Konoha Year 49.
Kiyohara's face was grim in a way he couldn't quite hide, no matter how hard he tried to keep his breathing steady. It wasn't fear in the dramatic sense,not the kind that made people scream or run. It was worse than that: a quiet certainty settling into his bones, heavy and cold.
He was probably going to die.
He read the mission sheet in his hand again. Then again. As if repetition could erode reality, as if staring long enough might peel back the ink and reveal a different destination beneath it. But the words remained unchanged, brutally consistent:
Reinforce Minato's team. Location: Kannabi Bridge.
Kannabi Bridge.
To other shinobi, it was a battlefield with a name. To Kiyohara, it was an event carved into the spine of the era,one that chewed people up and spat out the ones lucky enough to survive with scars they'd never admit existed.
He was a transmigrator. Ever since he'd awakened his former memories, he'd lived like someone walking on thin ice: careful steps, quieter breaths, no unnecessary risks. He didn't chase achievements. He didn't gamble with fate. He simply… endured. Clung to the margins. Stayed alive.
And now, after all that, he'd still drawn what felt like a "certain death" assignment.
On a battlefield where everything was in motion,where ambition, blood, and survival surged like living things,how was a nobody supposed to complete anything? For Kiyohara, the Battle of Kannabi Bridge wasn't merely dangerous. It was the kind of place where "ten deaths out of ten" didn't feel like exaggeration.
What unsettled him most, though, wasn't just the danger. It was the shape of it,the way the mission felt wrong from start to finish, as if someone had arranged the pieces with a smirk.
The enemy lineup was three elite jōnin, veterans who had lived long enough to become sharp. One of them,an Iwagakure jōnin named Akira,was even regarded as one of the strongest among them.
Konoha's side?
A newly promoted jōnin, Kakashi. Two chūnin, Nohara Rin and Obito.
And in the middle of this operation, Namikaze Minato would be sent to reinforce the front.
Meaning that once Minato left, the reality would become painfully simple: one jōnin and two chūnin against three battle-seasoned elite jōnin.
Was that… reasonable?
If Kiyohara went, he wouldn't be a solution. He'd be an extra name on a list,one more body to fill a gap until it stopped moving. Even Kakashi, a prodigy who had already developed an S-rank Raiton ("Lightning Release") technique at twelve, couldn't be sure he could hold the line in waters this deep.
And Kiyohara?
He was just a genin.
Everyone knew the gap between people could be obscene. Some genin fought and the aftershock could crack stone. Others existed solely to be thrown into the ugly places where formations broke,human sandbags on a living battlefield.
"Kiyohara? What's wrong?" Rin asked, her tone genuinely puzzled.
Her short black hair shifted with the movement of her head, a few strands brushing over the purple paint streaked across her cheeks. She looked at him as if trying to spot an injury he hadn't noticed. She didn't understand why his expression had soured the moment he received orders to reinforce them. This mission had Minato-sensei leading it,fastest shinobi alive. With him there, wasn't it practically guaranteed?
"It's nothing," Kiyohara said, forcing the words out smoothly. He even managed a small shake of his head, the kind that implied mild embarrassment rather than dread.
His eyes rose to her, taking in details he didn't want to think about,the pale pink skirt tied at her waist, the black top, the fitted over-the-knee socks. Small, human things. Proof that they were still young enough to wear normality like armor.
"Don't worry," a blond young man said as he approached, a gentle smile on his face that made it easy to believe in tomorrow. "This time, I'll protect everyone."
Kiyohara nodded. "I believe in you, Minato-sama."
What else could he say?
At this point in the war, Namikaze Minato's name carried weight like a weapon. There were shinobi from other villages who would abandon a mission on sight the moment they realized he was present,and no one would call them cowards for it, because living was the only victory that mattered.
And yet… Kiyohara couldn't stop the thought that had always haunted him about Minato.
For all that he was called the fastest shinobi in history, he would spend his life arriving half a step too late,always trailing disaster by a heartbeat.
"See?" Obito chimed in, strolling over with his hands behind his head, grinning as if war were just a loud inconvenience. He stopped beside Rin, leaning in close like he belonged there. "With Minato-sensei here, nothing's going to happen."
A short distance behind them stood a white-haired boy wearing a black mask. His gaze was flat, distant,like the world had nothing left that could surprise him.
Kiyohara watched the scene in silence: the kind teacher, the earnest girl, the loud boy, the quiet prodigy. Warmth held together by shared trust.
And he couldn't stop his mind from tugging that warmth toward the cliff edge of the future.
After this battle, Rin would be captured by shinobi from Kirigakure. Obito would break, then rot into something darker, and later he would return to Konoha and put on a grotesque performance of devotion,dragging the next generation into tragedy with his own hands.
So where did that leave Kiyohara?
People's joys and griefs didn't naturally intersect. He didn't feel what they felt; he only heard the noise of their certainty, and it scraped at him like sand under the eyelid.
He exchanged a few polite words, then slipped away, his steps measured and quiet. His mind drifted,not to tactics, not to heroics, but to a humiliating practicality: should he write a will now? Should he decide who inherited what little he had? What did a genin even leave behind besides a name?
That was when a voice echoed inside his head, clean and synthetic.
[Last Testament activated.]
[Book of Last Words: With you as the anchor, countless possibilities will extend from the future.]
[Please accept your will and your urn. Bury the remains properly.]
Kiyohara froze mid-step.
"…What?" His throat tightened. "So I die… in the future?"
His composure snapped,not in a dramatic outburst, but in that small, helpless way reality sometimes made you laugh at the worst possible time.
He knew it. He knew Kannabi Bridge was a grave disguised as a mission. And now they weren't even pretending: they'd already delivered the urn.
"An urn…?" he muttered, and as if responding to the word itself, an image formed in his mind,an opaque, translucent silhouette of a small container.
It bore the mark of Konoha.
Except the symbol had been slashed through with a single horizontal line.
Kiyohara stared at it, his stomach sinking.
That mark wasn't subtle.
"…That's the sign of a missing-nin."
Then, suddenly, another voice rang out,familiar enough to make his skin prickle.
"When you hear this, I'm already dead. What follows should be my last words…"
Kiyohara's breath caught.
From the urn's phantom outline, a hazy spirit drifted free, the shape wavering like smoke struggling to hold a human form. The face was unmistakable,seven or eight parts like his own, only older, hardened into a middle-aged version of him. There was fatigue in the eyes, and the kind of wear that didn't come from a single battle, but from years of losing something you couldn't name.
A shinobi headband sat on his forehead.
Slashed.
A missing-nin.
"You're… me?" Kiyohara forced out, voice low. "The me who died. And you defected?"
He remembered the earlier line: with him as an anchor, countless possibilities extending from the future.
So this,this traitor wearing his face,was one possible ending.
"Close enough," the spirit said, tapping the slashed protector with a hollow kind of acceptance. "As you can see, I'm a missing-nin now."
"When did you,no," Kiyohara corrected himself, jaw tight, "when did I defect?"
This wasn't destiny. It was only a branch. A warning. A mirror held up at an angle.
"A few years after this war ended," the spirit replied. There was a faint sigh in his voice, like the memory still tasted bitter.
"Why?"
"Because I wanted to move forward," the missing-nin said simply. "In the shinobi world, clans rely on bloodlines. Commoners rely on mutations. If you have neither, you either accept your limits… or you find someone who can break them for you. I joined Orochimaru."
Kiyohara fell silent.
That answer fit the shinobi world too well.
They said gold would shine anywhere, but Kiyohara had always known the truth: civilian-born shinobi weren't gold, not unless fate deigned to make them special. Most were just iron,useful, replaceable, and forgotten the moment they dulled.
In this world, power traveled through families, through apprenticeships, through blood and inheritance. If you had none of those, you survived on luck and stubbornness,burn a little incense to the Sage of Six Paths and pray your name didn't end up carved onto a memorial stone.
"Then how did you die?" Kiyohara asked, forcing himself to focus on what mattered.
"Explosive tags," the spirit answered.
Kiyohara stared.
"…That's it?"
"That's it."
A death so blunt it was almost insulting.
But Kiyohara didn't laugh. Plenty of shinobi died that way. The battlefield didn't care how important you thought you were.
"At least that means you survived Kannabi Bridge," Kiyohara said, voice tightening with urgency. "Tell me what you know. Anything. Even a detail."
He had the advantage of knowing the "story," yes,but even the smallest shift could distort events beyond recognition. A single flutter of wings could change who lived long enough to matter.
The spirit shook his head.
"No," he said. "Back then, I never received this mission."
Kiyohara blinked hard. "What?"
"I spent most of that period doing logistics," the missing-nin admitted, and the edges of his form flickered faintly, as if even speaking about it cost him time.
Kiyohara's chest tightened.
So it wasn't just him that could change. Other people, other events,everything could bend. The future wasn't a straight road; it was a forest of paths, and he was standing at the point where the branches began.
Like a warped reflection of reality, something akin to Gentei Tsukuyomi ("Limited Tsukuyomi"),a world that resembled the original but carried subtle differences in every corner.
If that was true…
Then the future could contain anything.
ANBU Kiyohara.
Hokage Kiyohara.
Ridiculous, impossible,and yet no longer something he could dismiss outright.
"Then what's the 'relic'?" Kiyohara asked, remembering the message. The urn was supposed to come with remains, with something left behind. "What did you leave me? Don't tell me it's just… you."
"To be honest," the missing-nin said, and something almost like a smile tugged at his mouth, "it probably is. I can stay for a while. I can teach you some jutsu."
He paused. His silhouette wavered, thinning at the edges like mist under morning light.
"But I won't last long. I also had a Book of Last Words… I just awakened it too late. When I died, I was packed up and sent to another version of me."
Then, in a steady, resigned voice, he explained what he understood: if the living fulfilled the dead person's final wishes, they could receive a boost,an amplification, as if the will of the deceased could be translated into strength.
Kiyohara listened, motionless.
On the surface, nothing had changed. A mission. A team. A war.
But underneath it all, something had shifted,like the future had reached back through time and placed an urn in his hands, daring him to prove it wrong.
End of Chapter