A small figure ran in panic through the silent streets.
Sasuke Uchiha felt an inexplicable unease clutch tightly at his heart. Guided purely by instinct, he sprinted toward home.
But—
It was too quiet. Terrifyingly so.
Then he saw it—
Scattered kunai.
Dark red stains splashed across the walls.
And bodies lying motionless on the ground.
"Dad…? Mom…?"
Fear poured over him like ice water. His legs trembled, nearly giving out, yet he forced himself forward.
At the corner, a figure blocked his path.
Short black hair.
The familiar Uchiha clan attire.
The fan-shaped crest emblazoned on his back.
"Brother!"
Sasuke rushed toward him like a drowning man grasping at salvation, tears welling in his eyes.
"Everyone… everyone—what happened?! What's going—"
His words stopped abruptly.
Sasuke saw Itachi's eyes.
They were no longer the gentle black he knew, but a sea of blood-red, etched with cold, eerie patterns—sharp and merciless, like spinning shuriken.
What froze his blood completely was the kunai in his brother's hand, still dripping with fresh blood.
"Foolish little brother."
Itachi's voice was colder than the night wind.
Before Sasuke could understand, that crimson world swallowed his vision.
The world spun.
In the next instant, he found himself bound to a massive cross, trapped within a twisted, oppressive realm.
Tsukuyomi.
Here, time was stretched infinitely.
Again and again, Sasuke was forced to witness—at the closest possible angle—his parents being slaughtered by the very brother he adored, cut down by that same kunai.
Each repetition carved the pain deeper into his soul.
"Why… Brother… why would you do this?!"
Sasuke screamed, his mind teetering on the brink of collapse.
Itachi stood before him like a demonic god, his voice utterly devoid of emotion.
"To measure my capacity. A foolish little brother like you has no value worth killing."
"If you wish to kill me, then hate me. Loathe me. And live on in disgrace."
"Cling to life. Flee desperately. Struggle miserably to survive."
"One day, when you possess the same eyes as I do… come and find me."
Back in the real world, within the Uchiha compound—
Sasuke's eyes rolled back as his body collapsed stiffly onto the ground.
Under the crushing terror and total destruction of his psyche, he lost consciousness completely.
Itachi looked at his brother's pale, tear-streaked face.
Behind the cold Mangekyō Sharingan, a single tear finally slipped free and fell.
After one last glance at Sasuke, Itachi turned away without hesitation and vanished into the night.
Danzō Shimura stared at the Uchiha compound, his gaze burning with satisfaction.
Tonight, he had finally fulfilled his teacher's vision.
And from this night onward, he would possess a vast reserve of replaceable Sharingan.
At that moment, a presence appeared silently behind him.
"Konoha must guarantee Sasuke's absolute safety," a voice said coldly.
"Otherwise, I won't hesitate to sell every piece of intelligence I possess to enemy nations."
It was the most direct warning Danzō could receive.
Danzō's eyes hardened—then quickly returned to calm.
A fool who was used and still thinks himself noble, he sneered inwardly.
Hokage Office
The atmosphere was so heavy it felt suffocating.
The Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, looked at the blood-soaked youth standing before him—his expression eerily calm—and drew deeply on his pipe, releasing a long, weary sigh.
"You've been through enough, Itachi."
"I will infiltrate Akatsuki," Itachi said evenly.
"I'll monitor them from within. Sasuke's future… I leave it to you."
Hiruzen closed his eyes and nodded gravely.
"I swear it to you, in the name of the Hokage."
Itachi inclined his head slightly.
In the next instant, his form dissolved into a flock of crows, scattering and disappearing from the office.
After he left, only the dim glow of the pipe remained, flickering across Hiruzen's deeply conflicted face.
Shock.
Regret.
And a trace of—
An indescribable chill.
This boy had slaughtered his entire clan with his own hands, burdened his only brother with endless hatred and trauma to force him to grow stronger, and then accepted the name of traitor to infiltrate the most dangerous organization in the world.
All of it—
Done in the name of protecting the village.
Was this not an extreme manifestation of the Will of Fire?
Yet it was so fanatical, so ruthless, that even Hiruzen—the Third Hokage who had preached that philosophy all his life—felt his heart tremble.
He thought of the Uchiha clan's history: their intensity, their obsession, their tendency toward extremes.
"Are the Uchiha… truly a cursed clan?"
Hiruzen murmured, exhaustion and lingering fear weighing on his voice.
"I once believed Itachi was the genius who could transcend the clan's limitations… yet instead, he embodied them to the absolute extreme."
"This near-pathological obsession…"
"…is even more pronounced than that of his clansmen."
Hiruzen had to admit it—
Such a blazing, distorted Will of Fire was enough to frighten even him.
Somewhere beyond reality, yet completely isolated from it—
A figure was leisurely watching everything unfold.
Yin An, a soul that did not belong to this world, lounged as though seated on an invisible sofa, observing the tragedy playing out within the Uchiha compound.
He watched Itachi kill his parents.
Watched Sasuke collapse in despair.
Watched that single tear fall from behind the Mangekyō Sharingan.
A smile of amusement tugged at Yin An's lips as he muttered softly, his voice echoing in the empty space:
"What a bunch of lunatics. Obsessive, insane, and self-righteously indulging in self-sacrifice…"
"…But that's what makes it interesting."
He stretched lazily, calculation glinting in his eyes.
"The script is ready. The emotional groundwork is perfect. Now then—this director should start editing everyone's perception, and make this play more profitable for me."
A transmigrator's rule: there must be a cheat.
Yin An's cheat was a system focused on Deception and Emotional Harvesting.
The beginner reward—an Absolute Concealment Space(pocket dimension sealed with fuinjutsu)—perfectly evaded all forms of detection. Without his permission, no one could ever reach this place.
And now—
It was time to activate the system's core ability.
As long as Yin An deceived others or altered the shinobi world's perceptions—and someone believed it—the system would reward him.
The next day, dawn broke over Konoha.
Official news spread like a plague—
The Uchiha clan had been exterminated overnight.
The culprit: the rogue ninja Itachi Uchiha.
The village exploded.
The reactions of the major clans became subtle—and eerily uniform.
Sympathy born of fear?
Perhaps.
But every clan chose silence.
None raised objections to the village leadership.
As for the civilians—
They told a very different story.