Pain flashed through Hashirama’s eyes as he remembered the horror of his brother Kawarama’s death on the battlefield, and the despair in the eyes of the youngest, Itama, as he marched off to war.
Those images tormented him day and night like nightmares.
“Then tell me, Tobirama, what is the result of fighting on?
More death?
More hatred?
Until our two clans annihilate each other?”
“At least we would keep the Senju’s dignity!” Tobirama insisted stubbornly.
“Dignity matters more than life!”
“No!” Hashirama’s voice rose, startlingly loud in the silent night.
“Nothing matters more than life.
Once you’re dead, there’s nothing left—dignity, glory, all of it is nothing but empty phantoms!”
Their gazes clashed fiercely in the moonlight, invisible sparks seeming to fly between them.
Tobirama had never seen his brother so impassioned, and for a moment he was left speechless.
Hashirama took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.
“Tobirama, I know you’re thinking of the clan.
But trust me just once.
These negotiations are our only chance to end this cycle of hatred.”
“You’ve been blinded by Uchiha Madara.” Tobirama said coldly.
“What ideas has he fed you, that you’d willingly give up the pride of the Senju?”
“Madara has fed me nothing!” Hashirama’s voice rose again.
“It was I who witnessed the cruelty of war with my own eyes.
I who buried our loved ones with my own hands!
Can you honestly say you haven’t wavered even once?
Have you never questioned the meaning of this endless slaughter?”
Tobirama fell silent, countless battles flashing through his mind—Uchiha ninja fallen in pools of blood, Senju faces weeping for their lost kin.
But he shook the thoughts off quickly.
“War is the destiny of shinobi.
We were born to fight, to protect our own clan.”
“And what if there were a way to protect the clan without fighting?” Hashirama countered, hope gleaming in his eyes.
“Tobirama, imagine it—if the Senju and the Uchiha joined forces, we would become the most powerful force in all the ninja world.
No one would dare challenge us.
Our people could flourish in peace…”
“Join forces?” Tobirama scoffed.
“Brother, you grow more fanciful by the day.
The Uchiha’s hands are stained with the blood of our kin.
How could they ever cooperate with us in good faith?
This is nothing but their stalling tactic!”
The light in Hashirama’s eyes faded.
He shook his head wearily and turned to leave.
“I’m tired.
I don’t want to argue anymore.
When the day of negotiations comes, whether you support me or not, I will hold to my decision.”
“Brother!” Tobirama called out urgently.
“You can’t go through with this on your own!
Father will never approve!”
Hashirama’s back stiffened.
After a moment, without looking back, he said, “Perhaps Father’s choices aren’t always right.
I am the young clan head.
It’s my responsibility to choose the Senju’s future.”
With that, he mounted the stairs with heavy steps and disappeared into the shadows of the corridor.
“Damn Uchiha!” Tobirama cursed through gritted teeth, slamming his fist against the wooden pillar beside him and rattling the whole staircase.
He raised his eyes to the bright moon, his heart full of anger and unease.
The moonlight remained cold and aloof, indifferent to all the strife of the mortal world.
Tobirama stood where he was, thoughts churning.
He knew that once his brother made up his mind, it was nearly impossible to change—but this decision, in his eyes, was tantamount to pushing the Senju into the abyss.
“Madara…
what have you done to my brother…” Tobirama muttered, a flicker of killing intent passing through his red eyes.
If that Uchiha ever dared to harm his brother, he swore he would make the entire Uchiha clan pay.
A moment later, Tobirama too turned and climbed the stairs.
The night had grown deep.
With the important negotiations soon to come, he needed to conserve his strength.
Passing Hashirama’s room, he heard muffled sobs from within—so faint that only a shinobi’s keen hearing could have caught them.
Tobirama’s hand stopped mid-air, wanting to knock but hesitating.
He had never seen his brother cry in secret.
Even when something happened to Kawarama and Itama, Hashirama had always swallowed his grief and comforted the others.
Hearing that sound now, Tobirama’s heart felt gripped by an invisible hand.
In the end, he lowered his hand and returned silently to his own room. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Lying in bed, Tobirama tossed and turned, his brother’s sobs and those words about peace lingering in his mind.
“Maybe…
just maybe…” Tobirama stared at the ceiling, and for the first time his fixed view of the Uchiha wavered.
“If we really could end the war…”
But soon he remembered the clansmen who had died at Uchiha hands, and their agonized faces in their last moments.
Anger seized his heart again.
“No.
The Uchiha can’t be trusted.
I have to stop my brother from making a terrible mistake.”
Having made up his mind, Tobirama finally closed his eyes.
Moonlight spilled through the window across his face, lending a softness to his pale complexion.
Darkness surged in like a tide, and you felt yourself sinking.
Around your ears came the howl of wind and the sharp ring of a blade cutting air.
“Flying Thunder God Slash——”
You tried to move, but your body would not obey.
All you could do was watch that silvery-white flash drive straight at your throat—no, not your throat, but Izuna’s!
“Izuna!” Madara’s hoarse roar tore through the dream.
You sat up with a jolt, cold sweat soaking your clothes.
Your eyes throbbed with burning pain, and the pattern of the Mangekyou Sharingan flickered in the darkness.
You gasped, your throat parched as if roasted by fire.
Letting your hand fall, you looked at your trembling palm in the faint moonlight from the window—it was stained with blood that had flowed from your eyes.
That man…
silver-white hair, a stern face, a deadly kunai in his hand…
somewhere in the intelligence network, this name…
“Senju…
Tobirama…” You whispered to the void, your voice husky as if from another time and space.
A secret report intercepted in early winter last year had recorded the new technique developed by the Senju’s second-in-command.
Back then, at the clan gathering, Madara had scoffed that it was a trifling trick.
But now, between your teeth lingered the taste of blood from Izuna’s throat in your dream.
“Who…
am I, really?” You curled up in the corner of the bed, burying your face between your knees.
Your eyes were still bleeding, the pain spreading from your eyeballs to your temples.
The darkness of the room seemed to take on substance, coiling around your limbs, pressing down on your chest.
You let out a pained groan, your nails digging deep into your arms.
“It hurts.
Is this the price of being a seer?”
You knew your eye power was waning.
Every time you used this ability, your vision blurred a little more.
In a few years, you would be completely blind…
Forcing yourself to calm down, you wiped the blood from your face with your sleeve.
You had to think.
You had to sort out these jumbled memories and forebodings.
Senju Tobirama would become the Uchiha’s foremost enemy.
Of that you were certain—not just for the Uchiha, but for Madara especially.
Your feelings for Madara were so complicated that even you couldn’t understand them.
Sometimes, looking at him, you felt a suffocating familiarity; other times, it seemed a whole world lay between you.
“At least for now…
I can let my heart race as freely as I want.”
You knew you had no future.
The decline of your eye power was irreversible.
But before you fell entirely into darkness, there were things that had to be done.
The Mangekyou Sharingan gave off a faint red glow in the dark, and the shrine’s silhouette stood solemn in the moonlight.
Your fingers traced the weathered clan crest on the door frame.
Details you’d missed when you came with Madara last time were now clear: tiny ancient characters carved along the edges.
The shrine door gave a slight creak, as if resisting a late-night visitor.
The central stone tablet stood quietly, a silent guardian in the dimness.
You took three specially made candles from your robes—their wicks steeped in Chakra.
As you lit them with hand seals, the flames burned an eerie purple, illuminating lines on the tablet’s surface that ordinary light couldn’t reveal.
The Mangekyou Sharingan’s pattern spun rapidly.
The writing on the tablet rippled like water, rearranging and recombining into new content.
Your pupils contracted sharply—this was the true history of the Uchiha.
“The Sage of Six Paths founded the Ninshu Sect…
the eldest son Indra inherited the eyes of the Sage…
the second son Ashura obtained the body of the Sage…”
Your fingertips trembled as you read.
The text recorded that Indra was extraordinarily gifted, yet was rejected by his father for his excessive pursuit of power.
The tablet plainly recorded that the Uchiha clan were the descendants of Indra, and the Senju clan the successors of Ashura.
“So Madara and Hashirama…”
The candle flames suddenly guttered violently, and a sharp pain stabbed through your temple.
Enduring the discomfort, you read on and found the tablet also recorded the “Mugen Tsukuyomi” plan.
By combining the powers of Indra and Ashura, one could cast an illusion covering the whole world and create a utopia without war.
“But it requires…” Your voice caught in your throat.
“It requires the eyes of Indra’s reincarnation…”
The writing at the very bottom of the tablet suddenly seeped dark red liquid.
At first you thought it was a hallucination—until you smelled the rust-like scent of blood.
Those words recorded the fates of every reincarnation: brothers murdering each other, both sides wounded, the cycle starting over and over…
“No!” You stumbled back, the candlestick slipping from your trembling hand.
The purple flame guttered on the floor a few times and died, plunging the shrine back into darkness.
The Mangekyou Sharingan spun uncontrollably.
The blood-red words on the tablet seemed to come alive in your sight, twisting into a vision of Madara and Hashirama fighting.
In the vision, Madara’s eyes wept tears of blood, while an Uchiha fan was driven into Hashirama’s chest.
Behind them lay countless ninja corpses pierced by tree roots, and a blood-red moon hung in the sky…
“Ah!” You clapped your hands over your stinging eyes and fell to your knees.
When the vision faded, you found your cheeks already soaked—whether with sweat or tears of blood, you couldn’t tell.
The overturned copper incense burner rolled down the steps, startling the ninja crows roosting among the beams.
These black birds, tamed by the Uchiha, cried with voices like wailing infants, the beating of their wings eerily overlapping with the whistle of shuriken techniques through the air.
Passing through the corridor of Kagura Hall, morning mist flowed between the vermilion torii gates.
You turned to leave, and your sleeve caught the offering bell before the shrine, sending the bronze bell crashing to the ground.
The sound startled a figure by the door—but in the instant before you collided, it transformed into a substitution log.
The Somei Yoshino cherry trees around the training ground were shedding the last petals of the year.
Just as you stepped onto the stone-paved path, you saw Madara’s gunbai war fan thrust into the seventh training stake—the exact spot he struck during his daily morning practice.
The young clan head was, for once, in his everyday clothes, the hem of his navy-blue haori still damp with the mist of the Naka River.
“You smell of the incense from the shrine.” Madara caught a falling petal in his hand, and Chakra flame kindled at his fingertip, burning it into an ashen-grey butterfly.
The first rays of dawn pierced through the clouds, Madara’s shadow stretching out to cover you like some silent shelter.
“And if I said I could see the threads of fate…” Your voice was lighter than the falling petals.
“Would the young clan head believe me?”
Madara’s pupils contracted sharply.
Countless memories of training alone deep into the night surged through his mind, and all the words he’d wanted to say but never could emerged at last, with a rust-tinged question: “The thread you see…
whose heart is tied to the other end?”
In the instant the morning mist cleared, you saw a double reflection in Madara’s contracted pupils—the young clan head of reality and the horned Indra of the vision overlapping.
The gunbai fans in both their hands erupted at once with black flames that could devour heaven and earth.
The next day, the lights of the Uchiha compound lit up one after another outside the window.
It was the day of the important negotiations, and everyone had risen early to prepare.
Footsteps sounded outside the door, followed by Madara’s low voice: “Nagi, are you awake?”
You quickly wiped the cold sweat from your brow and steadied your voice.
“I’m awake.”
“I’ll wait for you in the meeting hall.” The footsteps faded into the distance.
You let out a breath and struggled up to dress.
The person in the mirror was pale as a ghost.
You put on the black robes of a death warrior and finally the hood that hid half your face.
The finest death warrior of the Uchiha clan had no need to show weakness.
When you opened the door, the east was already pale with dawn.
The clansmen stood in full battle array, ready to depart.
Madara stood at the front, his long black hair lifted by the morning wind, his profile cut like a blade.
Feeling your gaze, Madara turned.
His Sharingan gleamed a deep red in the morning light.
“Let’s go.” He said simply.
You walked silently to your position behind Madara.
Izuna stood at Madara’s other side, his gaze lingering on you for a moment as his brow furrowed slightly.
“You look terrible.” Izuna said softly.
“It’s nothing.” You answered briefly, pulling your hood lower.
The group set off, passing through a forest thick with morning mist.
Your breathing gradually steadied.
The lingering ache of the Cold Poison still moved through your body, but no longer hindered your movement.
You noticed Madara looking back several times, and each time you shook your head slightly to show you were fine.
When the Uchiha arrived at the meeting place—an open clearing at the border between the two clans’ territories—the Senju were already waiting.
You immediately noticed Hashirama standing beside Senju Butsuma, the Senju young clan head said to be Madara’s equal.
He was taller than you’d imagined, and his brown eyes visibly brightened at the sight of Madara.
“Uchiha Tajima.
You’re late.” Senju Butsuma said coldly, hand resting on his sword hilt.