Kimimaro's mask split mid-air, shards scattering like teeth.
By the time he hit the Uchiha ruins, his face and shoulder-length hair were fully exposed, dust streaking through the pale strands.
His black cloak had been shredded somewhere between the Hyūga wall and the second rooftop he tore through, leaving only pieces clinging to him.
The light lavender shirt beneath, loose-fitting with long sleeves, the front marked by that large yin-yang emblem and faint bone-flower motifs woven subtly throughout the fabric, showed through in strips where the White Bastion Frame hadn't fully reformed yet.
His green eyes were now completely overtaken by the Byakugan's pale, veined glare, and with every breath, he felt himself acclimating to the new vision more naturally.
A pressure shift rolled over the ruins.
Hiashi didn't just arrive; he descended, fast, sharp, controlled, flying, white chakra radiating around him like a blazing cocoon.
The same strange Hyūga energy that had blasted Kimimaro across the compound was wrapped around the patriarch's limbs now, lifting him effortlessly through the air.
Kimimaro watched him approach, noting the technique, the posture, the way the chakra flowed.
"So that was the source," he thought. "A Byakugan-based flight? Interesting."
Hiashi stopped above the crater Kimimaro had carved, his face twisted with fury and something colder beneath it.
When he saw Kimimaro's exposed appearance, mask gone, shirt visible, Byakugan grafted and blazing in his skull, scroll of stolen eyes still strapped at his side, his voice came out low, shaking with contained rage.
"You defile my clan's blood… and dare wear our sight on your face…?"
He lowered a hand, white chakra spiraling around his palm like a star about to implode.
"I will erase every trace of you from this world."
Hiashi's fury burned hot on the surface, but beneath it a second emotion churned far deeper.
Shock.
The peculiar teenager had survived that blast.
That alone was already unbelievable.
But the more Hiashi looked at him, truly looked, the more the reality sank in like a stone:
A lone outsider had slipped into the Hyūga compound at maximum alert, bypassed every barrier, and in minutes had crippled dozens of elite clansmen, including those whose skills easily matched Konoha's standard jonin level
And he had done it all silently.
Methodically. With purpose.
Hiashi was a clan head, not a fool.
He connected the dots immediately.
His daughter's mutilated eyes.
The scroll full of preserved Byakugan.
The surgical precision with which the boy had plucked them.
The confidence. The familiarity.
So that was his goal from the start.
He came here specifically to harvest their eyes during the chaos of the invasion.
And what was worse—
He was good at it.
The way he fought them and plucked their eyes… it wasn't wild brutality.
His movements were technical, deliberate, as if he had studied the Byakugan in the past directly somehow.
That alone chilled Hiashi more than he wanted to admit.
Then there was the chakra.
That chakra.
The teen's reserves were so massive, so dense, they were brushing the peak of kage levels.
Hiashi knew with perfect clarity: if not for drawing on the Hyūga's ancient power vessel today, even he wouldn't last more than dozens of seconds, perhaps, against such a monster.
The realization curdled into a knot in his stomach.
And then regret followed, bitter and heavy.
He should never have left the vault unattended.
He should never have let frustration drive him outside.
Earlier, he had been fuming, furious that, as always, no main-branch member lifted a finger when the village was under attack.
Especially after that blond boy shouted his ridiculous speech at Neji during the exam finals… Hiashi had felt something twist in him.
Shame.
Pride.
Resolve.
So he marched out alone, determined to show that the Hyūga were not cowards, that they still stood with Konoha.
That they were its strongest clan, rightfully so.
And because of that single decision…
Because he chose to act like a pillar for once instead of a locked door…
A white-haired demon had slipped in behind him and stolen the clan's most sacred treasures, including his own daughter's eyes… scarring her soft heart in a way she might never recover from. That thought cut deeper than any wound.
By the time his Byakugan peripherally caught the first panicked clansmen rushing toward him, and he sensed the upheaval inside the estate, it was already too late.
This was, in every sense, one of the greatest humiliations in Hyūga history.
Unless he crushed this boy here and now.
But even that was poisoned by consequence.
That blast he'd already used, the ancient chakra he'd awakened, someone would have felt it already by this point.
Someone in the village, maybe even outside of it.
The Hyūga's thousand-year secret, hidden through countless generations, might already be exposed.
His mood plunged so sharply it nearly made him dizzy.
It hadn't been this low since the night Hizashi died, and Kumo twisted the clan into a political sacrifice.
Hiashi steadied himself, fists trembling.
Everything, his daughter's tears, his clan's disgrace, their ancient secret, hinged on what happened in the next breath.
So his chakra flared even higher, surging in sharp, climbing waves as he pulled more power from the ancient vessel buried somewhere deep within the Land of Fire. Only Hyūga patriarchs could access it.
That energy wasn't created from nothing. It was fed constantly, passively, by the cursed seals of the side branch in smaller part and mostly by the countless Byakugan entombed in the clan's vaults, their dormant potency siphoned for generations. All of it funneled into that forgotten "factory," refined into this pale, foreign chakra, and sent back to him now.
Only the patriarchs were ever taught the truth of its existence. Only they learned how to draw on it without dying. Hiashi was doing exactly that, emptying centuries of hoarded power into himself in seconds.
Kimimaro, meanwhile, was genuinely taken aback by the power Hiashi was unleashing. The sensation was… familiar to something he saw in the original series in one other place.
It reminded him of Toneri's Giant Tenseigan on the moon, but far cruder.
Where the Tenseigan radiated a clean cyan brilliance, this was a stark, pale-white force that felt stitched together rather than born naturally.
Imperfect.
Manufactured.
As if it really was made from Byakugan, just as he had once speculated.
It lacked the Tenseigan's divine core, but raw quantity had its own tyranny.
Fusing so many Byakugan together would never birth godhood, yet it could twist the Hyūga bloodline into something evolved, something monstrous.
And Hiashi was already climbing, fast, pushing past the Kage threshold with each breath.
The pressure rolling from him was suffocating, a pale concentrated chakra armor clinging to his frame like a second skin, and that same energy was also capable of striking in larger waves as brutally as it defended.
Kimimaro had already felt its offensive force firsthand.
He steadied himself.
This wouldn't be easy.
And after what he had done, Hiashi would not allow him to leave this place alive.
So Kimimaro would have to make him.
One way or another.
Kimimaro, meanwhile, had already begun exploiting his new Byakugan, not for vision alone, but as an internal instrument.
He used it to refine everything.
The Five Gates.
The Yang Seal.
His Shikotsumyaku's molding pathways.
All of it tightened and harmonized in ways he had never managed before.
With Byakugan-level internal sight, his chakra control snapped into near-perfect precision.
He no longer had to rely purely on intuition and sensory feel; he could see every coil, every micro-flow, every leak and tension.
The Five Gates ran cleaner.
Less neural strain.
More stable output.
Longer upkeep before the body buckled.
Almost non-existent recovery period.
And with the Yang Seal feeding his bones, he could shape the Shikotsumyaku even more efficiently, a synergy that simply hadn't existed before.
Kimimaro exhaled once, quietly relieved.
He would walk into this fight with far more confidence than he could have expected a minute ago.
He glanced at Hiashi, still radiating that crude white pseudo-Tenseigan aura, and spoke with casual dryness.
"Well then. I already got what I came for. How about we both walk our separate ways? You restore your order, I leave with my collection, nobody needs to die unnecessarily."
A faint mocking tilt colored his voice.
"And with your clan's… extensive reserves, finding a replacement Byakugan of similar quality shouldn't be difficult. Very stable eyes. Transplant beautifully."
Hiashi's eyes widened a fraction.
He hadn't expected the boy to know about the hidden vault.
Or to speak about the Byakugan with the familiarity of someone who had handled them for years.
But that possibility didn't matter.
Hiashi's answer was already certain.
"No."
His chakra surged again, brighter and heavier than before.
Yes, he could replace Hinata's stolen eye.
The vault held many, some even superior.
But trauma could not be replaced.
Not for her.
In his mind, Hinata had always been a soft flower, too gentle, too fragile for the rigid mold the clan demanded.
He had been harsh because he thought pressure would strengthen her.
But in truth, her softness only made him want to protect her more.
And now this boy had torn that softness open.
Hiashi's fury sharpened.
His white aura roared up once more, shaking tiles loose from the ruined Uchiha wall behind them.
Kimimaro, meanwhile, reformed the White Bastion Frame in full, the armor locking into place with a hiss of dense bone, water-pressure jets priming beneath.
Both prepared to kill.
The air between them tightened like drawn wire.