The darkness was as thick and viscous as ink.
Yakushi Nono drifted in a sea of chaos. There was no light, no sound—only a bone-deep exhaustion and a lingering scent of blood that she couldn't shake. She felt like a rotting skiff, drifting aimlessly in frigid, biting seawater.
Suddenly, the scene shifted.
The acrid smell of gunpowder flooded her nostrils, mixed with the metallic tang of blood. Before her stood a deserted outpost on the outskirts of Konoha, its crumbling walls casting grotesque silhouettes under the pale moonlight.
She wore the signature tactical gear of Root. Her movements were ghost-like, swift and silent. Chakra scalpels flickered at her fingertips, slicing through the air with a faint hum.
The target was just ahead—a figure in ordinary shinobi attire, back turned toward her, frantically rummaging through the rubble with clumsy, desperate movements.
The command from Root was etched coldly into the depths of her mind: Eliminate the defector; recover the classified scroll.
There was no hesitation.
Instinct drove her like a precision killing machine. Her feet stepped soundlessly over the gravel, closing the distance in an instant. The chakra scalpel struck with lethal accuracy, aimed straight for the center of the target's back!
This strike was enough to sever the heart's vessels, resulting in instantaneous death.
Squelch!
The sound of the blade entering flesh was dull and clear. The figure stiffened, as if their spine had been removed, and began to turn around with agonizing slowness.
The hood slid back, revealing a face caked in dust and blood—young, yet etched with shock and agony. Those eyes, staring through a pair of hauntingly familiar glasses, fixed on Nono with an expression of utter disbelief.
"De... Dean..." A weak, raspy voice—as if squeezed out with the very last of his strength—escaped the youth's throat, carrying a broken wheeze and an unspeakable despair born of betrayal by his closest kin.
Dean?
That title was like a steel needle, stabbing ruthlessly into Nono's chaotic mind without warning! A sharp, entirely foreign agony exploded from the depths of her heart, instantly sweeping through her entire body. The hand holding the chakra scalpel began to tremble uncontrollably.
At that moment, the blood-stained face of the dying youth began to twist, melt, and transform like a ripple on water...
The facial features shifted rapidly; the dust and blood faded, the skin becoming fair and youthful. Behind the round lenses of the glasses, those large eyes—once always filled with a gentle smile and a hint of timidity—now stared at her with terror and grief...
It was Kabuto!
It was Kabuto as a child!
"NO—!!!"
A shriek, so shrill it distorted, tore through the dream!
Yakushi Nono bolted upright from the cold, hard stone bed. Her heart hammered wildly against her ribs, as if trying to burst through her chest. Cold sweat instantly soaked her thin grey prison garb, bringing a biting chill.
She gasped for air like a fish out of water, each breath bringing a burning sting to her lungs. Her hands clutched the fabric over her chest, knuckles white as she tried to physically suppress the heart that felt like it was leaping into her throat.
Sweat trickled from her temples, dripping onto the coarse burlap bedding.
In the darkness, she looked around wildly. Only the narrow gap at the bottom of the iron cell door allowed a flicker of dim, swaying yellow light from the hallway oil lamps to cast a twisted band of light across the floor. The familiar moldy scent, the dampness of the stone walls, and the aura of despair re-wrapped themselves around her.
It was a dream... just a nightmare...
She tried to tell herself this, using the cold reality to dispel those heart-shattering images. But that cry of "Dean," those eyes belonging to Kabuto, filled with sadness and horror, were like a brand seared onto her retinas, repeatedly burning her nerves.
An unspeakable void and panic seized her, more suffocating than the prison itself.
However, as her eyes habitually scanned the tiny stone room that had held her for an unknown amount of time, a sense of wrongness—like a cold snake—slithered into her heart.
It was too quiet.
There was no muffled coughing from the neighboring cell, no heavy footsteps of patrolling guards, no screeching friction of iron doors. Even the echoes of her own heavy breathing and heartbeat had vanished.
A hair-raising silence enveloped everything.
She instinctively looked down at her hands—hands that had once saved lives and executed countless dark missions. They were pressed against a surface of water, as smooth as a mirror.
Nono gasped, her body instantly turning rigid. She wasn't sitting on a cold stone bed; she was...
Sitting suspended above an infinite, ink-jade surface of water!
The water reflected the equally vast starlit sky above. Countless stars burned, rotated, and flowed, gathering into a brilliant river of stars. The cold, pure starlight spilled down, illuminating the space like the domain of a god. The water beneath her wasn't solid, yet it reflected her terrified, disheveled form with perfect clarity.
Where... is this?!
Massive terror instantly overwhelmed the lingering fear from the nightmare. She snapped her head up to look around. It remained absolutely silent, save for the magnificent, silent rotation of the stars. A cold, vast, inhuman ethereality wrapped around her, making her feel as small as a grain of dust.
"What you saw was not a dream."
A voice spoke abruptly. Low, calm, and devoid of any emotional fluctuation, it echoed directly within her soul.
Yakushi Nono spun toward the sound like a startled rabbit. Not far ahead, also standing upon the starlit water, a figure floated silently. He was shrouded in a voluminous black robe that seemed to blend into the deep background. His face was covered by a featureless white three-eyed fox mask; the three hollow eye holes glinted with a cold, inorganic luster under the starlight.
Symbolic fox ears extended from the top of the mask, adding a layer of eerie vitality to the inhuman figure. His wide sleeves hung naturally, and his entire being radiated a heart-stopping gravity and depth.
It was the ruler of the Land of Stars—the mysterious Shura.
"That was the script Danzo Shimura painstakingly designed for you," Shura's voice came through the mask, steady and toneless, as if stating a cold fact. "It is also the method he uses to screen, polish, and ultimately control the sharpest and most covert 'tools' in his hands."
Yakushi Nono began to tremble violently. It wasn't because of the cold, but because of the cruel truth contained in those words—a truth that pointed straight to the darkest core of her life.
Danzo... script... tool...
These words were like poisoned daggers piercing through her chaotic memory barriers. She instinctively shook her head, her grayish hair sticking messily to her sweaty forehead, her voice raspy and broken: "No... impossible... you're lying! Lord Danzo..."
"What he requires is absolute loyalty and absolute obedience," Shura interrupted her futile denial, his voice carrying a trace of cold, all-knowing mockery. "A spy with the identity of a 'mother' will always have a soft spot in her heart—a spot that can be pried open, exploited."
"Therefore, he needed to personally sever that bond. He used a perfect double to replace the real child in your memory, creating a new 'weakness.'"
"Then... at the most opportune moment, he would arrange an 'accidental' encounter—a cleanup mission that 'must' be executed..."
"To have the 'mother' kill the 'son,' or the 'son' kill the 'mother.' To use the ultimate peak of pain and betrayal to completely crush your humanity, erasing the last possible 'weakness' and forging you into a truly cold, absolutely obedient 'blade.'"
Every word felt like a frozen hammer slamming into Nono's heart. Those worries she had deliberately forgotten, those fears she had buried deep, began to surge frantically. She knew better than anyone what kind of man Danzo was and what kind of organization Root was.
The desperate cry of the youth in her dream... the face that eventually morphed into little Kabuto... The fragments swirled in her mind like shards of glass, cutting and slicing, trying to piece together a bloody truth she didn't dare face.
"No... it's not like that..." she struggled in vain, her voice getting weaker as she shook like a leaf in the wind. Something solid within her was making a distinct, overstrained cracking sound.
Shura floated silently, his white fox mask facing her without emotion. That silent posture was more oppressive than any words. He seemed to be waiting—waiting for the moment the levee of her mind completely collapsed.
Finally, that cold voice spoke again, like a final judgment:
"Yakushi Nono, haven't you noticed yet?"
Nono looked up, her bloodshot, terrified, and defiant brown eyes staring through her messy hair at that frozen fox mask.
Shura slowly raised his right hand, shrouded in the black robe. He didn't point at her, nor at anything in particular; he simply raised it casually.
With his movement, the smooth, mirror-like water reflecting the stars beneath them suddenly rippled soundlessly. The surface no longer reflected the stars; instead, like the clearest of mirrors, a scene instantly emerged.
It was the dim, oppressive corridor of the Seventh Prison Sector.
A boy wearing the deep blue Genin uniform of the Star Village and round glasses was distributing food to the prisoners. The boy's gaze was low behind his lenses, maintaining a forced calm as he placed a piece of dark bread into her cracked bowl.
The image froze.
It clearly reflected the boy's face—gentle, slightly youthful, with eyes hiding an uncontrollable storm of agony.
It also reflected her own face—haggard, numb, eyes hollow and vacant, like a shell devoid of a soul, showing absolutely no reaction to the face inches away from her that was filled with complex emotions.
"You have seen him," Shura's cold voice struck the frozen image like a hammer, smashing Nono's completely collapsed mental defenses.
"Just today, right in front of you. And yet, you couldn't even recognize your own child."
Boom—!!!
Yakushi Nono collapsed onto the water. Her world shattered into pieces.