Time rewinds a few moments earlier.
When Hyūga Hizashi activated his Byakugan to search for the source of that mysterious voice, he had, in fact, already seen Neji lying calmly in his room.
But because his attention was fixed entirely on the man who had spoken, he overlooked the strangeness right before him.
Normally, after venting his frustrations, Neji would toss and turn for hours, unable to sleep.
Yet tonight, after quietly bandaging his wounded hands, Hyūga Neji lay on his back, staring blankly at the ceiling. Within moments, a deep drowsiness surged over him like a rising tide.
When he closed his eyes, the world went utterly still, silent as death, an endless ocean of black stretching into infinity.
Until-
A faint, ethereal voice reached his ears. It seemed to come from somewhere impossibly far away.
"..."
Neji opened his eyes in confusion.
Before him stood a ruined torii gate, its crimson lacquer flaking away, rotting beams buried in the earth at crooked angles.
Beyond it rose a set of moss-covered stone steps, slick and damp. That same voice echoed from somewhere up ahead.
Drawn forward by something unseen, Neji began to climb.
He passed beneath the broken torii, between two shattered guardian-dog statues, and followed a shadowed stone path lined with swaying trees until the space opened before him.
A dilapidated shrine appeared in the moonlight. The sacred ropes were frayed and rotting, the wooden plaques clattered against each other in the wind, and the faded vermilion letters were too blurred to read.
In the clearing before the shrine, four children stood hand in hand, forming a small circle.
Two of them, faces obscured, released their grip and each reached out a hand toward Neji. Without realizing why, he stepped forward and took them.
The instant their fingers touched, an inexplicable joy welled up in his chest, and a faint smile curved his lips. A laugh, light, unfamiliar, not his own, escaped him.
He turned his gaze toward the center of their circle.
There, kneeling with her head bowed, sat a black-haired girl wearing a blindfold.
"かごめ,かごめ (Kagome, Kagome…)"
The children began to spin in a circle, singing in high, innocent voices. Neji found himself joining in, singing the words he somehow already knew.
"かごの中の鳥は (The bird in the cage…)"
The dying red light of sunset spilled over them, stretching their shadows into the shape of a bamboo cage, trapping them, and the blindfolded girl, within.
"いついつ出やる (When, oh when will it come out?)"
The song quickened. The children moved faster, and the long shadows twisted around the girl at the center like tangled wires.
"夜明けの晩に (In the night of dawn…)"
"鶴と亀が滑った (The crane and the turtle slipped…)"
"後ろの正面,だあれ? (Who stands behind you now?)"
The four children stopped suddenly and turned toward the girl in the middle.
"..."
Neji's eyes followed theirs. The girl's back seemed both strange and familiar, so familiar that his fogged thoughts began to clear.
The childish song still echoed through the decayed shrine, its innocent rhythm twisted into something deeply unsettling.
And the icy chill creeping through the two hands that held his filled Neji with dread.
He suddenly understood the rules of this game.
If the blindfolded girl guesses who stands behind her, that person must take the caged bird's place… and die instead.
"..."
The girl lifted her head slightly. Her pale lips parted.
"Hyūga… Neji…" she whispered.
The moment she spoke his name, Neji's body convulsed uncontrollably. The two children beside him gently released his hands.
"No! I don't want this!"
But his body moved on its own. He stepped forward and knelt before the girl. The four children closed in around them, their gazes solemn, reverent, almost worshipful, as though witnessing a sacred ritual.
At last, the girl raised her joined hands and softly caressed Neji's face. Her thumbs pressed against his eyes.
Squelch!
Hot, dark blood sprayed out. Thick streams ran down his cheeks and splattered onto the ground.
"AAAAH!!"
Neji's scream tore through the air, raw and animalistic, the pain felt like red-hot iron being driven into his skull.
When it ended, a blackness covered his eyes like a blindfold.
The four children joined hands again, spinning in a circle, their flickering shadows stitching him into the center of a cage.
Their eerie little song began anew,
"かごめ,かごめ (Kagome, Kagome…)"
"かごの中の鳥は (The bird in the cage…)"
"いついつ出やる (When, oh when will it come out…)"
Their childish voices warped, the melody twisting into something unrecognizable. Static filled Neji's vision. Distorted images flashed one after another across his mind.
The scene changed.
He saw countless people marked with the same cursed seal carved into their foreheads, standing like shields before those without it, dying by the hundreds on blood-soaked battlefields.
He saw a man bearing the Caged Bird mark, his face hidden, slaughtering without mercy.
He saw that man gouging out others' eyes, writhing in agony atop a stone altar, blood streaming from his own.
He saw the man descend the altar, carve something into a stone monument, then walk away. Whether marked or unmarked, anyone who tried to stop him fell beneath his hand, cut down in a heartbeat.
Even when others activated the curse seal, it could not stop him.
Neji watched as the figure entered a grand shrine. Survivors gathered outside, too terrified to follow. Only the sound of harsh breathing filled the silence.
Moments later, the shrine erupted in flames.
The figure walked out through the fire, flames licking across his face.
In his hand, he carried a severed head, an old man's, the expression frozen in terror, its pale spine dragging behind, painting the ground in streaks of red.
He halted.
The blood pooled beneath his feet, forming a dark crimson mirror.
Reflected within it were the horrified pale eyes of the onlookers, and within those eyes burned the image of his own.
Eyes unlike any Byakugan.
They were deep blue.
Neji stood at the back of the crowd, unable to move or speak, forced to watch as a silent observer.
After the pain of becoming the sacrifice, now he witnessed this massacre, and somewhere in his heart, he felt a twisted, perverse exhilaration.
Then the figure slowly raised his head, and their gazes met.
Neji froze.
He felt it, that man could see him.
Two lines of blood trickled from the man's blue eyes, sliding down his blurred face.
"Such an ugly clan," the man said softly. "It has no right to exist."
He raised his hand, as if gripping an invisible sword.
Golden light erupted, piercing the black clouds above.
"Let impurity be cleansed," he whispered. "Golden Wheel… Reincarnation Explosion."
The golden radiance fell, blazing across the night sky, and death itself seemed to take form.
Boom!
Confronted with that all-consuming light, Neji instinctively tried to dodge, but instead, his eyes flew open.
Before he knew it, he had rolled off his bed and hit the floor.
"..."
He stared blankly at the ceiling. The dull ache in his body slowly reminded him, this was reality.
"What… what was that?" he murmured. "Who was that man?"
"And those eyes…"