Part III: Rebirth in the Fire Country
The golden light shattered like glass.
Then came silence — not the calm kind, but the sort that presses against the skull until the world must invent sound again. A breeze moved through tall grass. Crickets murmured. Water trickled somewhere close by.
Ishi gasped.
Air flooded his lungs — cold, fragrant, alive. It wasn't hospital air; it tasted of earth and pine sap. His body convulsed, and he rolled onto damp soil, coughing, shaking. When he pushed himself up, he saw tiny hands, smooth and small. The sight startled him more than the forest.
He was barefoot. The silk robe was gone, replaced by rough linen that hung loose on his frame. His hair — longer now, silvery-black — fell into his eyes. His voice, when it came, was higher, fragile with youth.
"Okay," he rasped. "New game plus... confirmed."
No answer but the sigh of leaves. Sunlight filtered through the canopy in thin gold ribbons. Every color looked too alive — as though the world were painted in chakra itself. He touched a tree trunk and felt it breathing, a slow pulse of energy through the bark. The sensation made his skin prickle.
That was when the pain hit.
A sharp, electric ache behind his eyes, blooming outward. The world flickered — once, twice — and in that instant, he saw everything.
The forest fractured into threads: each leaf traced in veins of blue light, each insect a tiny spark in a web that pulsed with rhythm. He could hear the heartbeat of the river, the murmur of roots beneath the earth, the faint echo of voices far away and yet near.
Then— darkness.
He cried out, clutching his face. His head pounded like a drum split in two. He dropped to his knees, trembling.
Too much. Too much. Too much.
He forced his eyes shut and pressed his palms hard against them until the pain ebbed to a dull burn. When he lowered his hands, something soft brushed his fingers: fabric.
A strip of black cloth lay beside him, its edges embroidered with faint symbols he didn't recognize. He didn't know how he knew, but it was meant for him.
"Blind what the gods made to see," he whispered.
His shaking hands tied the blindfold around his head. The instant the knot tightened, the world steadied. The pulse of power receded like a tide going out, leaving him gasping but grounded.
He stayed there a while, breathing, listening to the forest. The smell of moss and smoke reached him — faint, human. Civilization.
When he finally stood, he wobbled but managed a crooked smile. "Ten out of ten for dramatic entrance," he muttered. "Could use less existential migraine."
He took a hesitant step toward the sound of water, then another. His balance felt strange — as though the ground tilted beneath him — but his feet knew where to go. Birds burst from the branches above, startled by his movement.
At the riverbank, he crouched. The blindfold hid his reflection, but he felt the cold spray against his skin. His fingers brushed the surface, rippling his unseen image.
"Guess I'm really here," he murmured. "Naruto world, huh? Let's hope plot armor's part of the deal."
The breeze answered with laughter-like rustling.
Somewhere far off, a dog barked — then voices, faint but approaching. Children, maybe. Ishi hesitated, the survival instinct of his old world whispering don't be seen, but curiosity won.
He stepped into the sunlight.
For a heartbeat, the scene froze: a small blindfolded child, barefoot and smiling faintly, framed by the glow of morning in a forest that would one day border the Hidden Leaf. His silhouette shimmered, the faintest trace of gold in the air around him — gone before even the birds could notice.
Far away, in a tower filled with scrolls, the Third Hokage paused mid-paperwork. A tremor passed through the air, brief and inexplicable. He looked out toward the forests of Fire Country and frowned.
"Another anomaly," he murmured. "So soon?"
End of Chapter 1 – Curtain Call