Time was an illusion within the vast Uchiha cathedral, a space where echoes of forgotten glories mingled with the omnipresent miasma of dry incense and ancient dust. The commotion of a recent past — a private spectacle of pain and despair — still clung to the air, but now, two protagonists occupied a peculiar silence. They were close, joined in a position that, to any outside observer, would seem a bizarre tableau of devotion and desolation.
On the cathedral floor, atop stones marked by the scars of a distant past and symbols that time could not erase, sat Kushina. Her crimson hair glowed within the cathedral like a river of arterial blood. She sat directly upon the cold, historic floor, cradling in her lap the body of a young man who seemed too large for such a display of affection, yet nestled there as if he belonged.
She exhaled a presence that challenged the very substance of the place. Her skin possessed a pale, translucent luminosity that contrasted with the dull obsidian of the cathedral, making her look like a deity exiled in a mausoleum of shadows. Her crimson hair held an organic vitality that mocked the mineral rigidity around her, glowing as if living blood ran in flames through her head. Yet, despite her divine appearance, her demeanor now was no different from that of a mother, comforting the youth in her lap with maternal tenderness—a silent softness that seemed the only thing capable of shielding the boy from the world's pain.
Though Indra's soul was that of a boy only twelve years old, who due to a difficult upbringing was relatively small for his age, he now inhabited a strange and monumental physical structure: the body of Itachi. Standing at 170 cm, he was nearly the size of the Matriarca, making the scene profoundly distorted. To see someone of that stature seeking refuge in her lap was like watching a wounded animal trying to return to the womb—the mind of a shattered child seeking to disappear within the warmth of his only protector. Yet, despite all possible meanings of this scene, Indra's countenance showed a peace and comfort he had never before been able to demonstrate.
The silence of the cathedral was cut by a constant, oppressive sound: the rattling of the chains that held the Great Being.
As if bothered by this, Indra shifted slightly, seeking a deeper fit within that shelter of arms. Kushina, sensing the movement, caressed his dark locks with one hand and spoke in a gentle tone.
"Are you better now, Indra?"
The youth did not answer immediately; instead, he only pressed himself harder against her, hiding his face in the white fabric of her robes as if trying to merge his existence into that protection. Indra let out a heavy sigh, a sound that carried years of fatigue accumulated in just twelve years of life, and for an instant, his eyes lost the glimmer of pain to reflect only the comfort of that lap.
"Yes," he murmured in a muffled voice, a low, vulnerable sound that hardly matched his new stature.
Kushina smiled imperceptibly, but the affection in her fingers did not stop. She continued to trace slow circles on the crown of his head, ignoring the metallic scent of blood from the wounds she herself had inflicted upon the boy. She knew it was the first time Indra was truly at ease, but his situation troubled her.
It wasn't just the wounds on his body, but the exhaustion and mental stress the youth carried. He had endured complicated situations long before the Nightmare, always living at the absolute limit of his strength. And even now, upon being greeted by his First Nightmare, he was bombarded with information and forced into a test that demanded far beyond his capabilities to finally achieve the liberation of some of his shackles.
In short, the boy was utterly exhausted. Due to an upbringing that never allowed him to sleep without being alert to the cell he inhabited, where shurikens or kunais would fly in his direction at any moment—he had never truly slept. Sleep, for him, had always been a trap. Knowing this, Kushina ceased merely caressing his black hair and lightly touched the boy's forehead with the same fingers. As if by magic, Indra's instinctive defenses crumbled, and he simply fell asleep.
For the first time in his existence marked by blood and pain, silence was not a threat. In the lap of the crimson-haired saint, Itachi's body finally grew heavy with the total abandonment of sleep, while Indra's consciousness plunged into a darkness devoid of danger. Kushina observed the youth's stillness, returning her hand to his hair, offering a delicate stroke as if guaranteeing that no nightmare could reach him in that brief interlude of peace.
"Sleep, little fox," she whispered, looking at the youth in her lap with affection in her eyes.
In the absolute silence of the cathedral, she needed no systems or mechanical voices to understand what lay before her. For one who had awakened naturally, without the crutches of the Nightmare Spell, the soul was not a set of statistics, but a vibrant tapestry of colors and sounds.
Kushina observed the "vessel" the boy inhabited, Itachi's body, and saw the invisible chains that bound him to Indra. Kushina's Aspect was something vast and terrible, a perception that allowed her to see the unfoldings of time like rivers running toward an inevitable ocean. She saw the choices Indra would have as bifurcations on a map of infinite possibilities, and what each would cause: life or death, creation or destruction. That little fox in her lap would be a beast that would scramble the fates of many, a factor of chaos in a tapestry that should have been fixed.
But now, this little beast was held by chains that sought to suffocate his capacity for choice. Focusing on them, Kushina saw the past: the machinations of Danzo, Ki Song, and even the whispers of Astarion, whose plans sought to turn Indra's life into a fixed script of suffering.
Even as a Saint, Kushina occupied the pinnacle of what a Transcendent could be. With 70% of the essence of Madara, the primordial Uchiha who refined himself unto the divine—her prowess was absolute. However, she could not use that prowess as she wished; she was bound by the paradox of her Aspect, lineage, and Flaw.
There, after centuries of reflection, isolation, and understanding, she realized what she was. And with that understanding, she named her Aspect [The Observer]. Through it, she possessed the tools to meddle with fate and construct it to her will. Furthermore, she was too "heavy" for Fate to manipulate at its whim, owing to her lineage. She would have all the weapons to mold the world in her image, but as a reminder from Fate, which marked her to hinder her, her Flaw, [Static Witness], prevented her from using what her lineage and Aspect granted. She was destined to always see, but never act.
As heir to the philosophy of Nether, the Daemon of Choice, Kushina saw fate as a system of gears, a structural prison where every gear referred to something. To her, reality was not a fluid web, but a colossal machine of stone and iron designed to dictate the end of all things.
For Kushina, fate was a "gear of possibilities" open only to those with the strength to claim them, a rigid design that cried out for an extreme force, a hammer, that could break the teeth of the gears and force a new path.
In this oppressive structure, she saw Indra: the possibility of breaking everything, though he was almost destined for failure by the low probability. A fruit of Nether's possibilities, the hammer forged to break the gears of fate. But Indra's existence was not just an act of rebellion from the Prince of the Underworld; it was the result of an impossible moment where the Weaver helped his younger brother, allowing Indra to be born and acquire the Uchiha lineage.
Indra was the anomaly that Weaver, the Weaver, accepted. In a rare point of convergence, Weaver agreed to assist Nether's project, thus allowing the possibility of a total contradiction of all that is fixed.
Under Weaver's subtle influence, she was able to move to refine this hammer of Nether, polishing Indra's raw essence to create something the world had never seen: a new Madara.
This new Madara would not merely be a ghost of the past. He would be a deadlier version, yet fundamentally different from the original.
While the old Madara was a warrior who clashed against the currents of the world until consumed by madness and sin, this new Indra was forged to be the tool of chaos within fate. Lethal, yet under control, he would have the shackles necessary to anchor his sanity while unbalancing the reality around him.
And Kushina would be the deepest of those shackles.
She would become his refuge, the martyr he would lean upon, and the chain that would bind itself to his soul indelidly. When the youth asked what she wanted, she lied. She claimed it would be problematic to find the other heir, but the truth was the opposite: there stood the perfect heir. Someone destined not to stagnate at a mere 50% of the Uchiha lineage, but to become something more.
Were the emotions she displayed false? No. Never. The affection and maternal love she felt for Indra were genuine, yet distorted. Her Aspect, fully optimized for visualizing the past and future, allowed her to see every fragment of his suffering, the scars upon his soul, and the dark paths where, in almost every variation of causality, he was fated to suffer.
Yet there was something that burned within Kushina's core with a paradoxical intensity: hatred. She detested, with every fiber of her being, seeing children forced into suffering or made to bear burdens that did not belong to them. This hatred was so absolute that she had forbidden the killing of any clan member under seventeen; she demanded that the young have the right to develop and grow, even if, in the end, they became killing machines driven by a thirst for power.
However, at the center of this hatred lay her greatest contradiction. While claiming to protect innocence, she herself intended to raise Indra for suffering. She would mold him to survive the hardships that would be cast upon him; through pain and manipulation, he would grow beautifully. But this was not only for his sake; he would be the crystallization of her will, of her rebellion against a fate that allowed her to change nothing.
The affection for Indra was genuine, which made her hatred for herself even deeper. She decided he must endure every scar to serve her purpose, so that he might grow beautifully. Since she saw the remote possibility of his emergence, the Matriarca had prepared. She assembled the perfect agenda to mold him, determined to teach him everything possible in the short time they had: from absolute mastery in combat to the coldness of strategy, passing through now-forgotten knowledge to the complex nuances of human relationships. She wanted him to be perfect not only as a weapon, but as an individual capable of navigating among men and women with mastery.
Was there manipulation? Yes. But it was a manipulation born of a desperate zeal.
She herself had a desire she had learned to bury deep within her core: the wish to be a mother. She had always wanted the warmth of a life she could call her own, but she saw where her own future would lead. Thus, she hid this desire in the darkest place of her being. This was why she imposed the rule of killing members only after seventeen, so that, with a better chance to evolve the Sharingan, they would kill their own family members willingly.
But in the short yet long time they would have together, she would teach Indra all she could. She would love him with an intensity he would never forget, ensuring that the fruit of this distorted love became what he desired most.
Indra would not be like her, a mere observer. He would be the chaos that gave birth to the new; the beast that would scramble the gears of the world. He was not there to follow the flow, but to become the anomaly that would force the machine to spit out results never before predicted. And Kushina, moved by this distorted love, would do anything, transforming her own existence into a chain that would bind itself deeply within him and never let go, so that he might grow and become the perfect weapon Nether desired—that she desired.
Kushina ended her reflection, but her fingers did not stop. She continued to caress Indra's hair with a delicacy that contrasted with the abyss in her eyes. The love was there, but the decision was sealed.
"Zetsu."
Her voice was not a shout, but a whisper that sliced through the cathedral's silence like a blade. Immediately, the ground seemed to exhale shadow itself. The distorted figures of White Zetsu and Black Zetsu, the same ones who guarded the entrance to this isolated place, emerged from the stone walls.
"Commence what was planned for the Hammer," the Matriarca ordered.
The gentle, maternal tone that had enveloped Indra vanished like mist in the sun. What remained was a cold, cutting, and absolute voice, the voice of a ruler who saw the world as a chessboard. The refuge Indra had found, that safe harbor of warmth and acceptance, now revealed its foundations of blood.
White Zetsu bowed in an exaggerated reverence, his voice laced with an almost childish, yet sinister obedience. "As you wish, my Lady! It's going to be quite a show!"
Beside him, the dark half, the manifestation of somber will, replied with a voice deep, guttural, and void of any human emotion: "Yes, my Lady. So that the fruit may grow beautifully. Your will shall be done."
Kushina did not avert her gaze from Indra. She was the mother who loved him and the smith who would forge him. For Kushina's will to occur, for chaos to be sown and fate to be scrambled, the "Hammer" had to be perfect.