Kimimaro didn't answer right away.
He leaned his palm harder against the spiral, eyes narrowing slightly as though he was measuring Ashina the same way he would a corpse before cutting.
When he spoke, it was calm, even, like a knife pressed flat to the throat.
"Why should you tie yourself to me? Wrong question. Ask yourself instead, what else do you have left? You're dust sealed in stone, old man. Your clan is already destroyed, with probably only a few scattered survivors left, your name is fading, and if I choose to walk away now, all that remains of you collapses with the seal soon afterward. Gone forever. That's the reality."
He let that hang before continuing, his tone sharpening.
"Loyalty? Blood ties? I don't trade in that currency. You likely waited for some Uzumaki savior and chosen child to crawl out of the ashes out of 'love' for your clan, but none came. Why? Because bonds without power are illusions. They abandoned this place completely a long time ago, or they were simply killed because they were too weak. That's the harsh truth."
Kimimaro's lips curved faintly, not into a smile, but something colder.
"I don't offer you loyalty. I offer you relevance. You put your knowledge into me, and it won't rot in the dirt. It'll carve a mark into the world so deep it can't be forgotten. The world never saw what Uzumaki could become when pushed to the limit, kind of thing. With me, they will."
His eyes gleamed, voice low and certain.
"I'm not asking you to entrust me with your clan. I'm telling you that this is your last chance to make sure Uzumaki means something more than a burnt ruin in a history scroll. You want revenge? You want revival? Then you need someone who won't hesitate, who won't let the standards illusions cloud him. That's me."
He tilted his head slightly, almost amused.
"So don't ask why me. Ask whether you'd rather vanish screaming into nothing, or live on through me, and let me turn your curse into a weapon."
Ashina's voice rumbled back, steady but edged with brittle pride.
"Bold and too elaborate words for a child. You speak like a warlord wearing a mask too large for his face. Do you think because you somehow have such a sharp tongue, you are fit to carry centuries of my Uzumaki legacy?"
But beneath the scorn, the seal pulsed faintly, betraying something else.
Kimimaro felt it, the way a predator senses hesitation in prey.
Ashina's words were hard, but his soul wavered.
Internally, Ashina already knew the boy was right.
Every word had cut at truths he had already cursed himself with in silence.
He was sealed, crumbling, powerless to shape the world without a vessel.
The Uzumaki had left nothing but scattered embers, and no loyal, not to mention qualified, heir had ever come.
This strange boy had found him instead.
And the boy…
Even through the static haze of the seal, Ashina could read him.
His chakra was dense, wild yet controlled, brimming with vitality not unlike a prime Uzumaki.
His body, for one so young, was monstrous, his chakra reserves extraordinary for his age.
In talent, he was at the same level as himself at that age, or even more.
Like a generational Uzumaki talent.
His aura carried not just strength, but that rare mixture of calculation and restraint.
At seven or eight years old, the boy thought with the caution of an elder and the hunger of a predator.
Ashina had left fragments of sensory channels in the seal, echoes of his own gift, so he could observe in silence over the years.
He had seen countless wanderers scavenge the ruins initially while he was still 'awake' here.
None like this boy in any way. None so sharp.
None with an aura so strange, something familiar, yet with traces of power he had never seen before, which was very rare, and unlike any Uzumaki, yet close enough to stir some resonance.
The soul within the seal stirred, torn between the pride that kept his chin high even in death and the gnawing recognition that perhaps fate had sent not an Uzumaki heir, but something else entirely, a weapon sharper than any he could have dreamed.
"Very well, boy," Ashina said finally, voice clipped, still cloaked in pride. "If I must choose between rotting into silence or gambling on a stranger, I will at least demand proof. Show me your worth not with words, but with what you can become. If I am to lend you even a fragment of what remains of Uzumaki, you will wield it as more than a thief of graves."
Yet deep inside, where pride could not reach, Ashina thought only one thing.
'This child… this otherworldly precocious and alien-like child… might be the blade to cut open the world.'
Kimimaro's voice came steady, dry as bone.
"Proof? If you need proof, then you've already decided. Otherwise, we wouldn't still be talking. Kimimaro. That's my name."
Ashina's spirit stirred, the echo of a weary but proud chuckle slipping through the seal."…Ashina. Once the patriarch of the Uzumaki. Now, little more than a soul chained to stone."
Kimimaro tilted his head. "Then explain, old man. How are you here at all? What kind of mechanism is this?"
Ashina's tone hardened, but there was no arrogance, only grim weight.
"The most advanced kind of fūinjutsu, the pinnacle of my clan's speciality. I anchored my soul here; that is why I linger."
He went on, the words edged with both pride and bitterness.
"When my physical body fell, I poured the last of my chakra into this complex tether secretly to leave my soul hanging on by a thread on another sealed plane. Only I could have done it among the remaining clan members, unfortunately."
"It masked itself, folding into the natural flow of the ruins, undetectable even to the sharpest eyes of the four villages that picked this land clean. They thought me gone. In truth, I was waiting. Watching. For a descendant of Uzumaki blood to come, so I might teach them, revive what was lost, and one day take our revenge."
"But years grind even seals down. Especially as complex as this one. Without refreshment, without Uzumaki blood to feed it, I should have faded soon. Yet you… Somehow, your own essence stirred it. Pulled me awake. That much, I did not foresee."
Kimimaro's lips curved faintly, a dry smirk.
"Then your gamble paid off. Just not how you expected. If you want revenge, and I want strength, then we can easily move together. But not at your pace. At mine. I'm seven. It would be idiocy to go crawling around the world right now looking for your lost clansmen, waving a target over my head. First, I'll grow. You'll help me train where I lack. Then we talk about the rest."
For a while, there was only silence in the seal.
Then Ashina spoke, voice low, resigned, yet faintly charged.
"…You sound less like a child the more you speak, and closer to my age. Very well. You are right. You must harden and grow way more first."
Kimimaro gave a short laugh, sharp and humorless.
"And I don't have the luxury of growing slowly. Every year wasted is a chain dragging me down. If I want to live in this kind of world, if I want to control my own fate, then I need to rise fast. Faster than anyone else. And maybe…" his lips curved, dry and thin, "…faster than even you aimed to in your prime. "
"I don't plan to wait until everything is taken from me before I move. You saw what kind of eat or get eaten this world is. Not to mention that I might have ambitions even 'crazier' than you, old man."
Ashina's presence stirred, the faint pressure of his soul tightening around the seal.
"Ambitions… greater than revenge on all of the great hidden villages? Greater than the revival of the Uzumaki clan? Even I know how deluded that sounds. So what are you saying, boy?"
Kimimaro's eyes glinted, his voice low but calm.
"Supremacy. Not just to live in freedom, to get some minor power, but to become the closest thing this world has to a god. To dominate it. To carve my name so deep into it that even the heavens can't erase it."
The silence after was thick, the ruins themselves seeming to hold their breath.
Ashina had seen countless prodigies in his life.
Shinobi who promised much, burned bright, and died young.
But this?
To hear such words from a child, with eyes that did not waver, made his spirit shiver.
"…Supremacy," Ashina repeated slowly, tasting the word like bitter iron. "You speak like an old monster from the Warring States."
Inside, Kimimaro felt a strange ripple.
If only the old fool knew the truth, that he was no reincarnated warlord, but a soul from another world entirely, an adult mind caged in this child's body.
He almost smirked at the irony.
But aloud, he only chuckled faintly.
"Call me what you like. Monster, child, reincarnation, it makes no difference. What matters is that I will not repeat your mistakes."
Ashina's spirit was silent, but within, he was shaken.
A part of him wanted to dismiss it as arrogance.
Another part whispered that this boy's aura, his talent, his discipline, his sheer hunger… was frighteningly real.
"…Then perhaps fate did not mock me by waking me through you after all."
Kimimaro's smirk sharpened. "Good. Then we understand each other."
Ashina stirred then, his voice rumbling low, as he just remembered something."…Tell me, boy. What year is it now?"
Kimimaro's eyes narrowed with that faintly amused glint again.
He didn't answer right away, as if savoring the weight of the question.
Then, with a tone both casual and cutting, he spoke.
"It's been twenty years. Almost to the day since Uzushiogakure burned."
The words sank deep into the ruined stone.
Ashina fell silent, his spirit shaking like a candle flame.
"…Twenty years," he whispered, a sigh laced with both grief and a strange, bitter laughter.
"Two decades since my clan was annihilated. And only now does someone touch this seal. Poetic. Cruel. Perhaps… inevitable."
For a long moment, he let the thought linger. The irony of it, the sheer twist of fate.
But as his senses settled again on Kimimaro, the realization crystallized further. This boy was nothing like the Ashina of his youth, not even like the patriarch who softened in age.
His aura carried no warmth, no hesitation.
He wasn't just cold, he was sharp, honed, a predator in the making.
Ashina studied him the way he once studied his enemies on the battlefield.
"…You're young. Far too young. Closer to a toddler than to a man. And yet your essence reeks of cruelty, of ambition without ceiling. That does not come from childhood. Not naturally. Either you were born twisted, or…" His voice dropped, low and speculative. "…something broke and rapidly reforged you. Experiments? Torture? Fate's hammer striking too soon? Or both? Everything all at once?"
Kimimaro only smirked, offering no confirmation, no denial.
Ashina felt a ripple through his soul, something dark, something that once would have repulsed him.
Now, it almost felt… fitting.
"Yes… If I lend my knowledge to you, if I forge your path further, then perhaps you will not grow into a saint, but into a fully grown monster, through that strength. An ultimate villain that this world perhaps deserves."
His tone hardened, sharp with conviction.
"…And I find that I do not care. Why should I, when the entire weight of the so-called shinobi world fell onto me first? When our closest ally discarded us and left us for the slaughter? If they could all betray me and my clan in life, then I see no reason to seek redemption for them in death."
Ashina's spirit pulsed darker, his once-pure will twisted.
Without realizing it, his soul had become something not unlike Kimimaro's own, scarred, unyielding, merciless.
"…Perhaps, boy, it is fitting. My plans require abnormal ruthlessness. And you… You may be the perfect vessel for them."
Kimimaro tilted his head slightly, lips curving into that faint, dangerous smile. "Good. I agree."