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"This is... my command tent?" Kitsune's voice quavered with confusion.
He remembered every detail clearly: leaving camp alone to clear his head, meeting the stranger by the river, the fight, the explosion, using Izanagi to reverse his death and sneak behind the old man for a final attack. Then came the white light, and after that, only crows.
And now he was here. In bed. In his tent.
"SOMEONE COME!" Kitsune made himself focus and called out.
A trusted subordinate stepped through the tent flap and bowed. "Lord Kitsune. What do you need?"
"When did I get back?"
The subordinate blinked. "My lord... You never left. You've been sleeping in the tent this whole time. You haven't stepped outside once."
"Never left. Sleeping this whole time?" Kitsune's body grew tense. The confusion in his eyes faded, replaced by something colder.
Impossible... He remembered every moment of it. Every footstep in the snow. The cold of the riverbank. The impact of his fan against that invisible wall. The sensation of chakra leaving his body as the explosive tags went off. These weren't the soft, half-formed images of a dream. They were real.
Genjutsu. It had to be genjutsu.
"RELEASE! RELEASE! RELEASE!" His Mangekyō Sharingan lit up. Kitsune focused all his strength, searching for any sign of an illusion.
Nothing...
A cold shiver ran down his spine.
There were no signs of genjutsu, no cracks in reality. The tent was real. His subordinate's heartbeat was real. The desk under his hand felt real.
He was genuinely here. He had always been here.
The subordinate flinched at the sight of Kitsune's spinning eyes and kept his head bowed, not understanding what was happening to his leader.
Kitsune drew a slow breath and steadied his voice. "You're certain. I was in this tent the whole time. No one came in. No one from outside."
"Absolutely certain, my lord. I stood guard at the entrance the entire time. I would never deceive you."
"...Leave."
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The tent fell quiet.
Kitsune sat by himself, lost in thought.
Was it really just a dream? Or was it a warning? Something pushing him to stop the war?
He walked to the weapon rack and looked at the war fan hanging there.
It was clean, without a single scratch. There was no sign it had ever been used.
"So it really was just a dream?" He said it out loud, but deep down, he couldn't believe it.
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The next day, Kitsune led his forces along a route that passed the frozen river.
He looked down and his face went pale.
The ice was broken and darkened. At the heart of the riverbank, a large, recently formed crater lay. His chakra signature lingered in the air nearby, a distinct Uchiha trace from his explosive tags.
All his self-denial vanished in an instant.
Kitsune stood frozen. A chill, unrelated to the winter air, crept up his spine.
Not a dream.
Not a genjutsu.
Every moment of that encounter was real.
The old man's power could change his life and rewrite his memories without leaving any trace. Kitsune had no idea how he lost, how he returned to his tent, or even how it all happened.
'Is that what a God looks like?'
Kitsune stared at the blast mark, his heart pounding in his chest.
The ability to erase a battle from someone's mind, manipulate their awareness of reality, carry a defeated enemy back to safety without them noticing a thing...
Only one being in the entire history of the shinobi world could do something like that.
The Sage of Six Paths.
Then another thought came to him, something hidden deep in the Uchiha records.
Uchiha Senichi. The old clan head from generations back.
The records were vague. Almost nothing remained, except a note that Senichi had once met an unknown old man, with no details about what happened. The fight and its outcome had been erased from history.
After that, Senichi had changed. He spent long hours at the Six Paths temple. He stared at the sky and muttered to himself. And at one clan meeting, he'd said something that everyone present had dismissed as the ramblings of a man worn down by too many years of war:
"There is an invisible hand behind everything in this world, moving it all."
"All of it is the Will of Heaven."
Back then, people thought the old man was losing his mind.
Now Kitsune was standing in his own crater, thinking the exact same thoughts.
He shook his head, trying to push away the fear creeping into his mind.
If this old man had been alive since Senichi's era, how long had he been walking this world?
No human being lived that long. It wasn't possible.
Unless...
"The founder of the Sarutobi Clan. The Third Patriarch of Ninshū. Could that actually be him?"
A new idea formed, and Kitsune's expression grew even darker.
The Uchiha had always kept their version of Ninshū's history. Biased, dismissive, but present. If the legendary Sarutobi patriarch was still alive and operating through the shadows, using techniques left behind by Ninshū...
It wasn't impossible.
After all, the Senju were Hagoromo's direct descendants.
'If someone from that era is still around...'
Kitsune stared at the chakra trace in the scorched earth, his expression impassive.
Whoever the old man was, Sarutobi patriarch or immortal leftover from a forgotten age or something else entirely, one thing was clear.
He wanted the war to stop.
And this power could easily end Kitsune's life at any moment.
But he hadn't.
That meant something was stopping him.
Kitsune clenched his fist, his eyes growing hard.
"My mind is made up." He turned to the nearest subordinate. "Is there a Six Paths Temple nearby?"
"Yes, my lord."
Kitsune let out a breath. "Take me there. I want to pray."
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Mount Myōboku. Manji rubbed his temple.
There was no reasoning with that man. Kitsune had the most stubborn Uchiha mindset Manji had seen in years—single-minded and sure his logic was the only one that mattered.
Indra had been Manji's student, so he was fairly reasonable. But Indra's descendants were a different story.
"Leave the rest to Asura."
Manji picked up a stack of paperwork and began sorting through it.
He'd been alive long enough to develop three reliable interests: recording history, working through administrative affairs, and watching the human world unfold.
"Gamamaru says he's short-staffed... Needs more workers?"
Manji frowned at the request.
The real problem was Mount Myōboku's population. Toads didn't reproduce like humans, and the workforce had been stretched thin for years.
"Bring the people from the moon over?"
He shook his head right away. No, the Ōtsutsuki branch family on the moon had their purpose. Moving them was not an option.
Just then, Black Zetsu walked in carrying a stack of bamboo scrolls.
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