A pale red moon climbed into the night sky above Konoha, staining the rooftops with light that looked too much like blood. The Uchiha district lay silent under its glow—doors closed, lamps flickering, wind whispering across the empty streets.
Sasuke stood in the courtyard, the night breeze tugging at his hair. The air felt heavier than usual, dense with chakra and something older—an unease that clung to the earth itself.
He could sense tension everywhere: in the distant watchtowers, in the hurried movements of hidden Anbu, even in his father's footsteps earlier that evening. The clan had been meeting almost nightly, whispers of rebellion flowing through their halls like smoke.
Tonight, those whispers would turn into screams—if he did nothing.
***
#### Ominous Stillness
Dinner ended quietly. Mikoto smiled through fatigue, urging him to sleep early, while Fugaku gave only short answers, distracted and severe. Itachi was gone again on Anbu duties, his absence cutting through the house like an invisible blade.
Sasuke stared at his bowl, unable to eat. His chest felt tight, his heart irregular. Every instinct screamed that destiny was shifting. He remembered the goddess's voice from another lifetime: *Fate does not bend. It corrects.*
When the candles flickered out one by one, he slipped outside, unnoticed.
The Uchiha streets looked deserted. Only faint torchlight shimmered on polished stones. Then, in the distance, he saw them—dark silhouettes leaping from roof to roof, moving with the precision of assassins.
Anbu.
Three signatures—fast, strong, and familiar. The lead flow of chakra chilled his blood. He would have known it anywhere.
Itachi.
For a moment, he wanted to deny it. But his analytical sight betrayed him. The rhythm of that chakra was the same one he'd studied for years, steady and flawless.
"It's starting," he whispered. "No."
He turned back toward his home, running faster than he had ever moved before.
***
#### The Clash of Blood
When he reached the main compound, he kicked the sliding doors open. Fugaku turned sharply, startled, but his expression softened at the sight of his son.
"Sasuke?"
"Father, we have to leave. Now. The Anbu—they're coming!"
Fugaku's eyes narrowed. "How do you know?"
"I just do!"
Before he could explain, a loud crack ripped through the courtyard. The ground trembled. In one sharp moment, all the torches blew out.
Blue fire erupted across the outer walls. Figures dropped from the rooftops—masked, silent, weapon‑ready.
Fugaku drew his blade. "Mikoto! Take Sasuke inside!"
Mikoto rushed forward, pulling him close, but Sasuke resisted. "Father—"
"Go!"
Lightning flashed. One by one, Anbu fell, but another wave replaced them. Through the chaos, a movement caught Sasuke's eye. At the far end of the courtyard, a figure approached, coated in shadow, eyes glowing red through the flames.
Itachi.
"Brother!" Sasuke shouted.
The world seemed to stop breathing.
Smoke curled around Itachi like mourning cloth. His Sharingan spun, bleeding patterns of calm destruction.
Sasuke took one step forward before his father's voice froze him. "Don't move."
For a moment, the two men faced each other—father and son, loyalty and duty twisted into a single gaze. Itachi's face revealed nothing.
"Why?" Fugaku asked softly.
Itachi's answer came quietly, but every word struck like steel. "Because peace demands a sinner."
***
#### The Fall of Light
Sasuke's cry split the air. "No!"
He lunged forward, chakra flaring, trying to interfere, but something invisible slammed into him—a pulse from nowhere, air folding like shattered glass.
The jutsu wasn't his, nor Itachi's, nor anyone he knew. For one dizzying second, everything turned translucent: walls, dust, blood—all frozen mid‑motion. It was as if time itself had been sliced and re‑stitched in front of him.
His body drifted backward, pushed away from the room. He hit the ground hard outside, gasping, the sudden silence crushing his ears.
When he looked up again, moments had vanished. The fire burned lower, the shouts muted. The household ahead lay eerily calm.
He dragged himself to the doorway, trembling. The scene inside blurred—his parents kneeling, still, peaceful. Itachi standing above them, sword lowered, tears glinting like shattered mirrors.
Then Itachi's gaze met his again.
"Forgive me, Sasuke."
Everything after that word became soundless.
Sasuke stumbled backward, the night spinning around him.
***
#### Breaking Reality
He didn't know how long he ran. Through alleys, over rooftops, down empty courtyards—the world around him folding under the weight of grief. The taste of smoke filled his lungs.
When he finally collapsed near the riverbank, the moon hung enormous above, its red reflection spilling across the water like blood.
He screamed into the silence until breath left him. The tears that followed burned cold on his cheeks.
Then something changed. The wind grew unnaturally still again. The reflection on the river bent, twisting into golden streaks. Time rippled invisibly, a wave stretching backward across existence.
Sasuke froze. The air shimmered around him, darker than darkness, brighter than fire.
It wasn't chakra. It wasn't genjutsu. It was something else entirely—a presence, unseen, incomprehensible, watching from beyond the edges of reality.
A whisper brushed his ear, carried in the hum of the distortion.
*"Your soul fights too strongly against written things."*
Sasuke clutched his head. "Who's there?"
The whisper replied only faintly. *"When one thread burns, another must rise. That is balance."*
And then it was gone.
He stared at the empty air, too stunned to move. His vision throbbed painfully, the tomoe in his eyes twisting into patterns resembling fractal circles. His analytical ability reacted uncontrollably, scanning the phenomenon as it disappeared. The data made no sense. It shattered mathematical logic, returning only one conclusion: temporal interference. Something—or someone—had momentarily rewritten cause and effect.
He looked back toward the heart of the district. The fires were extinguished. Silence spread. Either by fate or anomaly, most of the Anbu presence had vanished. The ground looked undisturbed—as if massacre had ended before finishing.
His chest tightened. *What happened just now?*
No answer came. Only the constant whisper of the Naka River.
***
#### The Last Family Shadow
Before dawn, he returned cautiously to the compound. The streets were scorched but empty. The faint scent of ozone clung to the air. Bodies were gone, removed by cleanup squads or erased by that strange distortion he could no longer sense.
At his home, only ash remained.
He knelt among the embers, crawling through fragments of what once was—the broken frame of his father's sword stand, the cracked ceramic bowl on the table, the shawl his mother used to wear.
He whispered, "I failed."
But even through sorrow, he noticed something: chakra traces not belonging to Itachi, the Anbu, or any known village force. They pulsed faintly, golden rather than red or blue—like residue left by a fading sunbeam.
Another pause in reality. Another hand unseen.
He stood slowly, his eyes reflecting the dawn. The strength of that energy terrified him, yet part of him understood. Whatever force existed here had pulled the massacre away from its destined scale. Half the clan still perished, yet others' fates had vanished from record—no bodies, no chakra remnants, no proof of life or death.
He felt the weight of invisible strings tightening again. Someone—or something—was controlling events only enough to balance them.
***
#### The Day after Blood
By morning, Konoha's streets buzzed with whispers. The Uchiha were gone. The Hokage's office had declared it an "internal purge." No one questioned further.
Sasuke sat among the survivors at the village outskirts, numb. He answered the investigators' questions in mechanical tones, recounting fragments yet hiding the impossible parts. Each word felt stolen, artificial.
"They said you were found unconscious near the river," the medic told him.
"Maybe Anbu missed me," he murmured.
Hiruzen Sarutobi visited later, voice heavy with sorrow. "You have the right to rest, Sasuke. What happened is tragedy beyond words. If you need time—"
"I don't need time," Sasuke interrupted quietly. "I need to grow stronger."
The Hokage looked at him with tired eyes. "Vengeance will poison you."
"It's not vengeance," Sasuke said, gaze distant. "It's correction."
Sarutobi didn't understand—no one could. But the boy's tone left no room for argument.
When the Hokage departed, Sasuke sat in silence. The world felt faded, like a canvas half‑erased. He looked toward the sunset burning over the village and whispered, "Father, Mother… I changed something, but not enough."
He clenched his fists. "I'll find the truth of that distortion. Someday, I'll control even the laws that tried to stop me."
The wind brushed through the grass, carrying ash and morning dew across the battlefield's ghostly scent.
***
#### Seeds of the Future
Weeks passed. The village repaired its streets and erased its guilt. Sasuke attended funerals that felt hollow, planted flowers that refused to bloom. He moved through each ceremony like a shadow of himself.
At night, he trained alone outside the gates, replicating every jutsu he had seen his older brother perform. Each movement ran with precision, powered by rage and purpose. His Sharingan deepened into full form faster than any record of his age allowed.
Yet something within him changed fundamentally after that night. His analytical senses grew sharper, but his emotions dulled. The world no longer moved in clean cause and effect. Time itself felt brittle around him, as if waiting to shatter again.
Sometimes, when the moon rose red, air around him trembled as it had that night. He would sense faint resonance—like waves bouncing from hidden barriers. But he saw no figure, no hand, no mask—only the silence of reality readjusting, correcting, settling into reluctant stillness.
The balance persisted, unseen but present.
Sasuke began to dream less of revenge and more of rewriting destiny properly, fully, permanently.
He spoke softly to the night, "If fate's correction can undo what I love, I'll learn to undo it faster. I'll break causality itself before it breaks me."
Far in the distance, unmarked and silent, the golden shimmer of that unknown power flickered once more—then vanished, leaving the world quiet.
The red moon sank below the horizon, ending the longest night of Sasuke Uchiha's first battle against destiny.
***
To be continue...