suppressed beneath the crust! Hatred vast enough to make any who looked upon it tremble to their soul, hatred built upon mountains of corpses and rivers of blood! These eyes held not a shred of the light, the attempt to understand pain and bring reconciliation, she had seen in the Rain Village tower. Only barren wasteland utterly saturated with despair and hatred.
This was not the Uzumaki Naruto she knew!
"You…" Konan's voice was desert-dry, laced with an involuntary tremor of fear. The boy before her radiated a chill deeper than the cavern's heart, triggering primal danger instincts.
Naruto didn't look at her. His gaze, like twin blades forged from ten-thousand-year ice, fixed unwaveringly on Nagato's empty sockets. There was no sympathy, no pity. Only a near-brutal, icy assessment, as if evaluating a vital weapon he was about to acquire. A weapon to pry open fate, to take revenge upon the stars.
Then, he moved.
Dragging his battered, exhausted body, step by heavy step, across the cold, rough stone floor. The footfalls echoed like funeral bells in the vast, silent cavern. Each step carried an unshakeable resolve, a ruthless determination to crush all his own weakness beneath his heel. He wasn't walking towards a dying penitent. He was walking towards a wellspring of power he *must* possess.
He walked straight up to Nagato, ignoring Konan's instantly tensed body and wary gaze beside him.
Nagato seemed to feel the intangible, crushing pressure. His head moved infinitesimally, "looking" towards him once more. The last vestiges of peace and expectation vanished from his gaunt face, replaced by immense confusion and a hollow, emptied-out stillness.
Naruto slowly raised his hand. It trembled slightly from exhaustion and injury, covered in dirt and dried blood. But its descent was unnervingly steady, bearing the weight of mountains. It came down heavily on Nagato's bony, almost lifeless shoulder.
Cold. Hard. Like touching petrified wood about to crumble.
His voice rasped out. Hoarse, low, as if vocal cords had been scraped raw by gravel. Each word seemed dredged from the deepest pit of hell, reeking of iron and gore, utterly devoid of human warmth, carrying only a demand carved into his marrow, absolute and unyielding:
"The Rinnegan…"
He paused. The hand on Nagato's shoulder clenched, knuckles whitening with brutal force. The grip was so tight it made Nagato's already shattered body convulse in a final spasm of pain, a faint, dying gasp escaping him.
"Give them to me."
Silence.
The two words fell like blocks of eternal ice into the cavern's damp, cold air, instantly freezing all sound. Even the ever-present, faint dripping of water seemed to cease. Only Naruto's heavy, rage-suppressed breathing and Nagato's increasingly faint, bellows-like gasps remained.
Konan's grief-stricken face froze mid-sob, replaced by utter, disbelieving horror. Her pupils shrank to pinpricks. Her body jerked as if struck by an invisible hammer. She stared at Naruto's hand on Nagato's shoulder as if it were a venomous serpent poised to strike, tightening around Nagato's last flicker of life.
"Wh…what?!" Her voice shot up, sharp with near-hysteria, echoing jarringly in the vast space, saturated with shock and panic. "Naruto! You… do you even know what you're saying?!" She surged to her feet, driven by instinct to shield Nagato, but swayed slightly, unbalanced by the shock and a core-deep fear. Her amethyst eyes locked onto his face, desperately searching for any trace of the familiar "Uzumaki Naruto"—any hint of hesitation, any flicker of doubt.
There was none.
Only icy stillness, and beneath it, the churning black fire of hatred that could freeze a soul.
"Have you lost your mind?!" Konan finally found some strength, her voice twisting with furious terror, tight as a wire about to snap. "You don't understand! That's the Rinnegan! The Cursed Eyes! They'll consume you! They'll drain your life dry! Just like… just like they did to Nagato!" Her gaze swept over Nagato's emaciated, life-ebbing form—the terrifying proof was right before them. She practically screamed it: "You'll die! Wasted away just like him!"
Consume life?
Waste away?
Naruto's hand on Nagato's shoulder didn't budge. His mouth twisted. Slowly. Stiffly. Upward at the corners.
It wasn't a smile.
It was a distorted grimace of infinite anguish and despair. Muscles pulled at cracked lips, drawing blood, making the expression ghastly, like a demon clawing its way from hell.
"Heh…" A low puff of air escaped him, thick with nasal congestion, like the last gasp from a crushed chest. "Consume life?"
He turned his head slowly. Those dead, abyssal eyes finally settled on Konan's beautiful face, now contorted by fear and rage.
His gaze pierced through her, through the damp, cold cavern walls, through the barriers of time and space, landing squarely on that distant, blood-and-fire future.
He saw it.
He saw it with perfect, agonizing clarity.
The cold rain washing over ruins, Hinata's pale, cooling cheek against his chest, the last trace of warmth fading; Uchiha Sasuke's proud head spinning in a crimson arc, the shock frozen in Sharingan eyes; Kurama's massive form torn asunder, the freezing void left when that familiar chakra warmth was ripped from his core; and Boruto… that small body in the orange jacket, crashing like a broken doll against burning rubble, the sickening crack of bone… Finally, Kaguya's perfect, indifferent face, the Rinne-Sharingan in her forehead revolving coldly, gazing down on dust. Each flashback was a red-hot knife, sawing, twisting in his already shredded heart. The soul-deep pain and hatred, like poison vines, instantly coiled around his spirit, tightening, crushing, threatening to shatter him utterly.
"That's…" Naruto's voice rasped like grinding stones, each word like a bloody lump coughed from his throat, thick with the taste of iron. He stared at Konan, the magma beneath the ice in his eyes finally bursting through a crack, unleashing an all-consuming, suffocating despair and madness!
"…stronger…"
His voice rose, not a shout, but the final, soul-tearing howl of a dying beast, a condemnation of the world, of cruel fate:
"than watching them all die again—!!!"
The word "die" exploded like thunder in the cavern, raw and blood-soaked with finality. It shattered Konan's protests, severed Nagato's last thread of confusion. In the cold cave, only the heavy breathing of the avenger remained, and the deathly echo of fate's gears beginning their cruel, relentless turn.