Chapter 553: The Heart That Was Overlooked
The boy running through the forest was not the real young Sasuke.
It was Satsuki.
The signature was getting closer. Clearer with every step.
That was Uchiha clan chakra -- the specific, unmistakable texture she had known since birth, the same presence she had sensed countless times in another world. Though in that world, the one carrying it had been a sister, not a brother. Someone who had made terrible choices, but who their mother had ultimately shielded from the worst consequence. Not a mortal enemy. Just someone Satsuki couldn't stand and couldn't be rid of.
But this world's Itachi was the man who had genuinely drenched his hands in his clan's blood.
Satsuki didn't slow down. She pushed faster, closing toward the chakra signature ahead.
And then, as she drew nearer --
"Sasuke... run... run away..."
A voice reached her. Weak. Familiar. Coming from off to one side.
Satsuki stopped.
She stood still and let her gaze sweep across the surrounding trees.
She saw them.
Not far from where she stood, two figures lay in a pool of blood. The blood had spread from beneath their bodies and soaked into the fallen leaves, dark red and spreading wide, reaching all the way to the ground at her feet.
Fugaku and Mikoto. Lying there, their bodies trembling faintly, eyes still barely open, watching her with expressions full of fear and desperation.
"Sasuke... run... please run..."
Satsuki was quiet.
If it were a real young Sasuke standing here -- a boy that age, faced with this exact scene -- what would happen to him?
He would probably shatter.
But Satsuki was not this world's Sasuke.
And to her, the scene in front of her was -- too fake.
So fake that she could see through it without even activating her Rinnegan. That was not flesh and blood. Not real life. Not any existence with a soul behind it. It was chakra, nothing more. An artificial genjutsu construct composed entirely of Mangekyo Sharingan ocular power.
All of it was illusion.
All of it was the work of someone hiding in the shadows, using the oldest trick available to them to break their little brother's mind.
Satsuki watched it quietly, and not a single ripple moved through her dark eyes.
But at the same time, she felt it.
Right nearby. Behind that large tree. In the shadow where the sunlight didn't reach. Someone was hiding there -- suppressing their presence, compressing their chakra, using every technique available to them to stay invisible. Peering through a gap in the bark. Watching with a pair of crimson eyes.
Itachi was right there.
Satsuki let her gaze fall back to the two figures lying in the blood at her feet.
She knew it was fake.
And yet -- looking at it anyway -- it made her angry.
Meanwhile, in the shadows not far away, Itachi was staring through the gap in the leaves at the boy standing motionless in the clearing. His brow was pulled tight. His Sharingan flickered with something he had rarely needed to feel.
Disbelief.
Something was wrong.
His Mangekyo genjutsu had failed?
Not completely -- not quite. The boy had seen the illusions he'd constructed. But he hadn't been pulled into the genjutsu space. The illusions had formed, and then stopped there.
How was that possible?
Mangekyo-level genjutsu, reduced to surface hallucinations with no ability to trap its target in the constructed world?
Why?
Could it be that his Sharingan --
The next moment, Itachi's body went rigid.
He saw it.
The boy's eyes -- black a moment ago -- had changed.
The dark was rotating. Condensing. Reshaping itself. When it finally settled, what existed in his brother's eye sockets was something Itachi had never seen before.
Unsettling. Bewitching.
Beautiful the way a forbidden thing is beautiful. The way a flower that shouldn't exist is beautiful.
Mangekyo Sharingan.
The shape of those eyes -- there was no mistaking it. This was the Mangekyo Sharingan. Proof of the Uchiha clan's supreme ocular power.
Itachi's heart slammed once. A single hard beat.
Two emotions lived inside that beat simultaneously. Shock.
And a joy he couldn't hold back.
Though a small confusion lingered -- even with Mangekyo Sharingan, facing a genjutsu of equivalent level should still require a specific counter to break it. The mechanics didn't quite add up.
But that didn't matter anymore.
Sasuke had finally awakened.
Those eyes -- the ones Itachi had waited so long for, the ones he had used every means at his disposal to force into existence -- were finally there. In his brother's face. Real.
Itachi drew in a slow breath and forced himself to stay level.
He read the emotions carrying in those eyes.
Revulsion.
Killing intent.
Itachi confirmed it silently to himself.
Yes. This was Sasuke. This was exactly how his brother was supposed to look.
Those emotions were too real to be manufactured. There was no trace of performance in them. The revulsion was pointed directly at him. The killing intent was pointed directly at him. The hatred that wanted to tear him into pieces was pointed directly at him.
If the boy in front of him were an impostor, someone else wearing Sasuke's face, there was no way they could have faked killing intent this authentic.
Itachi let out a slow breath.
But alongside that, another thought was beginning to take shape.
According to the intelligence he had gathered, after Sasuke fled Konoha, the village had immediately sent out a pursuit squad. The squad included Nine-Tails jinchuriki Uzumaki Naruto -- the boy with the deepest bond to Sasuke, the one Sasuke had genuinely acknowledged as a friend, the very person Itachi had selected as the host for his Kotoamatsukami crow.
Could it be that Sasuke, to sever his bonds, to acquire the power he needed, to fully commit himself to the road of revenge --
Had killed Uzumaki Naruto?
Itachi processed the possibility.
It was the only thing that would explain why Sasuke had suddenly awakened the Mangekyo. Killing with your own hands the person you cared about most was the fastest method, and the most agonizing. To open those eyes, Sasuke had traded Naruto's life for his ocular power.
It was logical. It was what the plan had always been building toward, just with a different sacrifice at its center.
And it was the only thing that explained why Sasuke would appear here.
Everything fit.
The only element that didn't fit was Konoha suddenly losing its Nine-Tails jinchuriki. Losing a tailed beast meant a significant drop in the village's overall strength, meant other nations might see an opening, meant the fragile peace could fracture at any moment.
Itachi's brow tightened slightly.
He hoped Sasuke would eventually return to Konoha and fill the gap left by the Nine-Tails with the power of his new eyes.
But that was a concern for later. Right now there was something more immediate.
Kotoamatsukami.
The technique embedded in his crow, the one he had prepared specifically to rewrite Sasuke's will at the critical moment -- it was still inside Uzumaki Naruto's body.
Or rather, if Naruto was dead, then the crow carrying it was gone too.
He would need to find another solution.
But.
Itachi looked at the boy standing in the sunlight. Looked at those strange, beautiful Mangekyo eyes. The corner of his mouth moved -- just slightly, just for a moment.
Sasuke. You've grown.