Chapter 1 – Sōsuke Aizen
Konoha, Year 56. Night.
Yakushi Kabuto moved quickly through the dark, winding underground passage.
Born and raised within Root, Kabuto had been trained in environments like this since childhood. He should have been used to such oppressive darkness by now.
Yet tonight, the boy's still-youthful face carried a faint but unmistakable weight.
The recent string of events surrounding Lord Orochimaru was so strange that even someone as young as Kabuto could sense that something was terribly wrong.
If he thought back carefully, the first shift had begun last year.
At that time, Kabuto—already recruited under Orochimaru's command and prepared to stay behind in Konoha as a sleeper agent after his master's departure—was suddenly ordered to halt all operations for reasons unknown.
Not only was the ongoing relocation of multiple bases abruptly suspended, but Kabuto himself, who had been designated as a key hidden asset, was reassigned to a completely different project—assisting with the revival of the Wood Release cell research.
But this time, it was nothing like the slow, painstaking experiments he'd seen before.
The progress of the Wood Release cell project was astonishingly fast—as if someone already knew all the correct answers and was simply replicating them step by step. In just half a year, the entire research had been completed.
If that could still be explained away as one of Orochimaru's flashes of genius, then the events that followed this year were beyond comprehension.
Since the beginning of this year alone, there had been at least three large-scale human experiments that Kabuto was aware of—one of which had even involved several elite jōnin of Konoha. The sheer boldness of it had made his heart pound with fear.
Those events defied reason.
Clearly, Lord Orochimaru had noticed the same thing—and sensed the tremendous, unseen pressure closing in on him from the shadows.
And that was why tonight's operation was set into motion.
"Clang."
The steel door creaked faintly on its hinges as it swung open. Kabuto stepped into the room.
Deep underground, beyond multiple layers of sealing barriers, this heavily guarded chamber contained a massive, multi-panel screen that spanned almost the entire wall.
Beneath the screen, researchers in white coats bent over their workstations, busy with preparations.
"Monitoring Group One, calibration complete."
"Group Two, calibration complete."
"Beginning anti-reconnaissance barrier check… recording now."
As the reports came in one after another, Kabuto sat down at his station and looked up at the wall screen.
In the center of the display stood Orochimaru himself.
After numerous fruitless probes and tests, this time Lord Orochimaru had chosen to act personally—using himself as bait to lure out the "big fish" lurking in Konoha's shadows.
Kabuto silently reviewed the operational summary he'd been briefed on before the mission began. Behind the glint of his glasses, his eyes flickered with a trace of fanaticism.
Whether it was this man's strength, his position, his countless victories, or his always-one-step-ahead intellect—Kabuto believed in him almost unconditionally.
If it's Lord Orochimaru, nothing can go wrong.
With that thought, Kabuto spoke crisply, his tone leaving no room for hesitation.
"Begin the operation."
"Yes, sir."
The researchers below responded in unison.
Meanwhile, on the screen, Orochimaru had already arrived at a small village deep within the forest.
---
Under the moonlight.
A tall, slender man with long black hair stood silently atop a massive tree branch, looking down at the village below.
Orochimaru crossed his arms, snake-like golden pupils glinting coldly as he surveyed the carefully chosen location.
Seventy kilometers southeast of Konoha, population three to four hundred—an ideal trade relay point where information and goods passed between Konoha and the outside world.
Its distance and size were… perfect.
Tonight, the entire village lay under his watchful gaze.
According to the plan, hidden beneath this village was a batch of experimental subjects with rare bloodline limits—acquired from the Land of Grass. During transport, a small clue had accidentally been exposed to Kumogakure's Black Ops.
Orochimaru had then deliberately leaked their movements to both Konoha's border forces and Root.
With so many factions converging, tonight's chaos was inevitable.
And of course—chaos was the perfect cover.
Orochimaru had gone to great lengths to flush out the elusive presence secretly manipulating events from the shadows.
"Let me see…"
His slick, indigo tongue slid across his lips, tasting the air. Every detail—be it insects, ninja hounds, birds, summoning beasts, even the faintest spatial or chakra disturbances—none could escape the vast web he had laid.
His slit-pupiled eyes grew still, almost meditative.
"...Who are you?"
But after a long wait—
His tongue, so sensitive to chakra fluctuations, failed to detect any of the ambushes that should have been lurking nearby.
Instead, it caught a familiar, almost searingly painful taste.
Orochimaru froze, then his eyes widened in sudden realization. He turned toward the village below, disbelief flashing across his face.
That taste was—?!
In the next instant, without a moment's hesitation, he launched himself forward.
Boom!
The half-closed door of the nearest house was slammed open, revealing the scene within.
Hissss—
A flood of white, viscous fluid spewed violently from the body of a middle-aged farmer sprawled on the floor.
His entire body convulsed uncontrollably.
From that white fluid, green wooden branches burst forth, growing at an unnatural speed as though sucking every last drop of vitality from their host.
The man's muscles strained, his eyes rolled back, his fingernails dug into the ground as he tried desperately to crawl toward something—anything.
But the roots anchoring him to the earth pinned him mercilessly in place.
"Wood Release cells…"
The suspicion was confirmed. Yet Orochimaru's face did not ease—instead, it grew darker, heavier.
He quickly moved to the next room—the direction the dying man had been trying to reach—and kicked open the door.
Inside, the man's wife and daughter were already far gone—their bodies more than half transformed into wood. One of them had even burst through the wall, her torso fused into a grotesque, tumor-like tree mass that continued to grow and swell.
Impossible.
That was the only word in Orochimaru's mind.
This village had been under constant surveillance for three full days. Every villager's movement had been accounted for.
Who could have performed human experimentation on this scale under his nose without leaving a single trace?
No—wait.
As if struck by a realization, Orochimaru sprinted to the next house. Then the next. And the next.
The moonlit village grew eerily silent—the cries of insects and birds faded into nothing.
Orochimaru's expression darkened with every step. His pale face seemed almost black beneath the moonlight.
House after house…
Every villager bore the same horrific marks of Wood Release experiments.
Some, their vitality stronger, had grown into towering trees that burst through their roofs—turning what was once a peaceful village into a sprawling forest of grotesque wooden giants.
Not a single trace of the planned surveillance teams, the Kumogakure operatives, Root agents, or even his own experimental subjects could be found.
Worse still—there was not even a hint left behind for him to follow.
What on earth happened here?
Even Orochimaru found it hard to believe what his own senses were telling him.
Driven by a last, gnawing need to uncover the truth, he walked through the entire street, finally reaching the very edge of the village—where the moonlight met the forest's shadow.
And there—
A young man in Konoha uniform stood waiting, as if he had been there all along, casually jotting something down in a notebook, seemingly oblivious to the devastation surrounding him.
He had medium-length brown hair, wore heavy black-rimmed glasses, and carried a soft, intellectual air. A faint, polite smile lingered at the corner of his lips, making him look more like a scholar than a shinobi.
If one ignored the nightmarish scene around him, he could have been mistaken for a teacher preparing lecture notes.
With his impeccable memory, Orochimaru recognized him at once.
A young man of Kakashi's generation.
But precisely because of that recognition, his usually raspy voice held an edge of doubt:
"—Sōsuke Aizen?"
"Good evening."
Only when Orochimaru spoke did the young man lift his head, as though just now noticing his presence.
"Lord Orochimaru."
The moonlight streamed through the canopy like silver threads, scattering across the ground in broken patches.
The night wind rustled the trees, and fireflies glimmered faintly like fallen stars, gathering around the young man.
Aizen Sōsuke stopped writing, closed his notebook with unhurried grace, and gave Orochimaru a polite, almost warm smile.
On that calm, composed face appeared a trace of wistfulness. His gaze, however, passed over Orochimaru, as though looking far beyond him—toward the distant sky.
"What a beautiful moonlight."
"To be the one to see you off under such scenery… is a kind of blessing, don't you think?"
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