Chapter 318: The Funeral of the Matriarch
The Nine-Tails Jinchūriki had been successfully sealed. The crisis that had threatened to consume Konoha was over.
The truth of what had happened that night—the full, unvarnished account of the Nine-Tails' rampage and its suppression—was never released to the public. The Third Hokage saw no need to spread panic by revealing how close the village had come to annihilation. And the Golden Buddha that had faced the fox in combat had been witnessed by precious few. The villagers who had taken shelter in the distant evacuation zones had seen only a blur of golden light clashing with the demon fox's crimson form. The details were murky. The participants were unknown.
Ragnar had no interest in fame. When Hiruzen consulted him on how to handle the official narrative, his response was simple: give the credit to Hatake Sakumo. And so the story became that the Third Hokage and Konoha's White Fang had joined forces, using a secret sealing technique passed down from the First Hokage's era to suppress the Nine-Tails and save the village. It was a clean narrative. Heroic. Reassuring. The kind of story that made civilians sleep easier at night and made foreign intelligence agents scratch their heads in frustration.
The truth, of course, was known to those with the means to perceive it. The shinobi who had been close enough to the battle. The ANBU who had guarded the perimeter. The Sannin, who had felt the Buddha's presence even from the village streets. They knew. But they chose silence. There was no need to contradict the official account. The village was safe. That was what mattered.
The next day, Sarutobi Hiruzen held a funeral of unprecedented scale.
Uzumaki Mito. The wife of the First Hokage. The first Jinchūriki of the Nine-Tails. The matriarch of a fallen clan. Her contributions to Konoha spanned decades, and her death—peaceful, at the end of her duty, having passed her burden to a worthy successor—marked the end of an era. Every notable shinobi in the village attended. The streets were lined with mourners dressed in black, their heads bowed in respect as the procession made its way to the memorial grounds.
Before the monument, Uzumaki Kushina and Uzumaki Meiko stood together—the last remnants of their scattered bloodline. Kushina wept openly, her grief raw and unguarded. Meiko stood silent beside her, tears tracing quiet paths down her cheeks. They were orphans now. Both of them. The last daughters of a clan that had once been great.
Behind them stood Sarutobi Hiruzen, his white robes exchanged for funeral black. Hatake Sakumo, his Half-Sleeve removed for the occasion. The Sannin—Tsunade, Jiraiya, Orochimaru—their expressions solemn. And Ragnar, his dark attire blending with the mourners, his face as unreadable as ever.
Danzō Shimura also attended. He had been conspicuously absent during the actual crisis—not a single Root operative had been deployed to assist with the Nine-Tails' suppression. But here, at the funeral, he was present. His scarred face was arranged in an expression of appropriate sorrow. Whether it was genuine or merely performative was a question that not even his oldest friends could answer with certainty.
Perhaps there was a flicker of real regret in that single visible eye. Perhaps, standing before the monument of a woman who had given everything for the village, even Danzō felt a twinge of something that might have been guilt. Or perhaps he was merely calculating how this death would shift the political landscape. No one could tell. No one ever could.
"Humans are so fragile," Orochimaru murmured, his golden eyes fixed on the monument. "No matter how powerful the shinobi, they all meet the same end. Dust. Silence. The grave."
"It's fate." Jiraiya's voice was uncharacteristically gentle. "Birth. Aging. Sickness. Death. That's the natural order. There's no escaping it."
Orochimaru shook his head slowly. He did not argue. But the look in his eyes—that cold, hungry, desperate look—spoke volumes. He turned away from the monument, and as he left, his voice drifted back like the echo of a funeral bell.
"Life is too short. Too impermanent. If I want to pierce the truth of this world... I need more time."
Jiraiya watched his friend go, and a shadow passed across his face. He knew what Orochimaru was thinking. He had seen that hunger growing for years. And he did not know how to stop it.
According to Konoha's funeral customs, each attendee was to present a bouquet of flowers at the monument. The ceremony stretched from noon until the late afternoon, and by the time dusk began to paint the sky in shades of amber and violet, Uzumaki Mito's tombstone was surrounded by a sea of blossoms. White lilies. Red camellias. The pale blue of forget-me-nots. Each flower was a memory. A promise. A thread in the tapestry of the Will of Fire.
As gorgeous as flowers, scattering like leaves, yet never truly ending.
The shinobi departed in ones and twos. The crowd thinned. The silence deepened. By dusk, only a handful of mourners remained, and the air was thick with the bittersweet melancholy of endings.
Ragnar left the memorial grounds. He had wanted to say something to Kushina—to offer comfort, reassurance, something that might ease the weight of her grief. But standing before Mito's monument, words felt hollow. Futile. The only person who could pull Kushina from this darkness was Kushina herself. He could stand beside her. He could not walk the path for her.
Outside the cemetery gates, he saw a figure waiting.
Uchiha Mikoto stood beneath a cherry tree, dressed in a black kimono that made her pale skin seem almost luminous in the fading light. Her dark hair fell in a cascade over her shoulders. She was looking around, scanning the departing mourners, and when her eyes found Ragnar, her lips curved into a small, hesitant smile.
She raised a hand and waved.
Waiting for me? The thought surfaced unbidden. He had not expected to see her here. The Uchiha clan had no particular connection to Uzumaki Mito. But then again, Mikoto was ANBU. She would have known about the sealing ceremony. She would have understood the significance of what had happened.
He walked toward her. "Mikoto."
"Ye-kun." She dipped her head slightly, a faint blush coloring her cheeks. "I... yes. I attended Lady Mito's funeral."
"You were waiting for me deliberately."
"No—yes." She started to deny it, then caught herself. When she met his eyes—those dark, depthless eyes that seemed to see everything—she found she could not lie. "Yes. I was waiting."
"Is something wrong?"
"No." The word came out too quickly. She winced internally. What a foolish thing to say. Of course something is wrong. Why else would I be waiting here like an idiot?
Ragnar raised an eyebrow.
"I heard... you and Kushina are close," Mikoto said, changing the subject with all the grace of a cart changing direction mid-stream.
"You know Kushina?"
"Yes. She's a wonderful girl. When her grandmother passed... she must be devastated. I truly hope she finds happiness again soon."
"Death is a powerless thing. No one can stop it. I hope Kushina comes through this period quickly and remembers how to smile."
"You sound like you care about her a great deal. And you're close in age." Mikoto tilted her head. "Why didn't you stay to comfort her?"
"I'm not good at comforting people." Ragnar's voice was flat. "You know that."
Mikoto opened her mouth. Closed it. She did know that. Ragnar showed his care through actions, not words. He had fought the Nine-Tails to protect Kushina. He had nearly died to keep her safe. What more comfort could anyone offer than that?
"Sister! So this is the cold-faced big brother you've been waiting for!"
The voice was high-pitched, childish, and absolutely delighted with itself. It came from a tree a few meters behind Mikoto, where a small head had suddenly poked out from behind the trunk. The boy looked about three or four years old, with black hair, black eyes, and the most enormous pair of eyelashes Ragnar had ever seen. His eyes were wide and bright and impossibly clear—the kind of eyes that seemed to hold entire galaxies in their depths.
"Shisui!" Mikoto's expression cycled through exasperation and affection in the span of a heartbeat. "What are you doing here?"
"I followed you!" the boy announced proudly, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. "You were acting all secret and mysterious, so I wanted to see what was happening!"
Shisui. Uchiha Shisui.
Ragnar studied the child with new eyes. This was the boy who would one day awaken the Mangekyō Sharingan and its ultimate genjutsu—Kotoamatsukami, the Distant Heavenly Gods, a technique so absolute it could rewrite a person's very soul without them ever realizing they had been touched. Shisui of the Body Flicker. The Teleporter. The boy who could kill you before you even knew you were in a fight.
And those eyes. Those ridiculous, galaxy-filled eyes. There was no mistaking them. This was definitely Shisui.
The child stared back at Ragnar with open, unabashed curiosity. "Sister, is this the cold-faced big brother you're always talking about? The one who—"
"Shisui!" Mikoto's face went crimson. "That's enough!"
Ragnar looked at the blushing kunoichi, then at the grinning child, and filed this information away for future reference. Always talking about, am I?
"It's getting dark," he said. "You should head home. Both of you."
"Yes! Of course! We were just leaving!" Mikoto grabbed Shisui's hand and began dragging him away with the desperate energy of a woman fleeing a burning building. The boy waved cheerfully over his shoulder, his enormous eyes sparkling with mischief.
"Bye-bye, cold-faced big brother! Come visit us sometime! Sister would like that!"
"SHISUI!"
Ragnar watched them go, a faint, almost imperceptible smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Then he turned and walked into the gathering dusk.
Behind him, the sea of flowers around Uzumaki Mito's monument rustled in the evening breeze. The Will of Fire, passed from generation to generation, continued its eternal dance. And somewhere in the seal space deep within Kushina's soul, the Nine-Tails slept—dreaming, for the first time in a century, of golden fists and Buddha's light.