For nearly an hour, I sat alone in my office, the quiet hum of the war camp filling the air outside. Reports from every front came in, each marked with blood and sacrifice. But one report stood above them all—one name whispered in every trembling voice.
Madara Uchiha.
The ink on the maps before me had begun to blur from my stillness. My fingers traced the lines of the front where his chakra had been detected. It wasn't just immense—it was suffocating, godlike, a weight pressing down on the entire battlefield.
I closed my eyes, feeling the cold pulse of his chakra through the air. I didn't need scouts to confirm it anymore. That kind of presence could only belong to him.
"Enough waiting," I muttered under my breath.
I reached for the kunai marked with my Flying Thunder God seal—the one I had prepared for situations exactly like this. The moment my fingers touched it, the air around me shimmered and cracked like lightning.
In an instant, the office vanished.
The world blurred into motion, and I reappeared on the battlefield amid chaos—sand, fire, and wind clashing with an overwhelming, crimson power.
There he stood.
Madara Uchiha.
His armor gleamed like polished obsidian under the fractured light of the sky. His eyes—those cursed Sharingan—glowed with an ancient authority. Chakra flowed off him like a hurricane.
He turned his gaze toward me immediately. "So… Itachi Uchiha. You've come."
The air trembled as our eyes met—Eternal Mangekyō against Rinnegan and Sharingan. For a moment, the war itself seemed to pause.
Then, in bursts of chakra, the other four Kage appeared around me.
Raikage landed first, fists sparking with lightning. "So this is the so-called ghost of the Uchiha clan? About damn time we settled this!"
Mei Terumī appeared next, her molten mist sizzling against the shattered earth. "If this is truly Madara Uchiha, we'll need to fight smarter than ever."
Ōnoki hovered in the air, his old eyes narrowing. "Hmph. To think I'd live long enough to see this fossil walk the earth again…"
Gaara stood silently beside me, sand swirling protectively around his body, his calm gaze fixed on Madara. "Itachi… what do you sense from him?"
I exhaled slowly. "A monster wearing a man's face."
Madara smiled faintly at my words. "You have your brother's eyes now, don't you? And yet… I sense something different. You are not the Itachi I once knew."
I didn't answer. My Sharingan flared to life, spinning with deadly precision. "No, I'm far more than he ever was."
Lightning from Raikage, sand from Gaara, lava from Mei, dust release from Ōnoki—all surged forward as one. I joined the onslaught, weaving seals faster than sight, releasing a wave of black Amaterasu flames across the shattered plain.
The Fourth Great Ninja War had just entered its most terrifying phase.
And for the first time in history, all five Kage stood side by side—against the legend of Madara Uchiha.